HerdingChaos

Becky made a wonderful dinner tonight with pork and steaks from the grill, some spicy rice, cranberry sauce, and cottage cheese. We were nearing the end of the meal and Tracy belched HUGE. I looked at her and made a funny face of surprise with wide eyes. She giggled and then said to me, “That was me, but it is normally you.” She is her father’s daughter.

Loren is laying on Becky’s lap and something amusing to Becky happens. Becky laughs. Then Loren giggles. She has no idea what is funny.. in fact Becky is often reading something that made her laugh. But it does not matter. Loren giggles.

We have a DVR in our cable box. It is a bit like a VCR without all the tapes. We record the few shows that Becky and I watch and a ton of kid shows for those rare times that they want to watch TV.

A couple of mornings ago I was sleeping in and Tracy came up to the bedroom. She had the cable/TV remote in her hand. Andrew started school and I think she was a little lonely. She wanted to watch her favorite show, Dora the Explorer.

The remote for the cable box is the universal kind. And the TV is setup to send all the sound through an amp and not the TV. So I was showing Tracy that she needed to hit the CBL button, then POWER, then TV then POWER, then AUX then POWER. She watched all of this closely, then turned to me with a smile on her face and said, “That sure is a lot of power just to watch Dora!”

When Loren is doing something a bit crazy my wife says things like “You are my little nut.” or “Loren is just being a nut.”

Today while driving in the car with the family I hear Tracy from the backseat.

“Loren is just a peanut! Sometimes she is so funny and she is just a peanut!”

Well, Becky never was specific about which nut she was….

I am such a nerd. I just had a random thought that I should have named the kids using names with spellings where every other letter was on a different hand when typing into a QWERTY keyboard. It would have made it easier to type their names.

Andrew is 6. I still sometimes do not believe this because he will engage in activities that I normally do not associate with a 6-year-old. For example he likes to play chess. He likes to play a computer game called Civilization. He chats with me on Yahoo IM when I am out of town. He questions me about cars and then proceeds to explain the difference between front, rear, and 4 wheel drive vehicles (something that, as far as I know, I did not teach him). He does other things like reading and spelling right in line with what you would expect from a 6-year-old. But my parent filter always picks out the above average performances. But sometimes the normal behavior is the most memorable.

I was away from home for work. Andrew was sending me instant messages to just say “hi” and other general chit chat that you might have with a 6-year-old.

We had the following conversation:
(2:31:58 PM) Andrew: hi
(2:32:07 PM) Mike: hi.
(2:32:19 PM) Mike: how has your day been?
(2:32:59 PM) Andrew: god
(2:33:12 PM) Mike: i will be home in 2 days
(2:33:16 PM) Mike: i miss you all
(2:35:16 PM) Andrew: I miss you to.
(2:36:02 PM) Mike: i bought an upgrade to civilization
(2:36:21 PM) Mike: the upgrade adds new leaders and civilization types.
(2:36:32 PM) Mike: we can play it together sometime.
(2:37:33 PM) Andrew: coo

Then a little later:
(5:20:33 PM) Andrew: hi
(5:20:37 PM) Mike: hi buddy
(5:22:03 PM) Andrew: how era yow
(5:22:10 PM) Mike: i am good.
(5:22:21 PM) Mike: I am still working
(5:22:26 PM) Andrew: good
(5:27:49 PM) Mike: http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/warlords/warlords.html
(5:28:08 PM) Mike: click on that and you shoud see the page about the new civilization
(5:28:37 PM) Andrew: cool
(5:32:01 PM) Andrew: osim

I always love reading his IM’s since they are usually phonetic. I saw “osim” and was a bit confused at first because it was the first time I had seen it. Then I said it out loud.

Blueeyes: 1993-2006

I picked him up from the pound when he was a little kitten. He died in his sleep yesterday afternoon.

Tonight while driving back from the baseball game Andrew was singing along with KT Tunstall’s Black Horse & The Cherry Tree.

Andrew sang, “Well my heart knows me better than I know myself.. So I’m gonna let it do all the toppings”

Just thought it was cute. I think he had ice cream on the brain.

Last night we were late getting started with our nightly family walk around the neighborhood. I worked a bit late and the kids all needed baths, so we didn’t leave the house until close to 9pm.

The walk we take is around 1.7 miles and is just a big loop through the not-very-busy neighborhood streets. Normally we take a double stroller and Loren rides most of the way and the other two kids sometimes ride and sometimes walk.

Last night it was already starting to get dark when we left. Loren wanted to walk as soon as we left the house and we let her. Loren is a pretty slow walker but she did a great job and ended up walking around 1.5 miles. By this time it was quite dark since 1.5 miles took her around 50 min. Around the time we put Loren into the stroller I almost ran over a toad with the stroller.

Andrew picked up said toad and it pooped on him. Then both he and Tracy pet the toad and in general had a good time. Becky wanted to show Loren the toad so she picked it up and the toad peed on her. After yelling “Ewwwwwww” Bec put the toad in the second seat of the double stroller and let Loren touch it. Everytime Loren touched the top of the toad she would scream-giggle-shake. The scream-giggle-shake is difficult to describe without a video, but needless to say she really had a fun time playing with her first toad. Loren’s reaction was then providing entertainment for the rest of the family.

This whole time the dog was not sure what to do with the toad. There was a close call. We had finished playing with the toad and placed him in the grass on the side of the road to which he was headed. We were securing the kids back in the stroller and did not realize that the dog’s leash gave him enough distance for him to get to the toad. I shined the flashlight on the toad and the dog was standing very still with his nose on the toad and he looked like he might eat the poor thing at any second. But we were lucky and he decided to leave it alone.

We have seats at the local AAA ball club along the third base line for all of the Friday night home games. My parents have the same package and they are one row in front of us.
Two weeks ago Andrew and Tracy and my dad went to the rock climbing wall. Andrew climbed a few feet up and came back down. Tracy was not allowed to go because she was wearing a dress. Dad told her to make sure and have shorts on for the next game.

All this week Tracy kept telling us that she had to wear shorts to the game. We dressed her in shorts and around the 7th inning dad took the kids over to the wall. Tracy started climbing and from our seats we could see her going up. She went all the way to the top and rang the bell!! She’s only 4! Dad has a picture from his phone, I will try and get a copy of it and post it here.