observant little monkey

had to go to beckley for a dental appointment today with my old college roommate and had lunch at mom and dad's afterward.

mom told me how impressed she was with the boy's increased language skills after spending time with him over the thanksgiving trip.

i told her he was also highly observant:

(The boy) just looked at me and said - i am not even kidding - 'mommy, you look sleepy.' oh. My. god.
— stuff kris sends (@textstogrumpnet) November 29, 2012

it takes a village

while daddy attends a lunch seminar, the boy is kept occupied.

first day back on the job after thanksgiving, i had to attend a lunch seminar for work.

kris needed a break to tend to the house, so i told her i'd take the boy out and run some errands.

knowing there would be pizza served and that the boy is currently on a kick where he likes wearing headphones to watch online video, i figured i could kill an easy hour with the boy by feeding him a slice of pepperoni and watching sesame street at my work station.

the kink in the plan came when the session was moved from the meeting room 10 feet from my desk to another one floor up. how the hell was i going to keep this boy from going ballistic in the newsroom?

as it turned out, not only was the boy content to sit, eat pizza and watch video, the newsroom was full of kind spirits nurturing his better angels.

i kept contact with our office manager via text message on his conduct, and she not only reassured me of his good behavior with photographic evidence, she even cut up his pizza. (after i hope he politely asked.)

one of our copy editors who had arrived for her shift ensured that his video feed was uninterrupted and interesting.

and our editorial page editor used her vantage right over his shoulder to keep tabs.

while i hope not to impose on my colleagues in this fashion any time soon, i'm glad to know that, with his cooperation, i can count on some kind souls to act as daddy's eyes, ears and hands to maintain a non-disruptive visiting entity in the workplace.

thanksgiving

after saying grace, the feast begins.

after missing the annual thanksgiving family gathering last year due to a bout of being knocked up, then skipping our myrtle beach trip after kris underwent some exploratory surgery, the family finally strapped on their helmets for the ultimate road warrior trip: charley west to west palm beach, fla. -- 14 hours of fast food, bagged snacks and diaper changes.

the trip down wasn't all that bad. we left about three hours later than we would have liked, owing to a blown deadline at the paper after the promise of a mandatory early press time, then some balky equipment changes switching from our jeep to dad's yukon. (seriously, i think we lost 30 minutes alone just trying to get a folded rear seat unstuck and upright. i was highly, highly pissed.)

plus leaving after midnight as we did, kind of screwed the major advantage of a night journey, which was having at least 9 hours of it conducted under cover of sleep-inducing darkness.

as it was, it worked in the exact opposite: 6 hours in darkness -- breakfast in savannah, ga. -- and eight during the day.

the children's slumber was fitful. the boy, in particular, was both excited at the prospect of seeing his cousins and the trip itself, which played havoc with his already disturbed sleep schedule.

the thanksgiving miracle: a noontime nap on i-95.

even after all that, he was fairly well-behaved, watching minimal video and staying busy with the activities his mama brought. he even took a two-hour nap after lunch, which was a miracle and kept him more or less fresh for an engagement with his cousins.

the girl was pretty much occupied with either sleeping or peering over at my mom.

the arrival on a wednesday, versus thanksgiving, when we've normally completed this trip, was good in so many ways. we got a real night's sleep before the big day, which left us free to actually participate with family activities instead of sleeping in another room. and our eating schedule was primed for a good-sized feast.

before the return trip home, auntie pamy finally gets the baby without tears.

all the children seemed to get along, although the baby wanted nothing to do with any of the women who were not her mommy. it was a coup for anyone to be able to hold her for any length of time without a great shedding of tears.

now the return trip? not as good. we left in the late afternoon and were ill-equipped.

in hindsight, i think moving the baby's carseat was a mistake in that it did not help her sleep well. (either that, or there was an unfortunate coinciding with a new round of teething.) until the last couple of hours of the trip, the poor monkey went on a jag where she couldn't go 10 minutes without crying.

the boy, was cranky with diaper issues and a desire for milk, which we failed to pack. (he's been drinking almond milk, since it's lactose-free. not having that, and drinking the regular stuff made for not fun diaper experiences.) so choosing not to give him any milk and his refusal to drink juice disrupted his already disrupted bedtime routine. he was a pissed-off chimp himself.

we arrived in beckley in time for breakfast. the boy ate lots of bacon and rice, then my mom kept him occupied in front of the television while first i, then his mama, took naps before making the final leg to charleston.

i think we learned some important travel lessons, especially for the girl, as this was her first big trip. and since this is usually the longest trip on the annual family itinerary, doing myrtle beach -- 8 hours -- or disney -- 12 -- should be a piece of cake. or at least a cookie.

and in the second week ...

while the rest of the state was digging out from the superstorm blizzard, there was a presidential election going on.

this would be the first general election we'd cover in the paper since we moved to an a.m. cycle, so staffing and working would be a whole new deal for us.

turned out everything worked out fine. we added two more staffers to copydesk to slot and paginate the inside stories and the other two of us did the front page and local front section.

even the election cooperated. what we thought would be a long, protracted affair involving some voter cock-up in florida or ohio, was instead settled before midnight on the east coast. barack obama was re-elected.

while there are probably hundreds of stories to document the hotly contested race that turned out to be no contest, i'll just link to the first news aggregator i ever heard of when i first got online back in the '90s -- slate.com -- for the day-after coverage and the day-after-the-day-after coverage. fascinating, albeit center-left, reading.

is this thing on?

note: 30 november 2012 -- the first draft of this post was begun on 9 november. apparently, blogspot remembers these things. then things got kind of hairy with the kids and the election and sleep and doctors appointments and thanksgiving and travel and i wound up completing it with outtakes from a column gleaned from this post. except for the lede and the kicker, i haven't edited what i began.

holy crap, what a month it's been.

didn't think i'd managed to go the month of november without posting until i realized my last entry essentially dismissing what we in the newsroom later described as the "big sandy superstorm" was in the last days of october.

our paper's front page on the
superstorm's effects in w.va.

well, what i'd derided as "frankenstorm" turned out to be the real thing as it battered and submerged the northeast and buried the southern part of the state with about two feet of snow.

it knocked out power to thousands here, including us, even as we had to deal with a good maybe 10 inches of snow here in charleston. (the weather service predicted the ground was too warm for the snow to accumulate; turned out they were wrong.)

the kids were up before the sun last tuesday and our day was getting under way when kris looked out the window early at the blanket of snow outside our house and wondered what was draped across her car. "is that a power line?"

 i put on my snow slippers and fleece jacket and grabbed a flashlight for an inspection. sure looked like it.

i followed the path of the wire drooping from the main line overhead to the side of our house. suddenly, that loud groan i heard in my slumber made sense. it wasn't something the cat knocked over or a stack of books tumbling in the den; it was our power meter and the wire conduit being pulled off the side of our house onto the ground by the weight of the snow on the line.

that wire touching kris' civic was live. well, it was until i heard two loud pops accompanied by bright flashes of light and our house went dark. two transformers blew not far from us. (about three or four more would follow in the next hour or so after i moved her car out from under the line and into our neighbor's driveway.)

a few phone calls later, we decided to take the family to kris' folks in parkersburg, where the weather was milder and the power was still on.

it would take some time to get packed and there we were with an antsy boy whose pre-school class was cancelled, along with all the county's schools, and who had no light for his darkened room to play and no television or laptop to distract him. what a perfect day to learn how to build a snowman.

the boy builds his first snowman.

the little goober was psyched to get out there. we dressed him in insulated pants, boots, a quilted coat and a mismatched pair of mittens.

daddy got started on a base for the snowman and the boy got the idea to begin packing more snow atop it.

i began work on a torso, which rolled quite nicely in the heavy, wet snow. we began packing more onto this section.

as his attention span wandered, he began eating his snowballs, then wanted some juice. daddy kept working while the boy tended his appetite.

things began going south after that. his mittens, a polyester knit of some sort, had grown wet from the snow. and, coupled with the cold, they began making his hands hurt. in his frustration, he knocked out the snowman's torso before i could add the dude's head.

he began crying and holding up his aching paws and i took him inside, warming his hands with mine. his mama began running them under warm water as i started loading the car for the trip.

this was going to have to be a strict, in-and-out operation: drop off the family, unpack their provisions and car seats and turn around for home so i could get to work.

things got dicey on the drive up. it seemed the storm was following us up north, which worried kris. one lane of interstate seemed to be getting covered with snow. but once we got past ripley and ravenswood, the snow seemed to stop accumulating and the skies were mostly just gray and wet.

parkersburg felt just as cold as charleston, but there was no time to compare notes.

we made the switches, i kissed my children and wife and thanked my in-laws, then hit the road for home.