256

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!"

Head filled with random crap

Four straight hours of play and I'm getting better at FIFA 08. My thumbs are paying the price though.

I'm still not entirely sure how to frame box soffits with steel studs.

Screens are up. Storm windows are put away.

Jane's bike needs one of these, and a more round back wheel.

3 c-forms in a year leads to one very in trouble boy.

The blonde tornado is now down to a 1/2" buzz cut.

The bus has trouble running cold. My first project. Gotta remember how carburetors work.

Crew on top of league. Celtic won and Huns drew, so hope is still alive.

Head exploding with ADD. Gotta do twelve things.

Ten

We've been parents for ten years. It is such a clear before/after line in my life.

On a vaguely related note, Michael texted me to remind me that I took him to see Primus open for 24-7 Spyz on 7/26/1989, his 10th BD, and then abandoned him at the Newport to go to the mosh pit.

I just bought 4 tickets to see Flogging Molly in August, and what do you know! It's an all-ages show....

Weekend Wrapup

Sometimes I wonder why...

...when I'm beat down from work and parenting and such, that I type all of this stuff.

Well, it's because I can look this up and put a smile on my face.

The kids were playing a game in the back yard today that Ellie is calling "Silent Green." I haven't figured out why yet, but it is somehow related to the haggis discussion at dinner.

Joey

As I'm leaving Joey's room last night after reading to him, he leans over in the top bunk and says earnestly, but softly, "Dad, when I get to college, I'm going to fill my room with booby traps."

(This photo was taken by one of the other parents in his class at their Valentine's Day party. I'm certain that he had all of two seconds to react to the camera.)

Photobooth: The second best parenting tool on the Mac

Joey and I did some Photoboothing today. It was the only thing that would cheer him up, and subsequently was the only thing that kept him from being sold to the Gypsies.

Bathtime!

The fun thing about bathtime is that when the girls are both screaming, the tile walls and the glass door both reflect and amplify the sound enough to make adult ears bleed. Luckily, the only one that still really screams is Fin. Ellie just makes a bunch of noise to add to the screaming while I wash Fin's hair.

Fin here is modeling what the long-haired people in our house call the "hair towel." This is the original that Jane had. She made Fin and Ellie copies of it for Christmas

Much was accomplished today, but no one can tell exactly what.

Off to TV. I hope that the Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn't suck.

The Pollypocalypse

This, I believe, is a Polly Pocket cat. This is not the Barbie cat that Fin so desperately wanted (and got) for Christmas. Little Miss fine-motor-skills herself put four different Polly Pocket footwear items (I'd say shoes, but two are slippers) on this cat tonight and walked around showing them off.
In addition to the cat, which must have come with a set, we were blessed with the Polly Pocket Polly-Tastic Jumbo Jet (with built in fashion show) and a few thousand other incredibly small rubberized pieces of clothing. Amazingly, the girls are doing a good job managing to keep all of the pieces both together and organized.

The boys, on the other hand got ~600 Legos, which are coating every horizontal surface of their room.

Ellie's Library Card

Like most families of the 21st century, we have rules for our children based on random Arthur episodes. Today's example is that our kids can't get library cards until they can write their names on the card. Ellie, was struck with a schme today and while jumping up and down asked Jane "Mom, can you write my last name down on a piece of paper so I can copy it and get my library card?" As you can see, she was allowed to get away with Ellie O'S, written left to right, for those noticing such things.

ecto says I'm listening to California Über Alles from the album "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables" by Dead Kennedys

Joey and Fin

Joey, "Mom! Fin said she could saw through my A-WORD!!"

Fin, "No I didn't! I said I would saw through your ASS!!" (This is punctuated by a full karate pose)

This entire exchange was accompanied by Ellie spinning around the room with her iPod and headphones singing My Favorite Things.

At 256, there is no context.

My camera has a 'Food' setting

On Epiphany we go to see Great Grandma Murtaugh in Ashland. Rhubarb Pie from Grandma Martha was for desert ("Dad!! It's a square pie!" said Joey, thrown by the square baking pan.).
This also turned out to be my one holiday PC service call, and we moved Grandma's PC upstairs from the basement and had to re-route the cable line to the cable modem.

On the ride back we listened to Ellie belt out "My Favorite Things" and "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" while she listened to Sound of Music on her iPod.

ecto says I'm listening to Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag ) from the album "Mary Poppins (Original Soundtrack)" by Julie Andrews

Damn! God! Poop!

Don't really know what to say right now, but cussing like a three-year-old just seems to fit.

Too much too say. Most of it should be held back from some segment of the general public, so drop me a line if you are really interested.

Otherwise, I'm really ready for 2007 to be done.

ecto says I'm listening to Brass In Pocket from the album "Pretenders" by Pretenders

3

Lest we forget someone is now three...

One more soccer game. Birthday bottle of Speyburn is half gone. I'm knee deep in broken Cadillacs.

and I've got more endurance than at least one of my kids

ecto says I'm listening to Goodnight Irene from the album "Orphans: Bawlers" by Tom Waits

Home!

(or, Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire)

We're back. The kids are alive and detoxing from sugar. We also survived, and learned the hard way how much work four kids are on vacation. We've got hundreds of pictures, plenty of new stuffed penguins, great stories, dirty laundry and a huge credit card bill.
We got lunch with Tracey, survived much bad (or no) planning, enjoyed outdoor musical theater and took notes.

More after we sleep and get through job stress!

Vacation hurts my head

Almost forgot in all the recent fuss: We're going to the Boston area on Wednesday for six days. We have flights, a car and a hotel. $10 Skybus rates into Portsmouth, NH and free nights at the hotel that I've earned with all of my business travel are making this an only mildly expensive excursion.

So far, we're doing the following:

• Boston Children's Museum
• Duck Tour of Boston
• Franklin Park Zoo
• Portsmouth, NH KidsFest at Prescott Park
• Sound of Music at Prescott Park
• New England Aquarium
• A day at the beach, either Rye Beach, or North Hampton Beach in NH.
• Some sort of nature walk/hike in a state park

The theory was that we'd put more planning into this but, you know, be flexible....

DAD!!!! I HAVE DOTS ON!!!

 

We love the Crayola washable markers at our house...

A productive weekend....

Or not. Well, at least I got almost the entire house vacuumed, carpet-cleaned and/or mopped. The Crew fell pretty hard to Aston Villa, the Simpsons movie was *very* funny, Jane is a complete stress ball, Joey's arm is now in a blue cast, the boys stayed up to 1AM Saturday night and went to the IC festival on Friday night. Through all of this, we get to hear "I'm bored!" at least three times an hour.

Aaah, Summer.

Wow! Dispatch Blogs get edgy

The Dispatch, via it's This Week subsidiary has decided to experiment with these new-fangled 'blogs' by allowing anonymous authors to post all kinds of weird things that they would never allow in print.

Here's the latest from This Week's 'Family Connection' Blog:

Some parents go so far as to decide that having a blissful utopian birth is only possible in their own home. This idea doesn't boggle my mind. It infuriates me.

Move your lips and read along with me: birthing a child at home is a Bad Idea. There is a reason why medical interventions were invented, and it's that the natural way Doesn't Always Work. And when it doesn't work, it doesn't work in a big way.

Wow, I don't even know where to begin, but I know a few people who do....

And in other news

Bobby, his Grandmother Aunt Molly and Uncle Michael went to Studio 35 to party and get their Harry Potter books. Butterbeer was drunk by all. Bobby is on chapter 8.

Later in the day, while playing a video game, Bobby swallowed a metal ball from a toy, that we are pretty sure is stainless steel. He's been punishing himself over it all day.

And, to top it all off, right before dinner was served, Joey fell down and hit his elbow hard against the slide, breaking tip of his ulna and possibly spraining his wrist. He's in a soft cast/splint and gets to do an orthopedic consult this week.

Good times. Good times....

Harry Potter Spoilers from Joey and Adam

Hidden below for obvious reasons

Transformers

Saw it tonight with the boys. I was about two weeks late, but we got to see it at Studio 35, with pizza, a couple pints of draft Arrogant Bastard, micro-brew rootbeer, and pizza.

Boy rating: Awesome!! We'll see it again.

Joey giggled maniacally after each inappropriate joke, and I got to teach them the history of the rocket hop.

All in all a good night out.

Alco-hug

Jane is sitting on the couch, soothing her bitten tounge with a Margarita cooler thing when Fin comes up and asks, "Can I have a drink?"
"No."
"But I'm thirsty!"
"No, this is a grownup drink."
"WHY?"
"Because it has alcohol in it."
With fluttering eyes and all the charm she could muster, "But I LOVE alcohug!"

Science vs. Theology

At the end of tonight's farewell dinner for Suzi, Ellie was pointing out to me the tulips placed off to the side of the table and wondering why they were only partially open.
Joey, who having stayed up to "12 or 1. I'm not sure." was having a horrible, slow-motion tantrum during the whole dinner. He perked up and asked Ellie if she knew the reason that the flowers were blooming.

Ellie didn't get quite get what the question was at first, but finally answered "Spring?"

"Yes, but why do they bloom in Spring?"

A lightbulb went on in Ellie's head. She was back on top of this. "Oh! Because flowers bloom when it gets warm."

"No, because it is a sign of new life, because Jesus died at Easter."

Mercenary Easter

So, the moment of Easter last year was one-year-old Fin sitting on the living room floor in front of her easter basket and picking up each egg and shaking it. Eggs that rattled, meaning that they were filled with change, went into her lap. Eggs that didn't, meaning candy, were thrown aside.

This year the process went on in the yard. Next year I'm filling all of the eggs with lead sinkers.

Ear cleansing

After an hour of sitting in the next room as Fin watches Wonder Pets and Backyardigans, it's good to remind myself that her favorite musician is Tom Waits.

ecto says I'm listening to Earth Died Screaming from the album "Bone Machine" by Tom Waits

Ethnic food

Joey: "Dad, what are we having for dinner?"
Me: "Food"
"What kind of food?"
"Ethnic food."
"What kind of ethnic food?"
"Ethnic food at a restaurant."
"Oh. You mean Bob Evans!"

Duck!

The end of Jane's phone conversation with Bobby after school today:

Bobby: "Oh, and Mom.  Joey is talking weird.  He's saying every word with an 'F' at the beginning, unless it starts with 'F.'  Then he's saying it with a 'B' at the beginning."
Jane: "Really?"
"Yeah."
"Well, make sure he doesn't say duck."

Babee Tenda

As much as I'd like to comment on this post at BuckeyStateBlog, my login is blocked for some reason. Ha! An excuse to write on my own blog for a change!

Either how, the poster and his wife are expecting a new baby, and as these things happen, word got out to the marketers, probably because they registered for baby shower gifts. From this, they got an invitation to a fake "Getting Ready for Baby" show, which he figured out ahead of time is a strongarm sales pitch for Babee Tenda product.

Now, nine and a half years ago, yours truly and the lovely mother of my children got roped into attending one of these things. Being young and stupid, as we were, I seem to recall that we detected a whiff of scam, but decided to go with a "hey it could be fun" attitude.

From what I recall (and I'm sure that as soon as Jane sees this, she'll have a much better recollection) a few things stand out. The huckster/salesman/"parenting expert" started out with a nice discussion of generic parenting advice, one piece of which was the importance of interacting with your children, even going so far as to show some products that isolated children from interaction like the dread baby carrier/car seat thing so hip these days.

The amazing thing was that their main product is a baby/child seat thingie (the actual Babee Tenda) that is a device for securely clamping down your child in order to prevent any bothersome movement (note that it can be used for bathing, and has a sun-shade for outdoor use!). Now this is actually worse than the roller seat thingie (will one of my siblings please fill in the correct O'S-lingo name for the pea-green one we had?) that lets the kid motor around and fall down stairs or wander into traffic and such. This thing is a table. It doesn't move. And, as a huge bonus, the Babee Tenda grows with your kid, allowing you to securely confine your toddler and even bigger children. This, of course, is done for "safety" and other positive parenting reasons. At this point in the presentation Jane and I were in full MST3K snark mode, and were most likely getting angry stares from the other marks in the audience.

The second product is the Babee Tenda child jail-cell crib. I wonder if they use these things for the children at Gitmo. The big sell point of these things is that your child (once you let them) can let themselves out of their crib! Now Babee Tenda targets first-time parents who have never had a crawling kid climb out of a crib or pack-and-play, and for some reason can't recall any of their siblings being able to do the same. I seem to remember my baby brother (of rock and roll fame) escaping from the crib numerous times.

The Babee Tenda product also is sold as something that you can use with your children until they run off to be a roadie for Metallica at 36. This apparently justifies their ungodly expensive pricetag. This price, while high, is of course MASSIVELY DISCOUNTED!!! and only available to the marks in the room. The Babee Tenda, like many other high-quality products such as Avon Cosmetics, Amsoil motor oil, and of course Amway, is not available in stores.

The other thing I distinctly remember about the whole incident was at the point where the price was revealed, and Jane and I were choking, the pregnant teenager (accompanied by bored, but vaguely supportive girlfriends) in front of us whipped out her cell phone (now, this was 1997) to call her mother for her credit card number, so as to not miss out on this incredible opportunity.

God Bless America.

ecto says I'm listening to Just Like U Said It Would B from the album "The Lion And The Cobra" by Sinead O'Connor

Lactivist vs. City Kids

Heh! First the National Pork Producers, now City Kids Daycare.

It's Feburary....

...and we're clinging to the shreds of our SAD-reduced sanity. There's no narrative here, only bullet points.

• Fin was almost potty trained.
• Fin is on a potty training strike.
• When told what to do, Fin simply responds "no." and goes on with what she's doing.
• Fin does not want to be a big girl, she is content being a baby.
• Fin is two. She points this out, rather loudly any time anyone within earshot is having a discussion about numbers.
• Our house is insulated, and no longer freezing. This is a good thing, but does not bring the hours of daylight that we are so desperately missing.
• I have a MacBook.
• Jane has an iPod.
• I am occasionally allowed to use the iPod, as mine remains broken.
• Ellie uses it the rest of the time.
• It is the height of tax season, therefore not a good time for Jane to miss a lot of work.
• Jane has missed a lot of work, as the schools have been closed quite a bit.
• In addition to work, Jane is doing freelance tax work.
• Jane also volunteered to be part of a group project at preschool that requires hours of sewing.
• We're not discussing it.
• I can cover roughly 2.5mi in 30min on the treadmill.
• I almost die in the process. Numerous times.
• I'm not doing this enough.
• Soccer is on Wednesday nights. Good thing I'm impervious to embarrassment.
• The kids are stir-crazy.
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip sucks.
• Lost is really uninspiring.
• Heroes is wandering all over the place.
• Re-mastered and effects-enhanced Star Trek (TOS) are the favorite weekly show around here.
• CSS makes my brain hurt.
• I have no time to even imagine a re-deisgn for the blog.
• I spent ~4 hours on that on Sunday.
• February sucks.

Dreams

Fin woke up screaming last night just as Jane and I were heading to bed.  Jane went to console her:
'Honey, did you have a bad dream?"
"No.  I had a hungry dream!"

The moral of this story is to not go to bed with ketchup and mustard smeared in your hair.

Small victories

Bobby got into bed tonight singing "Alice's Restaurant."

It defies description

When we meet people who are considering having more than one kid, we offer them the opportunity to come over for the "scared straight" program at our house.  Usually this sentence is broken by one or the both of us screaming something like "GIVE YOUR SISTER HER SHOE BACK!!!" across the room.

And people wonder why we don't get out much.

What follows below the fold is Jane's description (a direct contradiction of the title) of a video that we found on our digital camera.  It was taken by the kids over the summer, while they were "helping" clean the house.  The video itself is at the end.

Please, for the love of God..

..don't tell my children about this disturbing trend.

Writing and Math

In what I consider to be a horrific turn of events for American education, there is a new trend in math books to require answers in narritive form.  I was one of those math kids who could usually get to the right answer, but had lots of trouble with the "show your work" requirement.  Jane was worse.

She and I have gotten toghether and created Bobby, a math mind not fit for this age.  Bobby's got his figures down, but can't write a story to save his life.  Luckily, he's got a teacher who can read his answer to the above workbook problem and give him credit.

Sleep, who needs it?

Here's Fin, who has found sleep quite a challenge over the last few weeks, sleeping sitting up in her room, which lasted a good 15min, before she keeled over on her back. This was after her usual wired-for-sound performance that we've been subjected to every night for quite a while now. Tonight she added jumping off of furniture to her methods of not going to sleep. Last night, after being sent off, she registered her protest by falling asleep flat on her face across the doorway to our bedroom.

The sleep usually lasts till 4:30AM, when the screaming and fighting over where she needs to go starts. This hopefully ends around five with Jane leaving for Fin and Ellie's bed, and Fin hopefully moving over towards her side of our bed to spread out and sleep. Worst case scenario though is kicking and climbing on me till ~3min before my alarm goes off.

This too shall pass....

It's all in the book you get when you become a father

(We're at dinner, and Ellie is recounting her first day back at preschool)
Joey: "Whoa!  They tore down a wall at SYC?"
Me:  "Yeah, they had to to fit in the life-size Transofrmers that they got for the little kids to climb into so that they could battle.  Ellie skipped it though, because she didn't think it was cool."
Joey: "Whooooa!"
Bobby: "Joey!  It's Dad!  He's LYING!!!"

Joey:  "I never eat baby carrots."
Me:  "You have to eat the baby carrots, because you know what happens if they grow up?"
Ellie: "What?"
Me: "Well, they grow up big and become gang carrots, with tattoos.  Then they come to your house and (here I'm totally stuck coming up with a kid-appropriate form of gang carrot home-invasion violence) um, they punch you in the shoulder, and they have special rays to get past the dog and the cats."

I'm working, but I still can't touch the master.

It was almost perfect

The kids were spending Saturday morning watching some cartoons on the only TV in our house that has recption, the one in our bedroom.  I went up to check on them and I stepped into the room to find an almost perfect anti-Norman Rockwell scene:
Ellie and Fin had unpacked and dissasembled Jane's sewing project on the floor.  Fin was wearing the prototype dress backwards and bouncing on the bed.  Bobby was jumping in front of the TV and dresser waving his hands in the air, as Joey kicked a grocery-store ball off of our completely stripped bed towards the dresser and TV, only to have the ball ricochet off of the mirror and knock down a cup of water on top of the dresser.

In a stunning turn of events, they lived to clean it all up.

Vacation quote of the day

We're off on the first leg of our vacation odyssey: The Ohio Caverns.

Now, rule 6 of O'shaughnessy parenting states "Everyone must pee before entering a cave or cavern." so Bobby, Joey and I hit the restroom before caving. We came around the corner to find urinals that stretched to the floor. (I'm sure that there's a technical term for this, but I'm not fluent with urinal terminology.)

Joey backed up a step and said with amazement, "Whoa! If I pee in this will it teleport me?"

Siblings

(As transcribed by Jane)

Joey:  Ellie, I can read your mind with my smell.

Bobby: No you can't.

Ellie:  Okay, what am I saying?

Joey:  "Joey is a stupid butt."

Ellie:  What am I saying now?

Bobby:  No you can't!

Joey: "Joey is poophead."

Bobby:  She is not saying that!

Ellie:  My brain is saying it, because my brain hates Joey.

Joey:  It does.

Ballet Lessons

Well, actually it's Ellie who is taking Ballet, but I just had to stick this picture up here. Fin insisted that she get to also try on the ballet outfits that were dropped off at our house. She also insisted on the shoes and the helmet. She was so impressed with her own outfit that she went out of her way to hold still for this picture.

Ellie's ballet lessons, on Friday mornings at Whetstone Rec. have been going very well. She, until the accident, would gladly show off her plié skills.

The accident you say?

Great moments in parenting

Joey does something to Fin.

Fin screams. (Fin can sustain a scream for a good ~45sec.)

Jane looks at Joey and asks angrily, "Joey! What do you think Fin is trying to say to you!"

Joey gives jane a confused look that lingers a second, and then opens his mouth and screams at Jane the same scream that Fin screamed at him.

Plague house

The kids have been passing around some sort of nasty flu since Wednesday last week. The kids are mostly recovered, except for the mild fevers and the incessant cough. Jane and I have managed to escape unharmed. We attribute this to the amazing immune boost provided by not sleeping.

What sucks though, is that we haven't had a chance to see Bridie and Katie, who are in town from Ireland for a few weeks.

Otherwise, it has been an uneventful weekend. Books were read. Homework was done. Shopping for interview/profesisonal clothes was done, and so on.

More fun news next week. Jane has a job interview on Tuesday!

Housecleaning, from Jane

Cleaning the house has been a constant battle around here, as you'd might expect. Jane and I have struggled mightily against our tendency to be "binge cleaners" that only make the house presentable before company comes, or when it gets so bad that we can't actually walk through most rooms.

Recently we've managed to get close to a maintenance level around here, and with Fin's lessening needs to walk around dumping everything she can find onto the floor we're in a pretty good place.
Nevertheless, we've been looking for tips and hints to manage a house with six slobs and thirty thousand Legos.
Now, understanding that, I've been trying really hard in the last few months to like the ParentHacks blog. It is an interesting site, fluctuating wildly between useful tips and discussions, and amazingly oblivious "hints" from the $800 stroller, disposable-everything, kids as excuse for wretched-excess crowd. Most of the posts are redeemed by the discussions in the comments.

Thursday, ParentHacks had a somewhat innocuous post about cleaning habits that ended with a link to this RealSimple article. Being a smartass, and knowing how RealSimple sets Jane off, I immediately emailed her the link. Once she was convinced that I was kidding by sending it to her she send me the following email she sent to her friends

Joey the wise and inquisitive

While he was sitting on the toilet (thus wisdom) last week, Joey and I had the following discussion:

"Dad, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure Joe, what's up?"
"Well, I don't know how to say it."
"um, give it a try. I'll try to understand"
"um, aaaahh.......um. Well..... Dad, can a Klingon be Jewish?"

O'Shaughnessy is Gaelic for..

..."Men who shop in Christmas Eve."

And with that Bobby, Joey and I are headed out for our traditional shopping spree.

And later today:

I will regale you with a tale of my ultimate shopping victory, and how it was almost a disaster.
We will list the many ways my oldest son demonstrates that he is gift shopping retarded, and tell how the IC christmas boutique preys on kids like him.

ecto says I'm listening to Fairytale Of New York from the album "Essential Pogues" by The Pogues

Denial isn't just a club outside of McManerberry

Well, the good news is that we got a new van. Can't you tell? Don't worry, nobody else can either. That was the idea. After all the consternation and test drives and such two years ago when we got the first one, Jane just looked at me and said, "Get me one just like the one I had. I don't want to deal with it."

And yes, they did total the old one. Simply too much damage to complicated sheet metal to fix. Luckily, it had under 70,000 miles on it so we got about half what we paid for the new one out of it. We've moved up in the world too. The new van is four years younger (it's a 2003), has a roof rack and a CD player.

It's the new bluesmobile.

In other news, life hurtles forward. With the curveballs of the wrecked car and bathroom repair, we are somewhat behind on Christmas. I had to abandon, early on, my main gift project (about which I won't be saying any more until next year, as a certain number of you who would benefit from the project read this), and I'm behind a bit on things like Christmas lights and shopping.

Last week, Bobby pulled off his best spelling score yet, a -1 (yes, everything is a minus). He's amazingly happy and feeling quite successful, especially since he got every single word wrong on his pre-test at the beginning of the week. We'll be trying out a spelling drill program over break to see if he can get any better.

Bobby also, after five years of waiting, got to open his Lego Droid Developer Kit. He's halfway through R2-D2 right now.

Okay, there's more, but I'm running short on battery and I've got to shop tomorrow.

A tale of two kids

Here is Ellie, late in the mess that was Saturday, having fallen asleep while hiding under the dining room table. Shun and Neysa were over visiting and dropping things off when Ellie, after bending Neysa's willing ear for quite a long time, started playing hide-and-seek with Shun. Her last hiding place was here under the table. Shun, who was also carrying on conversations with Jane and me left without finding her. About 20 strangely quiet minutes later, Jane looked at me and asked, "where is Ellie?"

Good news, and bad news

As you can see, the bath tub is done. Proper cement backerboard has been installed and tiles have been re-attached with proper thinset mortar. The whole thing has been re-grouted and all is well. Maybe now the plaster ceiling in our dining room will stop dropping chunks of paint. As you can also see, Jane wrecked her car today. Thankfully, everyone is okay. Joey got a bit knocked around by the impact, but was given a clean bill of health by the paramedics. He's been burping as loud as he can all afternoon, so we figure he's okay.

That boy ain't right

Two Joey moments from the last 24 hours:

I hear screaming and laughing from the boys' room. I find Bobby laying on his bed and Joey standing beside with a pillow. They are in mid argument over what is the "worst thing in the world." Bobby says that the worst thing in the world is Joey, and then laughs hysterically. Joey then yells "No! Its SEX!" and then wallops Bobby with the pillow.
It goes on like this.

Today, walking home from Church Joey screams repeatedly at Bobby, "You're not a boy! You're a girl! You don't even have a penis!"
I consider us all lucky that that incident didn't escalate.

Mexican Party

Mexican Party is the name that the boys came up with for playing the Episode II Jedi Battle on Lego Star Wars with the Mustaches and Teacups mods turned on.

For those not familiar, Lego Star Wars allows you to play various Star Wars characters, in Lego form. The Mustaches mod gives all of the characters Pancho Villa-style mustaches, while Teacups replaces everyone's weapons, lightsabers and blasters, with Lego mugs.

In addition to being worthy of a name, this setup makes both boys giggle so hard I'm afraid they are going to pee.

Tonight, while watching the pan-and-scan, televised version of Episode II, Joey led in the end battle with "Here comes the Mexican party!"

I'm trying to find/obtain screenshots of this combination.

Thought I was gone, didn't you?

Nope, just flipping busy. Four kids, demanding end-of-fiscal at work, Jane in class four nights a week, and coaching soccer two of those.

Just a little busy.

Soccer is over, as the year at work so, we can breathe a bit now, at least for a few minutes before we host Thanksgiving two days after Ellie's birthday.

More, with pictures after the fold.

Parenting thought for the day

"So," Jane says, "Ellie just got out her cereal, poured the cereal and her milk and then put both the cereal and milk away. All by her self. I swear to God, if we had the girls first I'd be convinced that the boys were retarded."

-- Photo by Ellie, who planted her finger squarely on the lens to achieve the soft-focus effect.

ecto says I'm listening to Lifes Gonna Suck by (Dennis Leary)

Place is a bit of a mess...

But, then again, so is everything else around here..

The good news is that we got to go out to a nice party with grownups, and kids, and water balloons and Rum last night. Fin impressed everyone by eating handfuls of gravel and dirt. We came home with a new pet, a thimble-sized spider that was angry as spit to have been captured and imprisoned. we transferred him to our bug jar when we got home and he ran around and scrabbled against the lid.

Joey and I went to Harbor Freight and bought two battery-powered airplanes. This, of course caused the boys to get a call inviting them to the pool right after we got them built, and for a hailstorm to come down on us after they got home. Hopefully we'll have some flight tests this evening.

ecto says I'm listening to Flash Pan Hunter from the album "The Black Rider" by Tom Waits

Eventually, this all pays off

Or at least that's what I keep telling Jane, and maybe myself. Strangely, looking at the calendar for next week, all of this summer so far looks pretty easy in retrospect. All three kids that can walk have activities this week, so Jane will spend just about every waking minute shuttling them around. We think that maybe she can make it to the grocery store on Tuesday.

Add in demanding work, and Jane's 4-night-a-week class and spare time is at a premium. As much as I've been trying to not do work at home, I pulled at least one late night last week for a morning deadline, and I'm sitting here now, watching the last remnants of my old work laptop move to the new one. I was hoping to do the whole move on the clock, but it's been over a month since I got the new one and I'm sick of hauling it around.

I haven't been completely inactive though. I've gotten so sick of my digital camera that I've hauled out my old Rolleiflex and Leica and started shooing film again. The thing I haven't done much of, though is scanning the film. A pile awaits in the basement. Most of it will be going to my Flickr page, if you want to look.

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