8/19 - Some "Dora the Explorer" while dinner is prepared

The boys don't watch much TV, but occasionally we'll throw in an Elmo DVD if we want to grab just a few minutes to get something done. Problem is, lately the 2 Elmo discs don't seem to be holding their attention - they'll act excited to watch him, but within 10 minutes they are running around again (still getting upset when we turn the TV off).

Well, tonight we stumbled upon a Dora episode, and the boys were mesmerized. A good 20-30 minutes with no interupptions. We're adding this to the DVR recording list so we can always have one on hand...


 

Friday 8/25 - random thoughts

Tonight I met Annabel and the Boys at Max's Opera Cafe at the mall. I was late getting out of work, so by the time I got there and they were seated, it was after 6:30. We didn't get the food until after 7. The boys were pretty squirmy in our booth, driving us nuts climbing up the walls and looking over at other tables, or wanting to crawl on the ground. After a while Jackson started yelling, and after asking him several times to stop, I had to take him outside for a little timeout. He started bawling on the way outside, because he didn't want to leave Mommy. Once he settled down, we went back in and ate our meals, and he was very good.

Annabel is starting to get some bad headaches from the pregnancy, which was something that happened for a stretch last time as well. No fun for her...

The boys have recently made the switch from regular diapers to pullups during the day (although we still use regular diapers at night b/c they are much more absorbent, which reduces the likelihood that we have to change their sheets in the morning). They are slowly getting better, and will occassionally go pee-pee on the potty - even the "big potty" (in fact, that seems to be the only one Jackson wants to use now).

One funny thing that happened at the end of dinner - I said the boys "it's late, we're going to have to get you home and put your PJs on, read a story and go to bed. This immediately prompted an outcry of "I want to drink some milk!" and "I want to sing songs!". I then said, "Do you guys want to go home and (a) put your PJs on, (b) go down and have some milk, (c) read a story downstairs, (d) go upstairs and read another story, (e) then sing our songs, and (f) then go to bed?" (reciting the majority of their nightly ritual), to which they both enthusiastically replied "YES!" -- it's amazing how they love their routines...

August 17 - Daddy has Lasik Surgery

OK, I'm writing this on 8/25 but these pictures are from a week ago, Thursday 8/17 after I had Lasik surgery on my eyes. You can see me sitting on the couch with the boys, wearing my "protective goggles" that I had to wear all day after my 3:30 surgery (to prevent me from accidentally rubbing or touching my eyes. You can see that the boys had fun wearing them also.

Alba and the boys picked me up after the surgery at "Doctor MAN-cheees" office, which is the way J-train likes to say it. They've been obsessed with various doctor's names lately, and the fact that Daddy had TWO doctors in his life was very exciting. Sample conversation:

J - Daddy, what's your doctor's name?
(usually w/ the typical emphasis on random syllables, like NAAAME)

Daddy - Do you mean Dr. Duncan?

J - Daddy, what's your OTHER doctor's NAAME?

Daddy - I don't know - you tell me

J - [visibly excited] DOCTOR MAAAANCHEEE!

Or maybe this:

J - Daddy, what's your doctor's name?

Daddy - You know - you tell me

[brief pause, while Jackson squirms and smiles and looks at me]

Daddy - Is it Dr. McAdoo? (the boys' pediatrician)

J / D - NOOOOO!

Daddy - Hmm, is it Dr. Kahn? (Annabel's OB)

J / D - NOOOOO!

Daddy - Well, is it .... Doctor Duncan? (my regular doctor)

J /D - [visibly excited] YEAAAHHHH!
(occasionally followed by "Daddy, what's your other Doctor's name? rinse, lather, repeat)

Random Thoughts - August 15

1) I think Jackson has completely moved past saying "Di-da" ... he almost always says "Dillon" at this point

2) The boys are just now starting to understand the concept of a letter having a "name"/sound - for the longest time they would identify letters by the word they knew - so A was always "Alba", B was baby, C was Colter, etc. They probably knew 15-20 letters like that. Just recently, they will call a letter by it's name. Jackson is a little better than Dill - he probably knows 5 or so. N, A, D, J, B.

3) For a while, Dillon has been discriminating against the numbers 3,4, and 5. When asked to count something, he would always go "1, 2, 6, 7, 8...". Tonight for the first time in a long time he independently counted correctly, including 3,4,5! Now, he still likes to over-count (so if a picture has 5 ducks, he'll either count to 4 or to 7, etc.), but he's also getting a little better at that. Jackson is pretty good - if the items are laid out fairly evenly (as opposed to in a jumble) he can usually accuratley count up to 9 or 10.

4) The night-time routine when daddy reads bedtime stories is now as follows: (a) read one or two books, (b) sing the three standard songs - "A, B, C, D", Baby Beluga, and Rockabye Baby, (c) have Mommy put the boys to bed. The boys have more recently been singing along almost all of the words with me, especially Dillon (sometimes Jackson just likes to make noises to the tune of the words and squirm a lot). As soon as the last song is done, the boys immediately get down from my lap and run to the top of the stairs where they shout "Annabel! Mommy! I want put Mommy to bed!"

Jackson wore some underpants this afternoon and didn't have any accidents. He even went to the bathroom a couple of times after Mommy prompted him. Some solid steps in the right direction!!!

Great dinner - Sat 8/12/06

We had a great dinner last night - nothing fancy, just a good summery meal. Grilled shrimp in a nice XXX sauce, steamed broccoli, and a caprese salad (with some home-grown tomatoes - from the one plant that actually worked out for us this summer). We ate out in the back yard. I also thought i'd show the thermometer ready at 6:30 when we ate, just to brag a little bit about the nice weather.







Dessert was grilled peaches with some ice cream ... Dillon seems to be enjoying it...

Animal smoothies

The boys have a new game where they pull as many kitchen appliances as possible from the lazy susan storage, lay them out on the carpet in the family room, and play with them.


One of the favorites is to get the blender to "make smoothies". Often this consistes of filling the blender with cars, but today they decided to make an animal smoothie. You can see Dillon here prepping the ingredients, and Jackson in mid-production...

For some reason, they aren't nearly as good at putting away the equipment as they are at getting them out...

Testing the ability to post via email

OK, here goes ... supposedly you can post to the blog by sending an email to a particular address. This will be useful to capture quick thoughts while out and about, or at work. So this is my first test email to see if it really works...

Testing a Slide Show from Slide...

I'm testing out some new software from "Slide" which is the new company started by Max Levchin, the co-founder of PayPal. It's pretty cool; just a couple clicks of the mouse and you can upload pictures that then appear as a slide-show within your blog. Note that i used some random pics that i had on my work computer -- including some stock photos of a taxi and a garbage truck that i have saved for any of those random times when i'm working on my computer (but not connected to the internet) and Jackson or Dillon come over and demand to see one of these images (two of their favorites, which we normally see by going to Google images when we are online). It's so interesting to see how they are growing up with the internet as a part of their lives - the "pooter" is something they see us interacting with almost daily.

UPDATE 8/11/06: I've finally uploaded some actual pictures of the boys, so that's a little more relevant to the blog...

Jackson's First Giants Game

Today Jackson and I went up to the Giants game ... 1:05pm start against the Rockies. We were invited by Chad Thomas, who had access to his company's luxury suite ... which is a great way to take a 2 year old to see a ball game! Between the TV and computer in the interior room (with couches, chairs, and toys to keep the kids occupied), a great food spread and the views from the seats, Jackson was pretty occupied (although he was generally more interested in the boats and helicopters than in the actual play on the field. He got to see Barry Bonds hit a ball about 415 feet, just missing a home run b/c it was hit to dead center, where the fence maxes out at 421 (it was a ground rule double).

It was dad's and boys, so we were joined by Chad and Griffin, Jake and Colter, Glen and Thayer, Michael Mader and Alex, and Chad's friend Scott and his daughter. We had a good time, made it to the seventh inning stretch before heading out. Unfortunately I'm a bit incompetent with my camera, so the pictures didn't turn out all that well (focus on the distance vs. the people in the picture), but you can still get a sense for the day... (which was beautiful - low 70s, light breeze).

Here's Jackson hamming it up...


J-train and Daddy at the ball park...


From left, Colter Nunn, Griffin Thomas, and Jackson George...

 

Everybody Jump!

We just got back from a morning trip to coffee store and "cheese and olive store" (akak Whole Foods), and it was time to blow off a little steam...



Dillon is very much a jumping/climbing fiend ... he's much more willing to jump off things with both feet (the couch, chairs, sidewalks, into the pool at Grandpa's house). Jackson is still a bit tentative ... often his jump is really just a "bend over, get really low to the ground, then fall down". As you can see below, however, he's getting a little more aggressive :-)

Shoes are fun

Isn't it great to slip on some comfy shoes at the end of a long day at work?

A Snail!!!

Oh boy -- it's always fun to be running around the back yard only to discover a snail hiding out on the edge of the grass...

Ok, here's my first attempt at creating a blog. The plan is to capture some of the day-to-day elements of raising the boys ... we may have thoughts or observations or hypotheses that seem so obvious or top-of-mind at the time, but the reality is that in two or ten years we may not remember them. So we're going to try to capture some of them here, which would create more of a permanent record. We'll see how it goes...

Now for a couple of ground rules:
1) This will only work if it's updated regularly. It will only be updated regularly if it's easy and quick. That means that some of the entries will be pretty basic. And there might even be (gasp!) some typos or grammatical errors. That won't be the end of the world.
2) Blogs work best when there is some interactivity, so responses and feedback are encouraged.
3) We're making this up as we go, so we may try some things and decide they don't work, in which case we'll change them.

But enough yip-yapping -- time to get rolling!