My So Called Life

To sleep, perchance to dream

/ Shane / 6 Comments

One night Evie was crying in her sleep. I went to see what was the matter and she explained to me that, while she was lying in her crib, a frog was trying to eat her legs. I explained to her about dreams and she went back to bed, but this dream stuck with her for several days, until we had to have a lengthy discussion about good dreams and bad dreams, and why bad dreams couldn’t hurt you.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a horrifying dream to me, even as an adult. There’s something particularly creepy about it being a giant frog, I can totally picture it. I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth.

The fact is, I have very vivid dreams that I almost always remember on a nightly basis. When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I would lie awake nearly every single night with the sheet pulled up to my eyes, getting carried away by my very vivid imagination. Naturally, I would rather Evie was spared from that.

The other day she told me about a dream she had. She was flying down a long hallway, like a bat, while “something with no mouth and no feet” walks behind her. Creepy to the max. On one hand I am proud that she has such a vivid imagination. I think that will serve her well in life.

I’m sure every kid has nightmares. It’s probably not a big deal. Anybody else have any experience with this? How old were your kids when they started having nightmares, and when did they grow out of it?

The Toot Hole

/ Shane / 7 Comments

When we were camping, there was a missing knot in the bench of the picnic table, leaving a hole. Evie asked what it was for and, because I take the “Calvin’s dad” philosophy of question answering*, I naturally told her it was for “toots”.

Let me back up a second and explain toots. We didn’t have any cutesy names for bodily functions when I was a kid, we called a spade a spade. When Evie was younger, Sara asked me what names we should use for things and I was like, “huh?” It just didn’t occur to me that you should make ups some silly phrase. It doesn’t make it any more polite people, talking about farts in the first place is what’s rude, not using the word fart. That being said, when Evie says “toots” it’s the darned cutest thing you could ever imagine the world.

So anyway, I told her the hole was for toots, not thinking much of it. The “toot hole” (as Evie called it) must really have captured her imagination. She went around telling everybody about the toot hole and spend a decent amount of time trying to toot on the toot hole. It wasn’t long before the origin of the phrase was traced back to me.

Time passes and I don’t think much about it. Then one day we were sitting out on the back porch and she said, “My red chair has a toot hole!” See, her chair is one of those plastic ones and it has a hole so that (presumably) the water can drain off. I had long since forgotten about the original toot hole and the fact that she remembered it took me by surprise. This brought another round of Evie doing her darndest to toot on the hole. Not as funny as the first time, since I now had the sinking feeling she wasn’t going to forget about this one.

Fast forward to this week. Evie and I were pretending to go camping, one of her favorite games. Evie was telling me a big story about her imaginary, fully-featured lawn chair. It was blue with yellow arm rests. It had all the features, cup holders, a thing to lie back in, and, of course, a toot hole.

Don’t say I never taught you nothin’ kid.

* I couldn’t find a good copy of the Calvin and Hobbs strip I was looking for to embed in this post, but you can see a grainy one here. It’s kind of hard to read, so I will reproduce the text:

Calvin: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just the world was black and white then.
Calvin: Really?
Dad: Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: That’s really weird.
Dad: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If their world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But… but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the ’30s.
Calvin: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Nusiance Cat, Part II

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Updating my previous post, since I blocked off the area Nala had been using as a toilet, Nala outsmarted me by simply climbing onto the next higher shelf and going bombs away from up there. The ironic thing is that the shelf she used holds diapers, meaning that 90% of her pee was absorbed by probably the best possible thing for absorbing urine.

So the bad news is, she’s still making an attempt to pee on my floor. The good news is, she’s sort of polite about it (even if by accident).

Weekend with old friends

/ Shane / 2 Comments

What a weekend.

We were visited by some friends from college who we hadn’t seen in a long time. We hadn’t seen them for so long that we’ve had a kid since then and they’ve had two. It was great to finally meet Ayla and Jackson, and Evie had an absolute blast. Obviously she’s played with kids her age before, but the last time someone her age came to our house, she was too young to really appreciate it, or remember.

She was such a good girl sharing all her toys and things without complaint. It was adorable to watch her playing with Ayla and trying to hold her hand. I wasn’t exactly sure how she would react, but she was a perfect angel. I think she’ll probably sleep for a week. I guess it was fun to see Alexis and Gregory too. 😛

Mostly we just stayed around the house, but we did walk over to the garden and the farmer’s market. We took the train downtown to the aquarium, which was Ayla and Jackson’s first time on the train, and we (well everyone but me) hit up the jazz festival. I think we could have confined ourself in a padded cell and Evie would have still had a blast, but seeing the dolphin show was still pretty exciting.

Another highlight was when Jackson peed on my leg. I mean, I’ve been peed on (or worse) before, but it has been awhile (and it’s probably something you never quite get used to). I had seen him pick up a water-squirting bath toy moments before, so when I first felt the stream I didn’t even look over at him. That reminds me though of another one of Evie’s favorite parts, which was taking a bath with everybody. Every day she asked if they could take a bath with her again that night. Ayla and Jackson are much more rambunctious in the bath than Evie, who mostly just sits there and hates to get her face wet. I think Jackson in particular was quite a surprise to her.

The weekend definitely wore me out though. Alexis and Gregory are blessed by kids who sleep late in the morning, so staying up until midnight isn’t quite the hit to them! Evie hasn’t really been sad since they left, but she has mentioned that she wants to, “call Ayla and tell her I miss her”. She also said that when they leave, “I won’t be sad. I’ll just close the door and sit on my yellow chair and be lonely.”

So, all in all, a really great weekend and we all had a blast. We need to do it again soon. I really enjoyed having you guys over and actually hanging out with friends (something we never do!) I just wish you guys lived a little closer!

I think my all time favorite part of the weekend though, was when we got off the train at the stop right next to our house (you can see our place from the platform actually) and the conductor said, “Are you folks from out of town?” I said, “Some of us are, but we live here.” He replied, “Are you sure you want to get off here? This is kind of a rough neighborhood…”

Nothing like getting told your block is too rough for you.

Blogging Timeline

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I had thought to make a post about my “top 5 blogging moments” but I couldn’t come up with a good 5 for the list. I thought about changing it into “my top 5 favorite posts on my blog”, but I eventually turned the concept around a little bit, until it became, “notable events in the history of my blog”. So here is a timeline of sorts of important blogging events:

2/17/2004 – My first post ever. Not very exciting.

8/3/2005 – This was my first post back after a one year blogging hiatus. This was significant, not only because I resumed blogging, but also because it marked a new era. Previous to this, my blog was more of a personal journal, after it became more of a “best of the Internet” aggregator and link place holder, which is more or less what it is today.

8/2/2007 – Announcing the birth of Evie. This post straddles the line of important event in my life vs. important in terms of the blog. However, I think it is safe to say that Evie has had a big impact on blog, both in terms of giving people a reason to check here, and for giving rise to the “Evie Update” category (79 items), and the “From the Mouths of Babes” category (27 items).

3/26/2008 – My first post on WordPress. I can’t say enough how much better WordPress is compared to LiveJournal. LiveJournal has some advantages, particularly in the facebook type community aspect, but in terms of pure blogging power, there is no contest. So switching over to WordPress had a big impact on how the blog evolved after that.

6/21/2008 – Childhood hero of mine, Commander Mark Kistler, comments on my blog post about him.

6/23/2008 – A title mishap (in which I may have implied their product causes rickets) brings me to the attention of Bob’s Pickle Pops, ultimately leading to them sending me some free samples. This was the first and only time this blog led to any sort of compensation.

8/25/2008 – Someone from my favorite store ThinkGeek comments on a post. Of course it is the one and only time I am bashing one of their products (for something that was totally not their fault, mind you), but hey, I’ll take it.

1/3/2009 – First post of the 3rd incarnation of my blog, in which I started blogging every day. It wasn’t exactly formal, I was just sort of testing myself to see if I could do it, and then I just kept doing it. At first I planned to blog 7 days a week, but I eventually settled into a M-F pattern. Coming up with 5 topics a week is extremely difficult, and I was worried that the quality would drop off. I don’t think it really has, though I might not be the best judge.

1/21/2009 – My 500th post.

2/17/2009 – My 5 year blogiversary.

2/24/2009 – My 500th comment.

5/21/2009 – The first post after I started to push my posts out to Facebook (and then later, Twitter). This was significant because I think most people I know didn’t really know I had a blog. So this opened us up to a much wider audience (although they still rarely comment, or comment on Facebook).

I think that’s about it. Anybody else know of any big moments on my blog? Anybody have any particularly favorite posts? What is the first post you remember? Put them in the comments.