Passport

In two weeks, Nicole and I will be crossing the pond to visit France. A few months ago, we had a great time in London so I am really looking forward to seeing Nicole's reaction to the new sites that she will encounter and how she will react to hearing people speaking French instead of English. For now, enjoy her passport photo.

Do You?

Tonight while driving home, Nicole decided to inform me about reflectors that are mounted on the road. These little reflectors, she tells me, are placed there to make sure that you don't go over into the other lane and get into trouble with other cars. I asked her where she learned about them and she said, "My dadda told me." She went on to say, "You don't want to get into an accident with another car, do you?" and "You don't want to drive where you not supposed to, do you?" I thought this little addition of 'do you?' to her sentences was cute and asked her where she came up with that and suggested it came from her dad. She agreed. As we walked in the door, I said to her, "You better pick up your toys, you don't want Benji to get them, do you?" Guess I better look into the mirror next time to determine where she gets most of her expressions.

iPod

In the gym today I was actually using my iPod while working out (yes, I was actually working out _and_ using my iPod that sat around my desk for several weeks). I got to thinking about music and why things like the iPod is so popular. In my opinion, and what holds true for me, is that music can be that easy escape, either transporting you back to happier times and places or forward into your dreams...anyway, I kinda needed both of those things today and the iPod was happy to oblige.

Cheney

I can't do better than this....
http://homepage.mac.com/asboisseau/iblog/thedailygrind/index.html

Dreamland Forest

One of Nicole's favorite cartoon characters is Dora the Explorer. She has a Dora backpack, Dora play schoolyard with figurines and this great Dora book about a sleepy owl.

Normally, as we read stories, we sometimes go off on tangents about different topics that directly or indirectly relate to the story. In this particular case, we talked about how owls are similar to bats in two ways, they are both nocturnal and they both have excellent night/dark vision. The latter comes in handy for the owl when they have to go through a dark tunnel to make it to Dreamland Forest. The owl saves the day with his night-vision-goggle-like eyes to bring the group to safety. After making it through the dark tunnel, they arrive at their destination, Dreamland forest, where owl will presumably be able to catch some zzzzzzs. The publishers of the book overlooked a fact that I guess they thought most toddlers would not catch, but our 3.5 year old Nicole recognized it and said we had to tell Dora. Can you find the error in the picture below?:





That's right, the nocturnal owl who is only supposed to sleep during the daytime is sleeping at night! Oh the horror! Nicole advised me that I must tell the people who publish the book (not in those exact words mind you, she is smart, but still has some learnin' to do) that they are wrong and should correct the image to reflect the owl sleeping during the day and not at night.

Dark

Anyone who has children past at least the age of talking can understand how tired one can get answering all the questions a young child can ask. For those of you non-child bearing individuals, think of the scene between John Candy's character, Uncle Buck, and Macauley Culkin's character in one of my favorite John Hughes movies. In this scene Macauley Culkin rapid fires a slew of questions at John Candy searching for clues into the life of Uncle Buck. Nicole is no different from other children at 3.5 years old and always wants things explained to her. One night while driving home from my mother's I mention to her that we need to make a trip to Target to purchase a couple of gifts for some of her cousins. When I also mentioned that it was too late to go to Target because it was dark out and that the store was closed, she seemed to accept that reason. Tonight, when I mentioned we would be making aforementioned trip to Target she matter of factly asked, "Well, what is on the windows, then?" Because I was unable to see the connection between going to Target and the windows I asked her what she meant and she remarked that "if Target is still open then it can't be dark out because if it were dark out then Target would be closed, so, what is on the windows?"

Still Here

I don't have much to write about tonight...especially since the Super Bowl and its much hyped commercials were both rather bland. There were truly only a couple of plays worth noting and I can't even remember what happened in them except both of them had to do with bad calls by the referrees.
Of course, the other reason I probably can't think of anything to post is because I am still recovering from a night out with my brother and his wife (and in need of repairing all the damaged brain cells in my short term memory). We attended a formal builder sponsored casino night at the great Driskill Hotel (http://www.driskillhotel.com/) and enjoyed yummy food, free drinks and 'free' gambling. Chris and Cari were drinking Crown & Coke but the drink du jour for me was a dirty martini...they went down way too easy...all 7 of them. I was good at interspersing water in between the olive, vermouth and vodka concoctions, but since I rarely drink more then one glass of wine at any given dinner, or stay out past 2a.m. for that matter, recovery has taken a little bit longer. I am including a shot of the three of us pre-party...probably should have taken one afterwards to show how much were were dragging by the end of the night...but at least we didn't get a wasted as some of the older people at casino night still trying to relive there glory days. Of course you will have to take me at my word with no physical evidence to support this.

Akumal Barbie

Every morning before school, Nicole and I go through a ritual of deciding which toy(s) she can take to school that day. Some days it is the My Little Pony or the little stuffed dog and panda bear that we bought in Richmond, or any number of other toys and stuffed animals that she has to choose from. This day, she chose the cute Barbie doll that Pedro (grandfatherly name for Pete, the spousal unit's father,) and Susan, (Nic's step-grandmother, Pedro's wife) surprised her with on our family trip to Mexico. Susan had come up with the cute name of Akumal Barbie because of the little beach acoutrements (towel, surf board, jam box and recreations Starbuck's coffee cup) that came with her and after the quaint beach location we spend some vacations. After dropping Nicole off at school I went to my hair appointment, ran a few errands and then returned to pick her up. I gathered her belongings from her cubby, signed her out and returned to find her outside with a group of other children. As I approached Nicole, she exclaimed, "She got a haircut!" and I replied, "Yes, I did!" thinking that it was unusual for her to notice because it really was just a minor trim. Nicole quickly corrected me stating, "No, Momma. Bella gave Barbie a haircut!" I looked at Barbie, who appeared to be unchaged from the front view, only to turn her around and find that there was a considerable amount of hair missing from the backside. I have named this new do the "reverse mullet". Do you think this style will catch on in Hollywood?

Exhibit A & B:

Fortress

When you have a baby, anyone who has will tell you, that there comes a time when you have to babyproof your home. There is all kinds of paraphernalia for this task including cabinet door locks (from simple plastic hooks to a little more complicated magnetic devices that require a manual to figure out how to use,) baby gates for staircases, baby gates for entire rooms, electrical outlet covers, door handle thingiemebobbies and window blind chord contraptions to name a few. Since our house is a two story, we chose to put a gate, not only at the top to keep Nicole from tumbling down the steps (ala Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind), we also put one at the bottom to keep her from climbing up to the top, then falling, you get the picture. Two obvious items that are good for babyproofing your home are pack-n-plays, (its ancestor is the playpen), and cribs...these are both great for keeping babies in a confined location. Unfortunately, there comes a day when babies become toddlers and find ways to climb out of cribs and therefore have to graduate to a bed. After making this transition with Nicole, I knew there would be times when she would not stay in the bed after having been bathed, read to and kissed good night. Since I had decided early on that I wouldn't subscribe to the Mommie Dearest philosophy of bed straps I figured that closing the gate would at least prevent her for a) performing a Scarlett O'Hara and b) deter her from coming down the stairs when she was supposed to be in bed sleeping. One night after the aforementioned routine, I decided to watch some Tivo'ed programs with the spousal unit. We naturally chose a program that wasn't for little ears but soon heard the pitter patter of little feet down the upstairs hallway and just as I realized I had forgotten to close the upstairs gate we heard her little voice exclaim, "Momma, you left the gate open so I HAVE to come down!" So much for constructing the fortress...