Biannual Blogging

Things kinda fell apart there for a while for me. I've been doting around with various forms of antidepressants for a while and without entirely noticing it I had fallen back pretty hard with my attempted solution. It's meant something of a personal reset, but I think I'm doing better now, and Jessie agrees.

I'm much less busy now. I don't run as often or as long, and I haven't touched my VR project in a couple of months. It's intentional. I wanted to spend some time just relaxing with my free time and seeing what that did for me, instead of turning every moment of the day into currency to be spent against future happiness. Current happiness has some value too. So for the last few months I've just been playing video games in the evening. Because I want to. I don't have to do job hunting or skill developing or anything else I don't want to do. I just pick something I enjoy and I'm doing that for a while. It's gone well.

I'm back on antidepressants as well, and it's helping. The side effects aren't as bad as the symptoms they help with, so there's no reason to complain. It does seem to make everything just a little bit easier to process, a little less of a burden. I like that.

Hobbies...I'm trying them out slowly. I'm less interested in finding some activity that will bring me some measure of bliss I'm just...trying stuff. I'm taking a portrait drawing class. It's all right. It's not making me think I need to get seriously into portraiture, but I like taking it. After the class is over, maybe I'll take another. Or maybe I'll try something else. I'm trying not to be so damn intense about it.

Work...I dunno, man. I still don't like it at all, but I'm trying to complain about it less. They pay me a lot of money, I try to focus on that. I'll work on things in bits and pieces and see what I can do with my career, but it's not worth wrecking myself over. Nothing is.

Fran lives here now. We bought a condo for her and helped her move over from Florida. It's great to have the help. We get to go out on date nights and she helps with chores, and when the kids get into regular school, critically, she'll help to pick them up. It's expensive, and our finances have taken enough of a hit that I'm eying our budget more carefully. Date night is a nice perk though.

To the kids: Tyler continues to improve his attitude in fits and starts. He got really angry a lot for a while there, but has gotten better at managing his anger. Growing older helps, as does a buffet of other things we have tried, I assume. Also moving up into the next class where there is more to do and more to challenge him. His reading is definitely coming along. Every time he reads me a book he gets a piece of chocolate. I'm willing to keep this up indefinitely if needed. He has been carrying a big plastic t-rex around with him lately. He asked if the t-rex could sit at the dinner table with us today. I said yes, and the t-rex was quite well behaved. Also Tyler ate two bowls of Squash soup, which is nice.

We have started to play some video games together, too. He likes to play minecraft and to explore and jump into lava. He gets a really big smile when I let him be in control and he walks us forward into a pit of lava and we lose all our stuff. I don't mind, it's a big smile.

Casey is a full-on Toddler now. She walks around a lot, and even likes to walk instead of being carried sometimes (because that's what her big brother is doing.) She is starting to talk more and more:

PPPPPPtttt = Please

Peessssss = Please also, but with Less spitting. I try to encourage this one

Ma-Me Ma-Me = Give me that!

Raaar = The sound that lions and Bears and Dinosaurs make

“I know” = What daddy says to her when she is fussy, and what she says in response

She's a pretty champion Babbler. She likes to hold books and make lots of sounds at you, which is what she assumes you are doing when you read a book to her. She also gives kisses and hugs and nuzzles on command, and likes to wave hello and bye-bye to strangers, which is the cutest goddamn thing in the world. Also she wears pigtails sometimes which are so cute they should be illegal. She's flipped over to liking mommy more now, which does happen with kids, but it was nice when she thought I was the best. I'm sure she'll be back eventually.

Micronews:

I've started eating Soylent for Breakfast and lunch. Being as I have been eating the same thing for breakfast and the same thing (nearly) for lunch every day for the past decade or more, it's not a huge adjustment.

We lost a set of keys, and getting car keys replaced is real damn expensive.

Jess may get Lasic!

Next blog should be in 2016 sometime...

-N

I don't much like being a Parent

I feel like venting about this for a while, and being as my children are still too young to read, I feel safe putting it up here.  Perhaps some day they'll be trolling through my electronic history and stumble across this.  If so, good job, detectives!  The treasure is buried under Old Man McGillicutty's mansion.

I've given it some thought, and you know what I think I hate the most about parenting?  It's that in far too many circumstances, it's easy to identify the right choice, because it's the one that makes your children less happy.  We speak of childhood, collectively, as this great time of wonder and exploration.  It's not.  I'd be properly chuffed if Tyler exhibited a little more wonder and explored a little more.  Mostly it seems like childhood is screaming when things get difficult or confusing, and always trying to eat foods that are bad for you.  I think that line might not fit in a sonnet as well, though.

I've been waiting for a moment, or even a gradual transition, where I start to really *feel* good about parenting.  Where he does something that melts my heart or makes me proud to be a parent.  I certainly didn't feel it right away, but I was prepared for that.  Dad's sometimes don't feel that connection right away.  But Tyler is coming up on three and a half years old and I still view him as largely a series of chores.  Even playing with him isn't that much fun.  The games we are allowed to play together are pretty restrictive, mostly involving him ordering me around until I get tired of it.  This doesn't surprise me, really.  He's three.  We can't really break out Dominion or Scrabble to pass the time and bond.  But, I dunno, playing with him now just feels like work.  I'll keep doing it because the books have told me it's really good for him, but let's not kid ourselves, I'd rather be doing almost anything else on my own.

I'm afraid, actually afraid, of being generous with him, of letting him have too much of what he wants; I can't keep it up.  Any reward must be transitory, of course, and he's capable of becoming a real monster when you have to turn off the TV or take away the IPad.  So I'm reduced to just being 'proud' of him.  It feels so empty.  I hope that he likes me and that such gestures give him some sort of positive reinforcement, because it feels like the only tool of positive reinforcement I'm allowed to use.  And, of course, I don't want to give him too much dessert because I'm trying to lose weight, and on top of everything else there is to do in a day, saying no to ice cream too often strains my self-control.

Of course, we are only a few years into the whole experiment, and raising a 6 or 10 or 15 year old has to be a completely different animal, but *man*.  People say all the time that they love their kids.  I'd certainly start breaking fingers if anyone tried to take them away, But I look at him now and I mostly just feel...tired.

-N

Telling some Stories

Casey likes to talk now.  It's not babble, which is when your baby starts mimicking the sounds of language.  This is some sort of pre-babble, where she just looks at you right in your face and sticks out her tongue and raspberries you.  Then you raspberry back.  Then she repeats.  This can last up to an hour. Then it transitions to happy shrieking.

Today, I was putting Tyler to sleep.  He grabbed my arm, rolled over and just said.  "Stay, Daddy."  It's been a while since he's done that.

Casey can keep her head up really well now, as well as roll from her front to her back.  We're working on sitting up, but there are two problems.  One is that whenever she gets excited, she likes to straighten out her body.  This means she flings herself onto her back without warning.  The other is that whenever she sits, she kinda leans forward, and forward, and forward, until she's essentially eating her toes.  Then she rolls to her side and then is right back on her back again.  It might be intentional.

I'm running infrequently, but being able to run at all with the kids in the house is a pretty big accomplishment.  Casey sleeps really well, though she can occasionally be hard to put down.  We've taken to cutting off her naps at 4:00, or sometimes earlier.  It means she gets a little loopy in the late afternoon, but she usually perks up when you nibble on her fingers.  Anyway, my 3 mile time is still roughly 45 minutes, which isn't good, but it's faster than when I'm sitting down.  And if the calorie counter is to be believed, it burns a lot of fuel.  (I'm not convinced it is to be fully believed.)

Fran was here last month, and Mom and (eventually) Dad are here this month.  We're going to go to a photo studio and get adorable pictures of everyone taken.  And then we aren't going to share those pictures at all.  We're just going to hoard them and look at them in dark corners where no one else can see.  This is a joke, of course.  Watch out for Christmas presents.

Tyler took some swim classes.  We're not trying to turn him into an Olympian, we just want him to feel comfortable (and safe) around a pool.  He started out pretty nervous, but got better at each class.  By a few times in, he was excited to go.  He's a decent swimmer now, he just keeps popping his head up instead of forward, and when you tell him to jump in the pool, he sits down, turns around, and shuffles in backwards.  Not a bad reflex.

It was my birthday last week!  I got to make a yellow cake.  It was really good, despite the fact that Jessie thought it was dry but who cares about her opinion anyway.  I haven't had any Ice Cream yet.  I'm saving that for later.  I don't eat ice cream as a matter of responsibility now.  Not eating ice cream reminds me that I'm being careful about what I eat.  The last time I had any was during my birthday last year.  I figure once a year is pretty responsible, I'm just going to reserve that splurge for another time.

I still hover around between 202 and 205 on the scale, with 199 always hovering just out of reach.  I'm really hungry, though.

If something big and dramatic happens, I'll try and let you know.

-N

Further Papa nostalgia- 1950's

It had seemed to be perfect with the guidebook for help. We would drive 25 miles on a dirt road to a private campgound on Polebridge Lake. Hey, we were hard core campers and didn't mind a little rough-around-the-edges-camping. But then reality set in. This was also boring. We missed the big community campfires and the lectures given by the rangers. After three days, I was getting stir crazy. I need a little exercise . I need something new. Martha ok'd my plan: to take an early morning hike--just let her and the boys sleep in.

The next morning, slipping out of my sleeping bag, I went on my way --three miles to the next lake and return. The sun came up and warmed me up and I enjoyed the awakening day as I trudged along . A quick look at the new lake and I was on my way back to my tenting family. As I came into view of the camp site the most amazing sight met my gaze. Grandma and Martha, bowing to boys' demands of "where had daddy gone" had dressed them in the home-made snow suits (that Grandma had made them out of Martha's brown coat} and coming down the trail toward me was this unlikely group. The boys suddenly caught sight of me, and WOW, the excitement--yelling, pointing with their stubby little fingers: " Daddy, daddy", tumbling first one way and then the other, they tumbled, jumped and ran like a couple of little bear cubs in those ridiculous snow suits.

Kids--They tiw knots in your heartstrings when you are the least awre of it.

M&B