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Before tooth-brushing tonight, Lydia asked if I could help pull her tooth. I barely touched it, and it popped right out! So Lydia lost her first baby tooth here in Camp Wood!
In triumphant celebration, I took a jittery phone-cam picture. Good luck discerning the gap in that grin. (I'm sure better pictures will follow, but the kids are in bed now.)
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This weekend Sarah's parents joined us in Round Rock and we caravan'd out to Camp Wood, TX. We've had fun fishing and swimming in the river, and staying in the famous (in our family, anyway) "Round House" that was built by Sarah's great-grandfather.
It's so fun to see Lydia running around on the rocks and playing in the river. She did the normal leaping and splashing and slipping on rocks, but the most "Lydia" moment was when she named a splashy spot "Roaring Falls". ("It needs a name, so let's call it Roaring Falls"). This is for a "fall" of approximately oh, 3 inches.
Her personality also shone today when she and I went for a little walk, holding hands along the river and the rocky bank. She found a particularly nice spot and asked if I would bring her book over so she could sit down and read.
Joe was really timid of the water yesterday -- he didn't want to get too wet, and he didn't want to walk across water even knee deep to him without holding a hand. But when we were talking about our day before bedtime prayers, I asked him what was the most fun, and he said without hesitation, "swimming!" Today when we went back to the river he was still cautious, but much more open to getting a little wet. It's too bad we can't stay longer.
Judah and Phoebe are loving the water too. Judah says things like "Fun!" and "Splash!" ... once when Sarah was "swimming" him toward me, he grinned real big and announced, "Shark!" (As in, he was a shark.) Phoebe, on the other hand, is content to sit in the water and kick her little chubby legs.
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This is my first birthday with my new birthday, July 6. It's a long story, but that is my new birthday. I will be 30. It's appropriate that my new birthday is tomorrow, because today I noticed something that makes me feel a little bit older. I got sunburned. On... um... let's just call it my "not bald spot" on the top of my head. It's just getting a little thin up there.
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We had a little bit of a hard time deciding how to get back tomorrow. Our current plan is to spend the night here tonight, leave early in the morning and visit Garden Ridge (Northeast of San Antonio) for services in the morning. I hate to travel on Sunday, but we didn't plan our day today well enough to get home at any reasonable hour tonight. It'll all work out.
For now, I've got to see if my very weak wi-fi connection will hold up long enough to post. If you can read this, it worked! |
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I have a few minutes tonight, so I'll tell you a little more about my "dates" with the kids on Saturday. First I took Judah, then Joseph, and last Lydia.
Judah is such a "little man" when we go out without the rest of the kids. I wasn't sure where to take him, so we drove across Round Rock until we saw something that looked good. We decided on Starbucks.
"Can you say Starbucks?"
"Bucks!"
"Say 'Star-bucks.'"
"Bucks!"
I gave him a little shoulder ride into the store, where I got a bottled juice smoothie and he got a chocolate milk. We went out into the Texas heat and sat on the patio, and made conversation about birds, and passing vehicles, and how he needed to be a good boy. I love talking to him like a grownup instead of the normal kid-talk.
He's such a sweet boy, and I think more than the other kids he has a tendency to get lost in the shuffle because he can't talk as clearly yet. He really does think about things -- and he figures things out.
(One word he can say clearly is "Phoebe." Another is "Booger.")
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Next came Joseph. I asked if he wanted sushi, or a Slushy. He replied that he wanted a Slushy and sushi! Smart kid. So, first we went to Sonic to get the slush. On the way, he asks, "Daddy, does sushi have yucky slimy seaweed, like you find in the ocean?"
"No," I replied matter-of-factly. "Sushi has yummy dried seaweed, and it's not slimy and gross like the kind you find in the ocean."
"Oh, okay." He was satisfied with that answer.
We got our slush, then went to H.E.B. to pick up the sushi. (California roll -- That is, cooked imitation crab meat, cucumber, and avocado -- I'm not going to feed my 4-year-old actual raw fish.... Although, he'd probably give it a shot.) The first piece, he tried to eat whole. Of course his mouth isn't big enough to eat a piece in one bite, and sushi isn't really made for multiple bites, but he chomped it.
The second piece we tried something different. I unrolled it and sliced the strip of sticky rice and seaweed into bite-size pieces, and let him dip (in soy sauce) and eat the inside pieces and the seaweed chunks one at a time. This worked well -- he even used his chopsticks some! And he liked it! Good times.
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Then Lydia's turn came. I was going to take her to get sushi and a slushy too, but she didn't want sushi. (What has her mom been telling her about it?) So we just went to the Starbucks and got a muffin and a hot cocoa. With Lydia it really was more like a "date" ... I asked what was going on in her life, how she liked living in Texas, and she asked me about my life and what I liked about Texas, too. I'm really impressed with how much of a "people person" she is ... could my daughter be -- dare I say -- outgoing?
Who knows? I will say when I introduce her to someone she hides behind my leg, so maybe I can hold onto hope of her being an introvert like Daddy.
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I remember a long time ago, one of my first major computer upgrades was an external hard drive. It was a whopping one GB. This was back with a Gigabyte was a real Gigabyte -- 1024 Megs, each of which was 1024 K, each of which was 1024 Bytes. None of this 1,000,000 Bytes nonsense.
Today I was emptying my pockets on my dresser, and I counted 3 1GB thumb drives on my dresser. This isn't counting the 256MB one or the 512 MB thumb drive + MP3 player, not to mention the 2GB thumb drive on the kitchen counter, the other 2 GB one in my laptop bag, or the 1GB SD card in my digital camera.
And one day in my lifetime, I will probably look back nostalgically on my silly collection of thumb drives, because we'll be living in a world of infinite storage everywhere -- our cameras will automatically stick our pictures on the network, and our phones will be able to pull the same info that our desktops or notebooks will -- or more likely, our phones will be our desktops and notebooks, and instead of using keyboards, mice and monitors we'll just project holograms, point with our eyeballs and subvocalize our commands.
And I'll still be cranking out boring blogs until way past my bedtime. Catch you guys later! |
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It's been a month or so since my last post, and I am ... only barely on the "to post" side of the "to post or not to post" internal soliloquy. It's not that I don't have anything new to report -- in fact, new things to report have come and gone to return again -- no, it's that I have to choose between creating my own new post (of quality) and just dancing around reading everybody else's. The latter option is easier, less selfish and often more enjoyable.
Well, maybe not less selfish -- I mean, if nobody wrote any new blogs we'd have nothing new to read, and the conversation would stagnate.
Wait! Hold it! This is the blogging equivalent of writing song lyrics about writing song lyrics (which I despise ... I'm looking at you, Elton John.) Enough.
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About my new job: My new job is something different than what I'd been doing before. I like it, but the particular situation I'm in is a bit frustrating. My first project was supposed to be "easy" because it was mostly done by another guy who was just going to transition it to me as the hard part was complete. Instead, the "transition" was jerky, and the hard part was just beginning (and made somewhat harder by the fact that the hard part was done poorly and much of it had to be newly built or re-done.) But I'm getting support and we're moving things in the right direction.
The frustrating thing is I'm working for two companies on the same task. One company, the one I actually work for, is insistent that I don't let myself get burned out. The other one, the one my company works for, would have me pulling 80 hour weeks apparently. It's not so bad though.
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Yesterday I got to take the "big kids" out, one at a time. It's fun to spend one-on-one time with them because they act more like adults when they're not swarming with Narnians and Pioneers and snatchers and tattlers that are constantly reminding them to be kids.
Gack, I'm out of time. I'll have to blog about the "dates" later. |
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I pop my head up this morning in Austin. I pop my head up today in Birmingham. Tomorrow? Waxahatchie!
The first week at the new job was crazy. It is a lot of new stuff, and then, some more new stuff. Ahh, but now I'm back with my family and I have a nice long weekend. And I have a house with a white picket fence, and I have a nifty new phone thing, and things can get back to normal, only even better!
It was great to see the kids again. Judah ran to hug me, and Phoebe gave me some sweet baby giggles. Joe gave me a big hug and I told him I was proud of him for being a good helper. (I had given him a talk before I left about helping out, and Sarah said he had really been looking for how to help.) Lydia was just sweet and happy and cuddly. Even though she was probably the least affected by all the crazy stuff this week, I think she felt a lot better for things to be back to more normal.
Mmm, but it's time to work with the kids now, very bedtimey. See you later! |
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