First Day Of School Dance

As promised, here is Lily's dance routine from yesterday morning. I'm sorry there's not more audio with it, that's kind of hit or miss. Sometimes she talks all the way through the dances, other times not at all. Still impressive though. I love how she uses the oven door as her mirror. I had to permanently take down the decorative towels we used to keep on the handle because she would shove them out of the way every time she wanted to try out a new dance move.

First Day Of School!

After much anticipation, Lily finally started preschool today! Mandi got the morning off from work so we could both drop her off on her big day. How did she repay us, you ask? When the teacher came and opened her door for her, she promptly grabbed her lunchbox and hauled ass up the stairs. She briefly stopped at the top to wave to us, but that was all we got! We managed to throw a couple of "Bye honey we love yous!" out the windows after her, but without so much as a hug or a kiss, she was gone.


After 3 hours of piddling around and wasting time waiting for our little, excuse me, big girl to finish up her first day, we arrived first in line to pick Lily up at a little before noon. As she came down the stairs to meet us she was thrilled to show off the lollipop she got for being a good girl. The teacher that walked her out said she was really good, and even helped keep the other kids quiet at time (Jedi mind trick, I'm assuming).


Before you say anything smart, I know these pictures don't flow with the story. Just keep it to yourself. I'm irritated with the computer right now and don't have the energy to screw with it. Because of said computer issues, I'm going to save the "first day of school dance" video Lily did for you all for a later post. Hopefully it will be later tonight. If not, look for it tomorrow. Kid's definitely got a future as a cheerleader, if not a bona fide dancer.

Anyway, on the way home I was plugging Lily for information on her day, and she was generally not cooperating. She really didn't have a lot to offer for the first ten minutes or so, so I just kinda left it alone. Then, when I asked again about her day, she said "Daddy, my classroom is awesome!"

"What made it so awesome?", I asked.

"When we got to have snacks!"

That's my girl!

There's nesting . .

. . and then there's going completely overboard. This is a lesson in the latter.

With Avery out of town this weekend, we planned to get a few things done around the house. Apparently my impression of "a few" and Mandi's are somewhat different. What I thought was going to be the painting of one room and stocking of the freezer turned out to be one of the busiest weekends I can ever remember.

I suppose it's my fault for not insisting on a list. I always do well with lists, no matter how long it is I'll happily work until it's finished. But when I come in thinking "paint one room and make some food" and it turns into "paint half of the house and cook enough to feed a small army, then do a thorough deep cleaning of the whole house while simultaneously keeping Lily occupied all weekend", I get a little ill. The truth is that as I type this, I'm completely whooped. To top it off, tomorrow's a holiday and our gym is closed, so my daily 2-hour respite from Lily will not happen. Serenity now!!!!

Anyway, the first project of the weekend was to transform Lily's lavender bedroom into Lily and Mason's two-toned "jungle" room. I don't really care for painting, but I do love paint. Paint brings new life to spaces, and it offers immediate gratification. It hides dirt pretty well, too. This is the progression of the project, neatly arranged in this convenient slideshow for you.

Lily loves her new room, and her new monkey Mandi's friend Sara gave her. She named it George . . so original.

Project number two was the freezer. Earlier in the week I was put in charge of defrosting the freezer in our garage to "get it ready" for this weekend. If I'd only known. I half listened as Mandi made her list of stuff she was planning to cook, but the enormity of the task didn't set in until about 6:00 yesterday evening, when she was barely halfway finished. Holy crap, that's a lot of food. Somehow our refrigerator still had ingredients in it, and she pushed on through the day today, finishing up just before dinner time. I won't list what she cooked, but if we chose to we could go about 3 weeks without cooking a single dinner. Gonna come in really handy when there's an infant to chase around the house. Here's what the freezer looked like before it got really full . .


And here's the after. Those stacks of aluminum pans go 2 deep, the big bags on the door are homemade meatballs, and there are 2 giant containers of Beef and Chorizo Chili hiding down near the bottom. Yum!


As if that wasn't enough accomplishment for the weekend, we decided to get some of our white touch-up paint and go over "some of the bad spots". Not my words. That of course turned into me painting all of the white walls from the top of the stairs, down to the foyer, through the living room, and all the way into the play room. Again, I love paint, just not painting.

The fourth and final project was by far the most frustrating, at least partly because of its proximity to Lily's mouth. I love that kid, but Holy Hannah does she have a set of pipes on her! We decided, almost on a whim, to paint the laundry room. It was the only room on the bottom floor of our house that was completely white, and the dirty walls just made the house feel, well, dirty. We'd talked a couple of times about doing something like a tangerine color in there, with the idea being that laundry's such a mundane task, why not at least make the room exciting. I bit the hook on that, and went to Sherwin Williams to pick up a gallon of "Sunburst". Well . . it looked orange on the card.

As small as our laundry room is (probably 8'x6'), it took almost as long to paint as did Lily's much larger bedroom. There's the chore of removing all of the accessories from the wall, like ironing board hangers and broom caddies and the like. The over-washer shelf came out with relative ease, but the whole process became quite tedious. By the time I'd washed the half inch of built-up lint from the baseboards and was ready to tape, it'd been almost an hour since I started. Couple that with the perpetual dance with the washer and dryer to get them away from the wall (I chose not to move them out of the room), and I was over this project before I really even got started. Mercifully I got it taped off and got the first coat of paint on before lunch time, and I felt OK taking a quick break for some leftover pizza. The second coat went on much faster than the first, and I was beginning to get the hang of standing on top of the washer to reach the ceiling by the time I finished. With a whim of creativity we decided to add an accent color to the strange little triangular-shaped intrusion into the wall from the staircase that goes above it. By the time I'd finished it and removed the tape I was completely sick of painting, and decided to leave the crisp white stripe left by the tape as my own artistic touch. Watch out Michelangelo . .




Now to prove to you that I'm not just over-reacting about a little work, I have indisputable visual evidence to support my theory that we have in fact gone well beyond the point of nesting. We are at 33 weeks pregnant as of today, with a solid 6 weeks worth of non-cluttered-by-baby-toys left to go in our current phase of life. Well so much for that idea. Project number five for the weekend was to get all of the baby related materials down from the attic, clean them thoroughly, install new batteries in all of them, and place them in their predetermined locations. Hell, it looks so much like we've got a baby in the house already that I thought Mandi was going to make me wear the baby carrier around while I painted! Here's your proof . .




Seeing that swing in the living room brings back a lot of memories. It's so funny . . when I vacuumed the living room tonight and came to the spot where the swing is sitting, I vividly remembered doing the same thing 3 years ago, leaning over the exact same way I did tonight to grab the swing, hold it out of the way, and just vacuum what I could get to. There is no moving furniture out of the way when there's a baby in the house. You're doing good just to get the vacuum out every third day as it is. Good times those were, and good times they will be.

One funny story from the weekend to leave you with. After Mandi and Sara finished hanging Mason's name on the wall, Lily came up to tell them that dinner was ready. She walked into her new jungle room with them and admired their work. She said, "Hey, that spells Mason!" She paused, then said "M, A, S, Zero, N!" She's such a smart booger, but you can't help but laugh when she has a "whoops" moment like that one. Another true classic.

At The Brink

A little bit of rain is always welcome, especially in the middle of August. When Tropical Storm Fay's original track veered away from the projection that brought it toward Charlotte, many locals were disappointed. Then stories started coming in of major flooding in the Florida towns where the storm made landfall four separate times, and some blessings were no doubt counted. We want all of the good, but none of the bad. A week after the original threat of rain, we began to see the remnants of Fay. Monday afternoon at the bus stop the rain started coming down hard, and it didn't let up until around 10:00 this morning. Some parts of the region received 6+ inches of rain, and it showed.

Today on the news it was reported that dozens of people, mainly motorists, required rescuing from the high waters. There was no widespread flooding like what I've heard about down in Florida, but it's washing out roads over rivers, and we Charlotteans are notoriously bad drivers when the weather turns. That fact was certainly taken into consideration when the decision was made to cancel school due to flooding. That's right, they cancelled school on the 3rd day. I hope my few local friends who are regular readers are being very cautious on the roads this week. Don't drive into standing water people.

When we got to the gym today, I saw an overflowing river where I did not even realize a river existed. I literally look out the windows of the fitness center in the direction of this stream/river every day I'm there, and i've never noticed water. You couldn't miss it today.



The activity fields were pretty washed-out too.




After the gym, and a trip to the mall, we swung by one of my favorite birding spots to see if the rain had flushed any migrants from their trails. It hadn't, but this Red-tailed Hawk was taking advantage of the break in the weather to dry itself off. Talk about soaked!




On the road home, we cross over Rocky River. To call it a river on most days is a bit bold, as especially in the summer months it runs at little more than a trickle. Today that was not the case. The water was well over the banks, and was dangerously close to coming over the bridge and on to the road.



Poplar Tent Road crosses the river a little further North, apparently with a little less flood protection than was needed. The local sheriff's department had the road closed off and was redirecting traffic.


Then there's the portion of Rocky River that runs alongside the nature trail here in Moss Creek. At the trail's Southeastern edge the river goes under Harris Road, and that was also extremely close to coming over the bridge. The water was moving very quickly, and additional rain will certainly only exacerbate the problem. This shot of the submerged utility marker really gives you a sense of how fast the water is moving.


This next picture is significant because it was taken 100 feet to the South of the actual river basin. The river itself has overflowed its banks at this point and is flowing down the floodplain. The rumor is that our nature trail is mostly under water . . I've been asked to survey the damage when it becomes safe and report to the developer what, if any, repairs need to be done. I suspect signage, bridges, and a good portion of the actual trails have been damaged. More photos of that reconnaissance trip will certainly follow these.

A Birthdate

I am, admittedly, a bit of a dork. I think about silly little things that ordinary (read: sane) people would not. Take for instance the recent discussion Mandi and I have had regarding the scheduling of her C-Section. The most important thing is that we get the doctor she likes to deliver the baby. That should go without saying. But what have I been focused on? The date, of course.

It's well known that I was disappointed with Lily's birth date. She was born 5/4/05, just one day shy of what would have been a very cool 05/05/05.

I know, I'm ridiculous. It's my child, and the only thing that should matter is that he's born healthy and his mom comes through surgery OK. But for now, I have no control over those things. Those are delivery room worries. Right now I've got some free time on my hands, so I think about silly stuff like visually-appealing birth dates.

Until about a week ago we've talked about a delivery date of 10/14 or so, and I hadn't really said anything about it. Now, however, the doctors' call schedule has been written for October, and it was time for us to talk to the scheduler.

Before I go any further, I'd like to add that I'm not the only one with self-serving motives here. Mandi's main concern, other than her preference of doc, is that she not have to go back to work until after the new year. Valid, yes, but still peripheral.

So I made it known that my preference would be for a 10/10/08 delivery day, and today it was written down in ink! Mandi got us on the docket for 7:45 a.m., and Mason should be arriving shortly thereafter. Of course I couldn't let it rest at that . . I figured why not just throw the next logical thought in the dork-progression out there.

"Could you call them back and see if we could schedule it for like 9:45, that way he'd have a chance of being born at 10:10 on 10/10?" I asked her.

Surprisingly, Mandi had already run that question by the scheduler and got summarily laughed at . . I'm guessing that means "No way Jose". Oh well, at least I got my date! How cool will it be when his 2nd birthday party rolls around and we can schedule it for 10/10/10???

I know, I know, you don't have to remind me. I'm lame-o, but I'll bet you I'm not the only one.

Not A Puppet Show

It's not the puppet show, but I did get some fun videos of Lily riding her bikes in front of the house a few days ago. Pure comedic gold this kid is sometimes.

This clip includes her first "spill". What a tough cookie!

I like to call this one "NASCAR practice" . . "Safety helmet's on!"

And the commentary in the last one is just classic Lily. A brief and reluctant appearance by Avery at the end is something of a novelty. She's a touch camera-shy.

As a bit of an aside, we were at Avery's soccer practice and a friend kept an eye on Lily for me while I coached. I heard from Lily from time to time throughout the hour, but really wasn't paying a lot of attention to what she was doing. When practice ended, I came toward the sideline and was informed that Lil was demonstrating her new favorite song to the parents, one that none other than her Meema taught her. The lyrics are approximately as follows:

I see your hiney
All white and shiney!
It makes me giggle
To see it wiggle!

Did I mention that practice was at 8am? What a great song to wake up to, eh?

Distance Shortener

Lily wanted to put on a little show for all of her non-local family this morning, and I've borrowed a friend's video camera for a while, so I decided to take advantage of it. It's in two parts . . enjoy!


Part I.



Part II.