Evie’s Catalog

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Evie has unveiled a whole host of new tricks lately.  She said “Ma ma” for the second time (or “mom mom”).  She sort of took her first step on 7/7.  We’re not counting it as walking exactly, it was more of one step and then a fall.  But the intention was there.  She’s done that a few times since then. Today she started to sign “book” but she has a little trouble differentiating that from “all done.”  She has started saying “No” but I don’t think she knows what that means yet.  She has been saying banana (or “na na”) or at least repeating it back when you ask her if she wants some.  She says “Daddy” more consistently, like sometimes when she is handing me things.  She has definitely gotten the sign for “milk” down and she uses that one spontaneously.  She rocks and dances on command.  She will stick out her tongue when asked and, for you 4th of July campers, she now sticks her tongue out when you tell her to be “silly”. She likes to “meow” when she sees cats or pictures of cats, and if you sing “Play the drum” from her music class she will find her drum (an empty coffee can) and start to play. Her favorite thing to do is to walk pushing something that is about the right height, such as a laundry basket or her music table thing, but especially the step stool. She sometimes goes to the bathroom on the potty. She likes to pick out books for you to read and when she has a favorite she makes you read it over and over again.  She can climb the stairs all the way from the bottom to the top.

Signs she knows: All Done, More, Milk, Book

Things she can do: Wave hello / bye bye, clap her hands, flush the toilet, drink from a “big girl” cup all by herself, feed herself finger foods (what little she will eat), look at books by herself including turning the pages

Things she can point to: light, door, window, fan, books, Nala, ball, drum, mommy, daddy, grandma, grandpa, Anna, jump-a-roo, cereal, spoon, high chair, baby, belly button, toes, mouth, hair, ears, ring, necklace, watch, cat

Things she doesn’t really do anymore: High Five, So Big, Shake her head “no”

I’m sure there are more things, but I forgot.

Oh yeah!

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Why does the kool-aid man hate brick walls so much?

Another good prank courtesy Urban Prankster.

My Civic Duty

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I received a summons to be a standby juror.  I’ve never been a juror before and I would kind of be excited about it, but it falls right in the middle of an upcoming vacation.  Now, I don’t want to get out of jury duty.  I know everybody wants to get out of jury duty, something so true it has become a cliche.  But I think everybody should do their part, I just wish my part didn’t have to fall during my vacation.  I am supposed to call a number the day before after 4:30 p.m. to find out if I am to show up at court at 9:30 a.m. the following day.  Obviously that wouldn’t leave much time and we would have to cut our vacation short just in case.  The crappy thing is that most people I’ve talked to that have bee standby jurors do not get called, so it would probably be for nothing.

So I called to see if I could just move my standby jury status to another week.  Not to get out of it, mind you, but to postpone it until it was more convenient.  I was prepared for them to tell me no.  I was not prepared for what actually happened.  I called the phone number and gave them my juror number all official like and explained the situation and the conversation went like this:

Me: “So I was wondering if I could postpone it, perhaps for a week.”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “You’re going on vacation?”
Me: “Yes”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Just disregard the notice.”
Me: “Just disregard it?”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Disregard it.”
Me: “Like, ignore it? I can do that?”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Disregard it.”

Soooo, I guess I don’t have to worry about it?  He certainly didn’t seem to be concerned about it.  Perhaps he made a note on the computer (I did hear him typing at one point) and I will just be sent another notice, I don’t know.  Or I’ll go to jail.

As long as I’m talking about government stuff, let me say something about universal health care.  It has come up several times lately that France is a magical wonderland where doctor’in is free and everybody lives to 1000.  Sure, there are a lot of good things about the social programs in France and it is not hard to paint it in a good light.  The liberals here make the conservatives in France look like flithy communists.  But I’m here to tell you that all of the French guys I work with hate it with a passion.  The tax burden is so great in France that they couldn’t wait to get to the U.S.  I heard on NPR today that last year the health care in France was $9 billion dollars over budget.  That’s $9 billion on top of whatever considerable budget they had planned for it.  I did a quick seach and saw on pubmed that in 2000 their budget was $37 billion.  I’m sure that has gone up quite a bit in the last 8 years.

So I’m not saying our health care system isn’t broke and I’m not saying universal health care isn’t the way to go, but I am saying that we would have to come up with at least $50 billion a year to start with to cover it.  Factor in how much it is going to increase every year as health care naturally gets more expensive and add that to the war and Social Security and tell me how we are going to pay for that?  More taxes and a lot of them and then we end up where France ended up.  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Human Mirror

/ Shane / 1 Comment

The folks over at Improv Everywhere turned in another really great mission.  Basically they got sets of twins to sit across from each other on the subway and mirror each other’s actions, creating a human mirror.  Some of the long shots down the car where you can see all of the people were really cool, it really looks like there is a long mirror in the middle of the car.

You can also see another clip here from ABC covering the mission.  Second link courtesy of Anna (where should I link for you?)

2 – 11, 3 – 4, 4 – 232

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I haven’t had a chance to update lately.  Of course a lot has happened, we celebrated another month with Evie, our anniversary, and of course, the birth of our nation.

For our part, we went camping for a 4 day weekend.  The camping went about as well as could be expected.  We were a little nervous since we have 2 more camping trips coming up this summer.  It rained once when we first got there and our tent leaked, but there was some time before we went to bed and it dried a little bit.  The rest of the time, the weather was great.  The bugs weren’t too bad and the campsite was decent.  We mostly avoided the sun, although I did have two funny red knees from where I sat in the sun talking for too long and got burned between where my shorts ended and my legs bent down at the knee.  Evie slept surprisingly well, including sleeping right through an impromptu fireworks display right outside our tent that kept Sara and I awake. 

In general, Evie loved camping.  She enjoyed being outside, she enjoyed the swimming and she enjoyed all of the people, but most of all she enjoyed the walking.  She is not walking on her own yet, but she moves quite well when she has something to hold on to.  When we were camping there was an endless loop of lawn chairs, picnic tables, outstretched hands, etc. for her to walk and walk and walk around, from sun up to sun down.  She probably improved her walking skills more in 3 days than in the previous 2 weeks.

The only bad thing that happened was that Evie got sick.  She had an elevated temperature (the doctor insists it wasn’t high enough to call it a fever) and she would periodically throw up.  But when she wasn’t doing that, she was in a pretty good mood so it was hard to know what to do about it exactly.  Actually, the one who got the worst of it was Anna who took a stream of vomit full in the mouth!  Yes, you read that right.

After we got home, the first night was pretty rough as Evie tried to re-adjust to things around here.  That was just the warm up though for the next day.  Sara caught whatever Evie had and got as sick as I’ve ever seen anybody.  She literally could not keep down a sip of water.  In addition Evie was still throwing up, so it was somewhat disastrous around here.  So far I have not gotten sick.  My stomach felt a little uneasy here and there, but I’m hoping it was just paranoia from being around sick people.  We seem to be through the worst of it (assuming I don’t get sick) so perhaps they will not have to paint a big skull and crossbones on the front of our house and quarantine us as a plague house.

Although, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, there were a few silver linings.  For example, Sara lost 7 pounds in about 10 hours!  She doesn’t recommend it as a weight loss program.