31 posts tagged “daughters”
My 4 and 2 year-olds can now navigate youtube to go from video to video... of BUCKETHEAD!
He is their absolute favorite and they run around in a circle screeching, "It's buckethead! He's silly cuz he has a bucket on his head! He's playing guitar really fast!" the whole time.
They now want me to wear a bucket on my head while I play.
Sorry to disappoint them, but re-purposed KFC hat or not, I can just not make my fingers move that fast.
I only discovered him for myself recently.
I'd heard, during the wait for Chinese Democracy, that there was a guy who replaced Slash who wore a bucket on his head while he played, and that's as far as I got.
I'm liking the stuff he does on his own, but not so much his G'n'R era stuff and his versions of their old material.
He's technically competent doing Slash's solos, it's just not... you know... he didn't write it.
But doing his own stuff... well... shit. He may wear a bucket, but he's got some soul; when he's not doing the overly technical speed-shredding.
So I'm glad I found him, and glad that he's out of GnR now, so that I can like him.
The wife had Intralase Lasik last Friday.
I was freaked out. Turned out fine.
Youngest daughter winged a ball at wife's face the next day.
I freaked out. Missed the eyes, turned out fine. She can read the 20/20 eye chart line.
Eldest daughter fell out of bed Monday night.
Gashed the back of her head on the bottom corner of a dresser.
I freaked out and got a lot of blood all over me while I held her.
After a trip to the ER at Midnight and three staples, turned out fine.
Youngest smacked eldest in the back of the head with a (hard) toy dragon.
I freaked out. Wound didn't open, no new blood, just a headache for eldest, so, you know, fine.
Eldest wants to go to preschool today as there are only a few sessions left for this school year.
I take her and find out today they're doing an inflatable bouncy-house all day because it's storming outside.
I freaked out. I'll find out in an hour if anything got bumped loose, but I haven't gotten an emergency call yet.
She has a follow-up doctor appointment today anyway.
Wife has a follow-up eye appointment tomorrow.
Me, I've about exhausted my freak-out for the week.
Plenty of Boulevard Brewery mixed-packs, Bacardi Solara Rum, vodka, and tequila though... so I might make it yet.
So, the house next door sold, and out moved a family with kids about our kids ages.
In moved renters, with a dog, staked outside 24/7, who barks and growls every time we go outside.
His tie-out extends all the way to the property line, which he snaps taut every time I go outside with our dogs or kids.
We ask the landlord for a fence, to keep our kids from doing something a kid would do like chase a ball downhill, and wind up getting bitten.
We've wanted a fence for a while as the back of the yard ends in a cliff down to a ravine.
So far, the feedback we've got from the property manager is that the landlord's OK with it, as long as we pay for the fence he picks out, and our rent goes up because the property would now been improved with a fence and to cover maintenance for it.
On the other hand, we've got our own renters in the house we left behind in the relocation wanting improvements for their own lease extension/renewal.
I'm not only seeing both sides of the fence, I'm seeing it simultaneously and let me tell you; there isn't any green grass on either side.
Inspired by the tornadoes sweeping around us last night, I put two shots of vodka into six shots pineapple juice and diced up a quarter of an Granny Smith apple that the daughters hadn't finished eating with their dinner.
I'm sure that any 1/4 apple would have done.
Just eat the other 3/4 yourself.
Worked beautifully to soothe the nerves, as we huddled in a closet under the stairs with our flashlights.
...with cookies that is.
My 21 month and almost 4 year old daughters had a blast creating in the kitchen.
We began with vanilla wafer cookies, which we decorated with half cream cheese frosting, and half strawberry frosting, then marshmallow pieces atop.
These we nuked in the microwave for a few seconds until they got slightly gooey and then dashed sprinkles on top while still warm to adhere to the goo.
Decadent.
Yesterday for lunch, the kids and I shared a Brie cheese wheel, sliced up on crackers, accompanied by apple slices.
Their milk, in crystal goblets.
Very continental.
Today, we had fried chicken.
Their milk cuppies snug in their NASCAR cozies.
Just after Christmas, when the visiting in-law grandparents were safely stuffed back on an airplane, my 3 3/4 year old decided she wanted to learn to read.
It has been an explosion of knowledge.
I am not keeping track of a word list that she can recognize or spell yet, as I'm not sure day to day how much of it is sticking in long-term memory, but it would be impressive.
Our favored method is to use an email client to compose a message (in super huge font)
one word on one line at a time.
This past week, she expressed an interest (i.e. "NO, I want to do it!") in typing the words herself.
So, she's also learning the letter location of the QWERTY system as well.
She's been copying some of her favorite sections of Doctor Seuss books in this fashion.
Now she's hitting up educational game websites to master their spelling games.
She long ago became bored with the content on noggin.com and nickjr.com having explored every link on their sites.
She is more competent with the use of the mouse and navigating via browser bookmarks than my parents are.
Her latest expansion is math fractions games.
She was on a spelling game when I left the room to go make us nachos.
I came back and bam, she's doing math.
My wife's response, "Are you going to save anything at all for her teachers when she starts school?"
I'd write a child development book on how it all happened, but dude, I don't think it's me.
We haven't pushed either of our kids, but simply provided resources for them when they expressed an interest themselves in exploring a given topic.
Now the 21 month old, I'll just be glad when she's finished potty-training (about 90% there now.)
She's also learning her alphabet, animals and sounds they make with a ringed flipcard set.
She started potty training (felt like early) because she wanted to keep up with big sister.
Now she looks like she wants to do the same thing with playing on the PC and reading her own book words.
It's daunting, this whole parenting young kids thing, but I think I might not have screwed up too bad.
I think they'll both be ready for school on time, likely way ahead of peer grade-level.
I am anticipating feeling incredibly relieved at that hand-off of learning to the teacher and at the same time weirded out, considering that at this pace they should surpass my own knowledge of most topics somewhere around middle-school age.
Today was soundtracked for me by Mark Lanegan's "Whiskey for the Holy Ghost".
The wife gets back in from a D.C. business trip in a few hours.
One hour after that, the sitter will be here and we'll be off to a wine group Meetup.
In addition to vino, the wife had a recommendation for Peachy Canyon Paso robles Zinfadel which we'll look for, I'll be taking a tray of feta/beef rolls.
Since I'm all about the easy groove, I picked up a tube of pre-made croissant dough, a package of feta, and a small pouch of dried beef thinly sliced.
Roll out the dough triangles in pairs so that they form rectangles (one triangle inverted to the other).
Fill the long axis center line with crumbled feta, followed by bits of crumbled dried beef.
Roll up the dough into a long cigar shape.
A quick trip in the oven at 350 F for 12-20 minutes (depending on the instructions for your particular brand of refrigerated tube o' croissants) and Bob's your uncle. (no, really, he is.)
Then cut the rolls into app-size length bites (1/4" to 1/2") and pin them with a toothpick to aid the structural integrity (and to make them look like cute li'l bone fide apps.)
"We got apps!"
-Beautiful Girls
On the way to pick up eldest daughter at preschool, I heard a radio spot for a jewely store (you may not be familiar with the term "radio". It's like an MP3, but free to be picked off the airwaves with a tuner, crazy as that sounds, but the trade-off being the commercials, but that's the impetus for this story).
The ad was touting why a buyer would want to choose their pieces over the competition for their servicing of
"soon-to-be heirloom" jewelry gifts.
That turn of phrase struck me. I think it was a jab, but having just been struck, I could have mistaken it for a hook.
An odd tableau played out in my head as I reeled (and signaled with my left turn blinker at a light.)
Picture a middle-aged man sitting on a porch, overlooking a wooded valley and in the rocker next to him, a bored looking 20 something busy texting his peeps on his blackberry.
Old guy leans over and rips one, then dangles a watch over to the crack-berry head.
"Son, this watch has been passed down, from pocket to pocket for the better part of five minutes now, and I'd like you to have it. Remember its history and what it represents about the family as you treasure it for the next month or so."
Instant, soon-to-be heirloom indeed.
I don't know whether the root lies in the microwave oven or the drive-through window, but our cultural lack of patience for something to become special over time seems to diminish the power of words in the vein of heirloom and antique.
These things acquire a meaning because of their age, their craft, the events they have survived that separate themselves from us in history.
Our lack of patience for them to become special robs them of meaning when we bandy about these words without their meanings, robbing us both of character.
My afternoon mood was salvaged when eldest handed me her painted hand-print snowman picture project and the 19 month-old made a successful deposit on her training potty upon the return home.
Eldest's project will be archived and will have some meaning when she shows it to her own kids later. It will acquire a specialness even greater than it merits today.
Youngest's project, while celebrated, was flushed.
With it, the notion of the "soon-to-be heirloom".
Dropped eldest off at preschool this morning.
Headed off to the Y with youngest.
It's one exit down the freeway.
While turning from the surface street onto the on-ramp, I was met with a vehicle reversing up the on-ramp toward me.
Guy had mistaken the clearly marked freeway on-ramp with the driveway to a business park, I guess.
He backed up all the way out of the on-ramp, backed through the surface street (against flow of traffic) and then turned into his desired destination.
Seriously people... it's called, "Yeah, I screwed up, lemme get off at the next exit and circle around to come back."
After the Y, youngest and I stopped off at the insurance agent office to get our policies transfered in from out of state.
