time squatting

so much to do.

so much to recall.

so much to write.

so much for that.

i've got to quickly jot down in my journal my resolutions for next year, which begins in about, oh, 18 minutes.

tradition!

a week in

so as you can see, the boy is adjusting to his new role as big brother.

and kris and i are adjusting to life as "married, with children." (emphasis on now plural offspring.)

writing at the moment is a luxury, so i've had to resort to the micro-blog, something i can do as i try to take in what's become an even more precious commodity: sleep.

which means i'm having to eat my words or something and say i've activated the twitter account i've been squatting on for the past year or so ...

i've got the first day home with the girl documented, along with subsequent updates -- including the boy's reaction to sharing space with his new housemate.

we'll see how long i can abide this twittering supplement to the blog.

not ideal, but ...

all things considered, we're counting our blessings.

so mama's home now, sleeping deeply, i hope. the girl is likely squawking to get fed.

we left the little munchkin at the hospital to receive a daily i.v. dose of antibiotics to squelch whatever infection upped her white blood cell count.

as infections go, it was minor. the hospital staff wanted to keep it that way.

so we get her back just before christmas; possibly a few days sooner if the pediatrician decides the administered doses have accomplished their mission.

we decided to look on the bright side of things.

• it gives kris a few nights to rest and recuperate.
• she also gets a few days to bond with the boy. (he was fairly stand-offish when gaga and papaw and i brought him in to visit with her.)
• we'll be able to delay the grind of the feed vs sleep schedule and its accompanying issues of identifying and adjusting to the vagaries of a newborn's digestive habits. the maternity nurses will be able to do that for us. (i hope.)
  
• and we remembered all the parents of babies who had to leave them in hospitals for months with much more tenuous prospects.

nope, we're blessed and lucky that all we needed was time.

we'll miss the time off i'm taking to sort of get our schedules in sync with caring for infant while raising a rambunctious boy and, obviously, we just don't have the girl with us.

other than that, we're good. we'll get to visit every day and stay as long as we want.

she's just spending her nights with some highly qualified nannies, that's all.

thanks be to God.

'the day everyone cries'

so here you are, third day of no sleep, filled with constant interruptions, poking, prodding and worrying, and, oh yeah, you spent most of the previous day trying to push another human being out from your privates.

i think there'd be a bit of tension in you.

well, on hour 31 of our girl's appearance on the planet, her mom lies in bed asleep, but ready to awake for the results of her newest baby's blood tests.

we have been blessed with a healthy baby. but as with most new releases, there are bugs to work out -- slightly elevated white cell counts, a persistent shiver -- but i think they will be worked out with low-dose antibiotics and a little time.

it's been trying.

but this evening's night nurse, emily, was wonderful in explaining things and comforting us.

as a mother, she knows what we're going through.

day two, she says, is "the day everyone cries."

and here she is

meet the new girl.

king for a day

here's a pic from what's likely the boy's last day as our only child.

today, he was mostly sweet, despite a few pouting jags.

he listened to me as he got to roam around outdoors on an overcast and unseasonably warm day ...

which led to a nice, long nap after a lunch in which he demolished two sausage links, half a cheese stick, a handful of wheat crackers and a few raisins.

bonus: upon his request to "pee pee," he did indeed potty. multiple times at one sitting.

(the incentive to flush the commode as frequently as possible appears irresistable.)

this is not his first foray into potty training, but it may be the first one for me.

kris has at least one where he made no. 1. and at least one where he made no. 2. (that was his very first sit, oddly enough.)

anyway, if things work out tomorrow, he may soon be sharing the house with a sister.

thank you, Lord, for this amazing gift of energy. bless, keep and guide this little boy of ours.

just wow

was getting the boy ready for a shopping excursion with mama today and while he was dilly-dallying, i noticed how big he'd become for his kiddie car.

i remember when my buddy brad bequeathed it to us after his own children had outgrown it.

i remember, once i'd replaced the batteries, how the only thing the boy would do with it was push the buttons to activate its various sound effects and music.

i remember it was also something of a competition between his talking dinosaur rider and the lightning mcqueen car for riding and how, once seated, he kept pushing both backward.

"lightning" has won and the boy seems to know to push the car forward, but now his knees are hitting the dashboard.

again. whoa. this is happening too fast.

lots of firsts

the "firsts" are coming in hot and heavy now.

before, they were ticked off in months, now they seem to come about daily.

at right, the boy's had his first car trip (to and from the kroger store) facing forward. (28 november)

i'm fairly certain i wrote when he said his first word ("kitty"), but i can't find it.

kris tells me a few weeks ago it became part of his first complete sentence: "hi kitty."

i believe it was thursday the 17th of november that his second complete sentence was uttered: "bye-bye, daddy." bummer, that.

his first song was for sure first heard on sunday 27 november on the car ride home from parkersburg after thanksgiving. "elmo's song" is reprised below a few days later:


he can use a fork. he can climb onto a chair. he's been high chair-free at home for a couple of weeks now.

it would be nice if he could say "thank you" instead of "you're welcome." (or "aku" and "elcome," respectively.)

we'd taught him "thank you" and was good on it the first few days, but began "correcting" himself every time we replied "you're welcome." we've yet to break him of that.

he's too tall now to walk between my legs, which both astounds and saddens me.

it's too fast, man. it's too fast.

lights

so in lieu of the usual pre-bedtime ritual of a few minutes of "sesame street" video on the youtube -- or "tee tee," as the boy calls it -- he, his mama and i sat on the couch in the soft glow christmas lights.

i called up the lovely "sing we christmas" album by chanticleer on the itunes as he sipped his milk and noshed on some cheerios. (he'd eaten a very poor dinner and mama didn't want him waking up hungry.)

he kept pointing to the bright strings of white across the window and the braids of color draped along the mirror, wondering at the "lighes."

with the cheerios gone, he was soon up and toddling between the kitchen baby gate and the couch, alternately activating the voice on his "lightning mcqueen" kiddie car and getting horsie rides on daddy's knee.

he eventually wound down.

i got his diaper changed and lowered the boy into his crib. mama touched his cheek and smoothed his hair. then he drifted off with nary a peep.

judging by kris' discomfort these past couple of days, the baby seems to be positioning herself for an arrival in the next day or so -- or at least before next weekend.

if that's the case, this likely will have been the last evening we will have spent as just we three.

mind blowing

so here we are, likely days away from the birth of our second child and the reality that we're going to have another person living with us is only just now being felt.

kris called monday afternoon following her ob/gyn visit to say the doc hopes, judging by her blood pressure spike, she can hold on until the following monday before inducing labor.

the ob could already feel the girl's head getting into position.

this is, like, three weeks before we were expecting her. as she said in a text a few minutes later, "holy fucking shit."

i mean, here we are, our son is running us joyously, exasperatingly ragged.

our world is 180 degrees from where it was a mere three years ago

and now we're preparing to bring home a wholly different living, breathing, spewing, crying, pooping armful of needs and personality?

i didn't think our heights could get much higher, and yet we're commencing to take a flying leap to the next level.

if we didn't have any idea what we were in for before, how much more so after a new force is applied to an already dizzying motion?

the Lord watches over drunks and fools. we must be living proof. may He continue to do so. amen.

a terrible two-r de force

so last monday, the missus -- possibly days away from an early delivery -- sends me a series of texts at work documenting what a bad boy the boy had been in the few hours i'd been away.

it was fairly epic. i'm re-posting them here in slightly edited form for posterity. (profanity included.)

4:21 p.m.

So he stomped on my foot twice, slapped me in the face and as i was cribbing him for that he kicked me with both feet in my belly. Why, you ask? Because i was reading to him from the toy story book and apparently he did not want me to.

4:42 p.m.

Wow. This day is going in the books. Just tore down the baby gate and fell backward on his head while throwing a tantrum after i took him off the buffet for hitting the cat.

my response: "holy cow."

4:57 p.m.

Oh, i'm not done yet. Keep phone close- i'm having a lot of pressure ... Probably just bc i've been lifting on him a lot, but keep your ears open in case i need you.

6:01 p.m.

Really? For his maybe finale, he just pissed under the dining table. Don't ask.

but i did ...

6:26 p.m.

I was trying to avoid having to lift him onto the changing table, so i let him get out of bath and i was trying to diaper and dress him in the bathroom. But he ran away, naked. And that's how he used his freedom.

impressed, i facetiously wondered what he'd do for an encore. and then ...

6:53 p.m.

That would be slap me and hurl my glasses across the bedroom as i was hauling him away from tv to bed. Epic day. If my water doesn't break tonight i will be shocked. Though i have no idea why [the baby] would want to deal with any of this.

7:08 p.m.

He managed to break my fucking glasses again. I'm going to bed ...

perspective, part 2

on the other hand, i got to spend part of today with my brother pj and his son at good old mountaineer field -- not necessarily in the same section, but at the same ballgame.

i apologized to my nephew that the team wasn't able to give him a win, but my brother was grateful that he got to spend some time with a couple of his old fraternity brothers.

i got a chance to hang out with them for a while out in the blue lot in front of the stadium and commiserate on the vicissitudes of middle age.

there was laughter, both rueful and amused, reminiscing, re-living heartbreaking wvu losses and a little catching up what everyone was doing.

at the game, i sat next to a lawyer from cleveland and her friend who teaches fifth grade science in the montgomery county, md., school system, as well as an increasingly frustrated dude from winfield, w.va., and a third grade art teacher and her husband.

(didn't get to experience the ramping up of high-fives all around that had accompanied the snowball nature of scoring in our wins this fall, so there was some disappointment there, but at least the company was good.)

was able to have a nice supper of hot wings, fries and bleu with pj and his boy and my sister, joy. it was a nice couple of hours.

got home to learn that my son had been a perfect angel all day for his mama (so that's where all our karma went) and i didn't need to feel guilty about leaving them for about 12 hours.

while i would have loved a win and a continued chance to win a conference title, all in all, this wasn't a bad day.

perspective, part 1

so my mountaineers lost today.

after nine games of waiting for the switch to be on from the get-go instead of only for the second half, we get a game where the switch never got turned.

special teams killed us. a missed field goal that proved the difference in the game and a blocked field goal that was run back for a touchdown was what got us behind in the first place.

despite my fondest hopes, this is a year we'll have to write off for rebuilding and re-learning.

in my heart of hearts, i really believed we'd instantly pick up this magic offense and quickly mature on defense and run the table.

consider that balloon deflated.

unlike games in years past that were out and out massacres or simply broke our hearts, these losses were disappointing -- and just this side of frustrating. (see above.)

you could almost feel it in the crowd, which was as flat as any i'd been a part of in recent memory.

i hope it was the cold, but there was an excitement missing that was the polar opposite of what i'd experienced in our beatdown by louisiana state.

of course, the bigger concern is that maybe our hotshot offensive coordinator hire may possess a wizardry with the x's and o's, but might lack the managerial and motivational wherewithal to be a head coach.

i hope he's not too proud to ask for guidance and that he'll prove to be a fast learner. otherwise, we can look forward to a few more seasons of disappointing performances.

the fun age

when i became a new dad, i didn't quite understand what parents meant when they'd talk about toddlerhood being "the fun age."

i was very much enjoying the little bundle of burps and spews and crying the way he was. how could the little monkey be more fun than that?

now i see.

yes, the lil dude is mobile and a constant source of anxiety as a flight risk, but, yeah, the stuff he does at this age is pretty funny.

watching the synapses connect as he applies his observations and discoveries toward whatever new permutations his imagination dreams up is a source of wonder.

the bemused or gleeful amazement that comes across his face when presented with new experiences warms my heart and gives me hope for his intellectual curiosity.

then there's the simple laughs and silliness of being a child.

yeah, that stuff's just cute.

wired

nights like this ... surfing for more big news about my mountaineers, catching up on online media, keeping track of a dramatic world series ... i'm up for no good reason.

this was a hard week at the paper with said big story about my alma mater. (which was itself filled with drama.) combine with remaking two different section fronts on consecutive nights and an epic game six to end the week, and i'm tired and wired.

i'm up and i should be asleep. but i feel like i should be getting work done in the house. it is difficult to focus.

i should just cut my losses and hit the sack.

wvu@25

here's my silver lining to west virginia's shocking loss at syracuse: instead of dropping down to no. 25, we'd be a top 10 team today.

with the upsets of oklahoma and wisconsin, two teams ahead of us in last week's polls, we'd have moved from no. 11 into no worse than 9 or 10.

maybe it's the fatalist in me, but if we were a top 10 team, some other conference foe -- likely rutgers this week or, worse, pitt in november -- would have exposed the weakness that syracuse exploited.

and that would have been a bubble buster even harder to stomach than this last one.

we're still a top 25 team, albeit by our fingernails. but we're also two losses wiser.

while a lofty mid-season ranking provides some heady ether, being brought down to earth can be a painful, but necessary way of sobering up to focus on the opportunities ahead.

i'm hoping that this really is a blessing in disguise, part of a football program's growing pains to bigger and better things.

wvu@5-2

my colleague, mike, posted a prescient preview story before friday's west virginia game against syracuse, in which he noted the similarities coming in this year and last.

unfortunately, we got the same result, an upset loss -- and, more than that, it was an old-fashioned, behind the woodshed ass-whipping.

this appeared as comment in his blog:

as per last year vs. this year: i don’t sense the ineptitude, impotence or indecisive flailing the team effused after losing in 2010.

we have an identity, and it’s a good one; we just happened to run into a buzz saw.

syracuse’s game plan was simple, but they executed to perfection. they were the team (coach doug) marrone asked them to be: smart, patient and, most importantly, physical.

as long as our defense couldn’t stop them, their offense dinked and dunked its way up and down the field and protected the ball.

the orange defense was relentless and constant as a piledriver. we never maintained a steady rhythm.

as (blog commenter) lcj said, we played “fine,” but we needed to be better than “good” against a team that wasn’t making mistakes.

my understanding of the 3-3-5 defense — and spread offenses, for that matter — is that they made up for the deficiencies from not being able to recruit elite athletes at positions designed for a pro-style offense or conventional defense.

we’ve needed gimmicks because we’re not alabama or michigan.

while my fondest dreams were that everything would gel this year and we’d pull off the upsets and crush the rest, i’m having to face the facts that “the experts” pointed out before the season began: we’re inexperienced in the places that count — o-line and defense.

we”re learning — and we should be the better for it, if not this year, then next.

while we no longer control our own destiny, that conference title is still up for grabs. i can only hope we take something moving forward from these lessons.

that about sums it up for me.

superhero day

on a day where we ran a story about self-styled "superheroes" rising up and roaming the streets of america, i actually sort of got to play one.

the boy and i were at the playground, where he was having a snack break from his morning rumpus.

from the shelter i heard a mom shout, "amanda? where are you?"

a quick scan of the playground revealed the 2-year-old atop a climbing wall trying to clamber onto a platform leading to a slide.

i hurried over as i pointed her mom in the child's direction.

as mom told her tyke to be careful, i climbed up to ensure the youngster didn't fall.

then she did. my hand shot up as her bottom landed square in my palm.

as i couldn't get enough leverage to push the child back onto the platform, i caught her in my arm as i jumped off the wall.

she cried, i think because a strange man was trying to make her stop crying. i handed her back to her mom, who said thanks.

earlier, on the way to the park, managed to get a kitten off the side of the road and back into her owner's carport.

she bounded down the slope to the road where the boy and i were walking and wouldn't leave the shoulder. that she was staying there playing made me nervous.

it took a couple of attempts to get her to stay closer to the house.

luckily, i recalled the "cat trap" picture and set her in a decorative halloween cauldron in the carport.

this bought the boy and me the time and separation needed to ensure she didn't us follow to the road.

i called the number on her tags and confirmed with the owner that it was indeed her house and that she is an indoor/outdoor cat. (owner was en route from south carolina back home.)

catching a falling child and saving a cat. sounds kind of like a superhero day to me. demented and sad, but kind of.

postscript -- 18 october: on way to work, moved a turtle out from the middle of the road. just doing my job.

go go, go go

this is the boy walking and talking down the street.

all he is saying is "go go, go go." he keeps this up for only a few seconds.

on saturday morning, though, he toddled with a head of steam down the alley beside the house to our neighbor at the bottom of the hill repeating it like a mantra all the way to her garden gate.

at this phase of his life, "go go" seems less a verb or command as a statement of being.

shake-up

for my west virginia mountaineers, it's come down to this: a big east conference lunging to the west for the hope of keeping open its bid to play for national championships.

for a few hours after the league held probably its most important powwow, i actually got caught up in the hand-wringing: who would give a rat's ass about this frankenstein's monster of a conference?

but if it gets pulled off? boise state adds consequential wins, southern methodist and houston give us texas and strong programs, air force and navy give tradition and prestige.

don't let the door hit you on the way out, syracuse and pitt.

every conference has its bell cows and bottom feeders. this one would be no different.

after the top two, at the very least, the league would be competitive in and outside the conference.

and for what it's worth -- big east supporters in general and wvu fans in particular are going to have to get over this self-loathing that they believe only membership in a traditional -- read: southeastern -- conference will validate a program.

wvu fans need to channel their inner stuart smalley: we're good enough, we're strong enough, and, doggone it, people like us.

after the better part of five years being belittled for its cupcake teams in the western athletic conference, boise state, now in the mountain west, has bloodied the noses of the sec, acc and pac 12.

they've garnered so much respect that they're now seen as the last, best hope for saving the automatic bcs berth of the big east.

(and if all this comes to pass, we'll see how well the broncos will handle a schedule that promises a little more challenge, as well. the battle for standard bearer could become a lot more interesting.)

post-jobs

the reaction elicited in the newsroom last week at the death of apple's steve jobs was not unlike that of learning michael jackson had died.

we kept talking about him and his company. the only business rock star we ever knew was gone.

and the proof of his impact was on our pc screens as we pointed and clicked around our desktop interfaces to drag and import words and pictures to report news of his passing in our newspaper.

from publishing to communications to music -- in all their myriad permutations -- his gift for seeing applications of technology touched everyone who uses the devices his company created or inspired.

(and this includes the snobby naysayers who regard macs and i-anythings as toys. it takes a lot of hard work to make something easy to use.)

his company mourned him.

silicon valley honored him.


even commerce tipped its hat.

i have a terrific loyalty to his thinking and products. his unique genius was once a generation.

i'm not sure if his successors will be able to continue that kind of vision and legacy.

he may never be replaced.

enjoying it while it lasts

there's hype and hope on the eve of a top 25 matchup between no. 2 louisiana state university and no. 16 west virginia.

i'm just taking a second to drink it in before a game most experts and the rest of the country expects to be a beatdown.

we're front-page news at our hometown charleston daily mail, the first read of the day at pre-snap read (and then some), top of usa today's sports section and cycled through the lead at sports illustrated's home page (above) and college football page.

i and the rest of the mountaineer faithful are basking in the attention with an odd mix of tenuous hopes or audacious certainty of an upset.

today, there is still hope.

i'm trying to enjoy this moment of potential before what could be a bone-jarring and potentially heartbreaking crash to earth. (on the other hand, it could serve as the yummy appetizer to a feast of pigskin ecstasy.)

it's been a long time, but there's an odd comfort in donning the cape of underdog once more.

why couches are burned

back in 2002, a sort-of humor columnist wrote this in the charleston daily mail to ensure the history of couch burning in morgantown was set straight:

Couch burning isn't new

As a responsible furniture owner, let me just say I was shocked by the reports of rampant couch burning by West Virginia University students after last week's upset of Virginia Tech.

What's the matter with these kids? Don't they know how much a good sectional couch costs?

Besides, in my day, burning things meant something. Sure, we wanted to burn sections of something - sections of town.

Those were the days when the legal drinking age was 18, our nearest rival, the University of Pittsburgh, was only a few years removed from their last national championship and cocky, future Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino stood behind center. We wanted to knock off someone big - anyone big.

By the time I got to school, our record against powerhouses such as Pitt and Penn State was dismal enough that I was told should we ever beat one of them, we would burn down Morgantown's legendary bar district, Sunnyside.

It was almost like a high-stakes bet, as if a big-time victory were so dear, we would sacrifice the thing nearest and dearest to an undergraduate's heart to achieve it. In this case, it was a row of wonderfully low establishments serving up our favorite frothy beverages.

That first year, down fell Oklahoma. Then, later, Pitt. And eventually, even Penn State.

Each time, as if from a congress of pigskin shamans, the incantation arose: "Sunnyside burns! Sunnyside burns!" But it never did.

Impromptu bonfires were lit, put out and re-started. And, yes, upholstery somehow got involved then, too.

Still, my friends and I knew that the handful of truly determined firebugs weren't in their right minds, just addled, excitable and in need of attention. We stood back and tried not to get in their way.

Once in a while, one of us would hoot. Mostly, we just raised our plastic cups, basked in the glow of a satisfying victory and worked up the nerve to talk to coeds. We were nerds.

Now, with zoning having mostly washed away the neighborhood's sudsy reputation, Sunnyside is but a sad shadow of its former glory, its value as the payoff to a big bet diminished. There's no sacrifice in what's essentially a stretch of sidewalk leading to off-campus housing.

Legends die hard. I can only guess that's the motivation behind this generation's celebratory pyromaniacs.

It makes for good copy. A blurb and a roll of the eyes on SportsCenter.

But in the presence of people who didn't attend my school, I feel like someone sitting with the in-laws' family at a wedding reception and watching a drunken, distant relative make a fool of himself. There's great love - and great embarrassment - at what should be a very happy occasion.

Nobody likes being in the hot seat.

Copyright 2002 Charleston Daily Mail

sucker punch

i was a little embarrassed after west virginia u held on to beat maryland saturday and kris wondered why i had a look of concern on my face.

i told her i was thinking about housework when i was really worried about news that the university of pittsburgh and syracuse university were headed for the atlantic coast conference and abandoning the one they helped establish, the big east. (wvu's conference.)

i was pissed when three of the big east's original football powers (ca. 1994) -- miami, virginia tech and boston college -- were poached back in 2004 by the acc. it seemed like a stab in the back, especially by tech, given that wvu helped champion its bid to get into the big east in the first place.

so while it was nice to see its strategy pretty much imploded -- only tech has been of any help to its football image -- and its latest move seems a puzzling lateral, it's a shame to see a once-proud conference get knee-capped, especially by one its founding members.

still, that leaves the mountaineers with none of the marquee names the football side made its bones with. all we're left with are cast-offs from conference usa.

i'm sure after all the shouting is over, things will shake out over the next few days and there's a good chance we'll find a nice home, but for now, it feels like wvu has been left holding the bag.

boy oh boy

you'd think after a nice, 12-hour night's sleep, you'd be in a good mood.

after waking, he was quite pleasant and chipper. but i think all that restfulness makes him not want to take naps. then, he just gets pissed.

made for an amazingly unproductive afternoon.

speaking of pissed, also today -- boy barges into bathroom as i've commenced to empty my bladder.

turns out trying to keep the lad from the commode now requires two hands. hilarity ensues.

yep. definitely not one of our better days.

coal bowl

so here it is, two weeks late, mind you, but here, my first beer served at mountaineer field at good ol' west virginia u.

(ideally, would've been a miller lite, but the crowd made it tough to go searching for a vendor who sold it or anything else.)

my first season opener in i don't know how long. and my first wvu-marshall football game ever.

i work very hard to not get sucked into the back-and-forth that surrounds the game basically because i can dish it out, but can't take it.

it keeps me composed.

anyway -- the crowds were mostly polite to each other, aside from the sophomoric shouting from the undergrads in the parking lot at the school's guests.

the game had its usual shock -- this time, a punt return for a touchdown. but the team got untangled by the second half and seemed to be on its way to a comfortable lead when the big storm hit.

yeah, more weirdness. spectators were ordered from the bleachers because of lighting strikes.

kris' dad and i hit the road at this point because the idea of a delay, then another waiting for game traffic to dissipate did not portend a speedy trip back to parkersburg.

back in the day, i would have hung around and commiserated with other damp fans until the game re-started.

turned out we made the right decision. after two re-starts, the game never was completed and was called at 10:24 that night.

we listened on the radio to the what turned out to be the last touchdown while getting gas in clarksburg.

final: wvu 34, marshall 13.

countdown to kickoff

ok, here's what's weird. here we are, at t-minus 6 days before west virginia university kicks off against marshall, and i think i've already had my fill of reading about the mountaineers.

up until maybe three weeks ago, i couldn't get enough preview stories and predictions for the upcoming football season.

now, meh.

it probably started with the hard-working pre-snap read overview that placed us at no. 21.

before that, espn, sports illustrated and the sporting news had weighed in.

and near the start of the month, the smoking musket wvu blog began posting daily again.

this, on top of a steady diet of mike casazza's blog updates that are as dependable and brilliant as the sunrise.

now ... i'm just full.

we're past the previews, past camp and into game-week preparation. now it's just navel-gazing and gossip.

maybe it's the birth of our baby girl in about four months and recognizing there's so much work to be done in the house.

i'm actually going to a number of games this year and these fall weekends are going to be crucial for preparation.

we have to get moving.

the time for planning and prognosticating is over.

i'm tired of reading and fretting. it's time to tee up the ball.

grasping at air

this pic was shot about a month ago at the local playground, inside an inclined, tube-like contraption on the jungle gym that leads from one level to the next.

from the first time we set him loose at the park, he'd make his way into the tube and crawl about.

for most of the spring and summer, he'd only make it about halfway up before skittering down, unable to combine the amount of strength and traction necessary to make it up the other side.

by the time i shot this, he'd made it up all the way probably no more than three times out of the dozen or so visits we'd made.

today, kris took him to the playground and let him run about and he crawled up into the tube.

because he was wearing long pants, instead of shorts, he wasn't able to dig his knees in to scoot up, so he kept slipping down before he could crawl to the upper level.

the boy began beseeching "plee, plee" ("please, please" -- yeah, also new to the vocabulary) to no one in particular to make it the rest of the way.

kris heard his pathetic imploring and climbed her 5-months-pregnant self up the ladder to help him over. (i hope she refrains from doing this in future visits.)

the heartbreak from the boy doesn't end there, though.

kris also informs me that today, when he came across the timbers that held back the mulch surrounding the play equipment, he didn't wait and raise his hand so mommy could hold on as he's been doing when approaching steps.

he walked to the edge of the play area, waited for kris and began the motion as if he were going to raise his hand.

then he stopped and stepped downward on his own.

after a slight wobble, he righted himself -- and didn't wait for mommy's hand for any more steps that afternoon.

all this in a month. he's already beginning to shed his need for us.

everyone told us the time would fly. still, it's bewildering how our moments are barely upon us before they are gone.

don't go too far just yet, baby boy. stay a baby with us just a little longer before you become all boy.

get the yoke

there's a little tradition in filipino wedding ceremonies in which an intertwined cord is laid on the shoulders of the bride and groom.

it is supposed to symbolize the yoke shared by husband and wife in the course of married life, where together they bear their burdens.

while i knew what it conveyed as a sentiment, today may have been the first time it hit home as a practical reality.

the boy in the picture woke up early today, not long after his pregnant mama.

the cat had awakened both kris and me numerous times with loud, long fits of meowing.

i was a little tired from helping a friend move her mom's belongings to a new house on saturday.

combined with an extended vacation sleep deficit hangover, and, well, it wasn't a pleasant morning for daddy.

i sat exhausted on the couch and actually uttered the phrase, "i don't see how i can go on."

thing was, it may have been a more trying day for mommy.

she was up before the sun -- not by choice, but likely a hormonal spike and/or a kicking baby -- then changed and fed a boy so rambunctious that he head-butted her in the teeth. she wept from the pain.

and still, when the boy wouldn't take his mid-morning nap, she told me to go back to sleep and insisted she take the boy to mass with her, so i could go on my own later.

i slept deeply enough in that hour that i dreamed. more importantly, that time bought me some needed rest after a fitful night's sleep. i don't think i conveyed to her how helpful that was to me at the start of my work week.

it didn't hit me until after work, though, that kris was doing exactly what we'd promised each other just over three years ago.

as i started my car, i realized i'm not carrying a load on my own -- i have a helpmate. we are a team.

today, she covered my back; i hope i'm doing a good job covering hers.

raising a family is work. days like today embody what it means to be working on a labor of love.

technical difficulties

well, it was a good, three-year run.

that's how long i had my first digital camera, a hard-working casio ex-z77.

i killed it by putting it into the pocket of my swim trunks as i gathered our belongings from a morning at the beach almost two weeks ago.

i assumed that the minutes i was dripping dry while folding an umbrella and towels and organizing our stuff was long enough to not have much seepage into the camera body.

as i discovered at my sister's birthday dinner that night, i assumed wrong.

the thing wouldn't focus and hasn't since. (note image above, likely the last one it will take.)

i tried putting it into a bag with rice to dry it out, then added a couple of bags of silica desiccate to no avail.

and even if it had dried out to where the lens mechanism would work, i read that the salt would eventually corrode all the metal, so i would have only been buying time.

i used that camera on my honeymoon (it was a wedding present from my siblings), for the minutiae of our first year of marriage, cat photos, family portraits and the birth of our son.

it's a bummer to lose it.

here, i will also mention that the wireless backup to my hard drive is also on the fritz. it hasn't backed up since last month's blackout.

if bad things happen in threes, i don't want to think of the next piece of gear to go bad.

girl talk

i think if you'd ask any of my female relatives or friends, they'd probably agree with my assessment that one of my purposes in this life is to exasperate women.

this appears to be a defensive posture, since i'm usually trying to keep them off balance, because, frankly, i rarely feel like i'm at an advantage in our dealings.

(haven't been able to shake this sense since, oh, second grade. they were then and remain mysteries to me.)

which is why monday's news at once delights and frightens me: kris and i are going to become the parents of a baby girl.

first and foremost, i am relieved and thankful that the ultrasounds show a healthy baby with everything where its supposed to be. that was and is my most fervent prayer.

and after writing that, i can see that my biggest anxiety -- besides the usual ones about taking good care of the child -- is of a teenage version of this person.

it was hard enough dealing with them in high school, now i'll have one in my house? am i ready to handle the drama? the pressure? the angst?

and the baby hasn't even been born yet.

of course, i'm sucking all the joy out of the news of a new life coming into our family.

and for what? phantom fears?

as with everything else in my life, my worries arise from the unknown, especially of things beyond our control.

i am going to have to trust and pray that we will raise children who will make wise choices. and after we've done our best at that, well, we'll leave it in God's hands.

if our lives weren't interesting enough with hurricane boy, i suspect they will become even more so with mystery girl.

hello computer

sent a text to my sister on the drive down to myrtle beach:

just programmed the onboard computer to chart a course to kingston plantation. keep fingers crossed. i don't trust it.

sounds like something dr. mccoy would tell capt. kirk.

after years of dismissing the charms of gps navigation, not only did i reflexively use it on our family's trip, i followed its prompts with hardly any questions. (the latter being the kind of mindless, uncritical use of technology i claim to abhor.)

mostly, i did it because i was curious to see what course the computer in dad's new car would choose and if i could actually program it.

i used the touch screen to pinpoint on the map where we wanted to go since i was unable to figure out how to enter an actual address. i'm an impatient computer caveman like that.

after hitting "go," it plotted a course not unlike ones our family has used for years. the main difference was the shortcuts bypassing towns like hamlet and bennettsville, s.c.

(we may have also cut across a few fields on private or county roads. i couldn't tell; it was long past dark. we were driving on blind faith then.)

anyway, we got where we needed to go with no doubling back from wrong turns, so we saved some time. hearing the prompt "proceed on this course" offered reassurance we were on the right track once we'd moved onto the smaller state routes.

it was nice to follow, but i still trust maps and map reading too much to consider any garmin or tomtom purchases anytime soon for our own vehicles.

the trade-off

this is my lovely wife on her last day of work, back in february. (can it have been so long ago?)

as our child peacefully slept, we sat at dinner friday, savoring her refrigerator clean-out invention -- french-italian marinated chicken with bean sprouts and pasta spiked with frank's red hot sauce -- she wondered if i regretted her decision to stop working.

my immediate response was "no." the rationale was more labored in its articulation.

i gestured at our repast, signifying the great pleasure i was deriving, not only from its melding of flavors, but the moment of being able to share it with her on my saturday.

when she was working as city editor, her weekends were conventional, saturday and sunday; as copy desk chief, mine were friday and saturday.

you'd think the overlap would suffice as time for togetherness. it wasn't.

by the time her weekend began, sometime after 3 on friday, i had been caring for a baby all day.

she was tired, i was tired. and -- as it was about time for the boy to wind down and go to bed -- neither of us had it left to cook, let alone enjoy a pleasant meal afterward.

all we wanted was sleep.

and come saturday, kris would let me sleep in, while she devoted her morning to him.

so by the time i was up and about, the morning was half-gone, and the day was pretty well filled with the stress of having to cram a weekend together, whether it was leisure or work, in the remaining hours of daylight.

kris was glad for the leisure of shopping -- not having to get everything done in one trip for a week. she can actually just leave for a few things and come back.

we don't have the financial cushion we were used to, but at the same time, we also got rid of the hard, hard chair it rested on.

hurricane boy

getting tanked, a photo by grumpnet on Flickr.

the story really began yesterday.

that's when the boy employed the skills he learned at the playground climbing wall to attempt to scale our built-in book shelves.

luckily, he slipped on the second shelf and landed square on his keister.

later in the day, he used his inner monkey to convert the box that kept his blocks into a step stool for reaching another shelf and taking the jar containing his mama's dried bridal bouquet petals and sprinkling them into his toybox.

(he was lucky the box -- not resting on its wide mouth, but on its tapered side -- didn't slip out from under him.)

you'd think those would be his major accomplishments in mischief for the week.

as the boy got his breakfast appetizer going this morning on the cat's perch, none of us had any idea what this day would have in store.

after a hearty meal of eggs, banana and oatmeal, the boy set after the cat, invariably grabbing her haunches or her tail.

otto had about as much as she could take when she wheeled and nipped him on the forearm.

the boy licked his wound before starting after her again. this time, he was grabbing her by both ears and yanking as if he were trying to pull them off.

so i took him outside.

before long, we were on the back porch, where he went for a bag of charcoal ashes, a can of insecticide and my bike chain.

we wound up in the front yard again, where he dragged the broom he was wielding like a scepter out back.

we visited our next door neighbor and he knocked on their door. i was surprised when one of her boys answered. i laughed and waved as he shut it.

with not a little protest, he was taken indoors again. he was due some hydration after our time in the mid-morning hotbox that's been the kanawha valley these past few weeks.

i set him in front of the fridge while i diluted some milk for him.

in the few seconds it took to pour into his sippy cup and close the fridge, made his way toward the cat as she ate.

as i lifted him off the floor, he snatched at the dish, spilling its contents.

i set him over the baby gate with his cup, while i went to clean the spill.

the brown handprint on the floor did not bode well.

mama was out of the shower and greeting the boy when i asked if she saw poop on his hands.

yup.

then i saw the turdlet that must have been stuck to otto's fur before it dropped to the floor.

a change of clothes and a bath later, we were headed for town. i laid on the couch in a fetal position until i had to get dressed.

he was actually pretty good in the backpack as i visited the newsroom to do a little work, went to the bank with his mom, then paid property taxes at the courthouse.

we picked mama up at the library, then ran into our buddy jon, who got married a few weeks ago. this was his first time to meet the boy.

once home, we ate lunch -- he ate two sausage links, a slice of cheese and half a box of raisins. a pretty big-ass meal for him.

he napped and i tried to nap.

while in bed, i missed him waking up, then clambering up the dining room chair, before finally climbing and kneeling on the table.

such progress for only a day and a half. at least was tired enough after supper that he went to bed without much fuss.

so ... to recap. in about 36 hours, the boy:

1. learned to climb shelves
2. learned to create makeshift stepstools
3. lost all fear of the cat
4. handled varieties of dirt, poison and grease
   
5. displayed lightning grab reflexes
6. smashed poop that wasn't his
7. summitted his first dining room table

i can hear roller coaster chains clanking.

(in his defense, he also ate three really good meals, spoke on the phone to both grandmothers, behaved well in a newsroom, branch bank and two county government buildings, had a nice, 2-hour nap and mostly slept through the night. i'll take it.)

Via Flickr:
otto is right to eye the boy on her perch. he would later be chasing her around the living room and pullng her tail and ears. she let him know that wasn't cool.

blackout

at the moment, around 05:30 hours, saturday 23 july, i'm writing in apple's textedit program because the internet is out.

up until about midnight, the power was out -- and had been for about four hours. i suspect we got off lucky.

this stormy summer, while the area has experienced numerous blackouts -- some lasting for days -- we've made it through with nary a flicker.

our number came up last night. and, of course, it was only fitting that it happen on an evening when we were expecting company.

luckily, kris was making a simple meal of pizza and the last, lurching surges of electricity continued just long enough for her to finish the toppings.

the thunderstorm announced itself for about half an hour with deep rumbles.

when it finally arrived, it was with fat, heavy drops, and then buckets of rain with explosive cracks of lightning that seemed like they were just above the treetops.

then it just parked itself on top of us. i began thinking about the great red spot on jupiter.

i can't say i can remember such a heavy and sustained downpour here in a long, long time.

the boy was getting antsy because it was near his bedtime, but i was able to keep him occupied watching the windows get streaked and splashed with the torrent spilling down from the roof.

i was pleased and impressed that the thunder didn't seem to faze him. with every boom, i expected a frightened cry, but he carried on as usual, even as i was putting him to bed.

by that time, we had no power, so i closed the door to his room to enter a house now heated by a gas oven with windows shut and no air conditioning.

i grew apprehensive at the thought of adding two more warm bodies to the mix with the oppressive humidity we'd been smothered with this week waiting to spread inside.

while the pizzas cooked, i drank a guinness that had been waiting in the fridge and sent out an all-points electricity check to a few friends in various parts of the city.

west side out. fort hill out. corridor g ok. my east end friends' numbers were in my other phone and i couldn't remember if my kanawha city friends were in town.

by its end, the storm mercifully took a lot of the moisture out of the air, so when our friends heidi and jamie arrived right around dusk, we were able to open windows and get a nice crosswind.

(coming in from huntington, there were half a mile from the exit, when they were stuck by flooding on the interstate. people actually backed up their cars from the rising water. jamie said a couple of guys got out of their cars to clear the culverts of debris and allow the roads to drain.)

the visit itself was quite nice. there was muted chat and lots of low laughs by candlelight. they'd kindly brought beer and heidi had made a chocolate cake from scratch, which was amazing in its dense richness.

and the pizzas rocked.

i can't remember a summer as stormy as this. i wonder if this is part of the climate change we've been warned about and if this is something we're going to have to get used to.

schedule rhythm

my housework schedule is linked to the one in the newsroom.

the days after my monday and tuesday are spent mostly trying to rest from the shock of returning to work. kris lets me sleep in after the baby wakes up.

come wednesday and thursday, the energy begins to return and i'm up with the baby for childcare, although then i need to take a nap before heading to the paper.

by friday, i know i have two days coming for r&r, and i can push myself from an early rise to take out the trash all the way to getting out our second edition.

i've come to accept this as the present state of my reality and have stopped wondering why i'm so listless early in the week.

in about four months, this is probably going to change when baby no. 2 arrives on the scene.

stay tuned.

wee folks and small talk

i took a day off work in anticipation of a shindig for a 40th birthday bash for my sister and her two crib mates, joy and perky.

(this is not my sister; she is perky's sister.)

i figured during the night and ensuing day, there'd be a lot of socializing and catching up and commiserating with old friends and i didn't want to miss it.

thing is, there was a small variable i didn't account for. he's a smidge over 2 feet tall and weighs about 25 pounds. yeah, that one.

almost everyone i wanted to see saturday was there. but i didn't get to say more than "hi" and "how are you" before i had to chase after the boy.

and even if the boy was with someone, i was distracted enough by his breakaway potential that i couldn't focus on the person with whom i was speaking.

mostly what came out of my mouth were chit-chatty non sequiturs, like so many one-liners to fill the space where personal interest should have been.

i'm not particularly upset, just a little taken aback by how i'd wrongly assumed i could simply plug back in to my old social habits despite the very evident change that my life has undergone.

it's odd that i thought somehow my relationships with those outside the home would remain static when those within have progressed so substantially.

adjusting to life with a toddler is like gaining weight then having to learn which clothes fit only after trying them on.

you have to re-learn for every situation since you don't know which outfits you'll be wearing from event to event.

some parts of your life slip on like a trusty t-shirt and are about the same as before. others will have to wait until things are back to "normal," and some, i suspect, you'll never get back to again.

i think, now that the boy is mobile at gatherings, i'm going to have to seek strategic sitters i can trust for more than five minutes at a time so i can actually engage again.

and if that doesn't work ... well, we'll catch up in about 10 years or so.

thunder and lightning

meet the one-two punch that's threatening to knock out mommy.

seriously, the boy's been on something of a tear this week -- waking up pissy and throwing these amazing hour-long temper tantrums.

kris tried taking him over to a friend's for supper last night and he made such a fuss while over there that she said she wasn't ever going to take him out in public again.

and the cat? she's just getting fat. so fat that she can't clean herself. so fat that the cling-ons don't cling very long and fall off after her visits to the litter box.

kris has threatened to kick her out of the house if she ever steps in the cat's stuff again.

hopefully all this is just a passing phase or the next 18 years or so are going to be very interesting.

nature walk

i like calling summer the unwanted guest that i hate to see leave.

by that, i mean i do not look forward to scorching temperatures and stifling humidity.

but at the same time, once i start seeing those yellow leaves start landing on the porch, i begin mourning the passing of the growing season and, in turn, another year.

in a weird way, i can dig limited exposure to the humidity this time of year in that it's sort of the acceptance of summer's calling card. it's one of the season's hallmarks.

when combined with the lush greenery of our wooded subdivision, it feels so ... at one.

this, however, was one of those rare summer days that most people are really wishing for when they've grown tired of cold, gray winter and dream of warm weather.

the sun was high in a cloudless sky. the temps were in the low 80s. the humidity was barely palpable. it was a good day for a walk.

the boy and i make it out on the road at least once a week through the neighborhood now.

even though we headed out past noon, the weather was just about perfect for being outdoors. it felt more like a spring nature walk.

our neighborhood streets are dotted with lovely, colorful gardens. i like to point out to the boy the flowers we see along the way.

i used to try to identify them for him, but this week tried to keep it simple by just saying "flower" and naming the color.

afterward, i'd explain what type of flower i thought it was. (luckily, there were many daisy varities and day lilies in a a variety of reds, oranges, golds and yellows.)

today, we visited the danner meadow playground, where we met a 4-year-old boy named dallas, from hurricane, his mom and, later, his grandmother.

dallas was sweet and seemed to enjoy having someone to play with. he even offered to have the boy stay with him and his mom and grandmother there while i went to work.

believe me, kid, on a day like today, if i could have spent the rest of the afternoon in the park, i probably would have.