An update from Bismarck

So, I’m sitting in Bismarck, North Dakota because of curling, so I thought I would update the family situation. I’ll have some time.

Anyway. Autumn is turning into a wonderful little girl. She’s still a little peanut, a tiny little girl. Last week at the doctors, we found out that she’s only bigger than 3% of the kids her age. She weighs almost 24 pounds, whereas Gavin weighs almost 20. At this rate, he’ll pass her by Christmas.

A little while ago, I was trying to get her to put on some pants. There’s really only one way to do it, and that’s give her a choice between two pairs. So I had two pairs of pants, neither one apparently up to her standards, which often mean Pink.

She looked at me, and channeling mommy, said: “Dad, you’re killing me”.

Apparently my pants choices were killing her. In my defense, one of the pairs was pink. In her defense, I have the fashion sense of a Florida retiree.

Eventually, she won, and I threw up two new pairs of pants that didn’t “kill her”, so we able to get dressed. But each day, she says or does something that is absolutely hilarious. She’ll just start telling us a story. It’ll go something like this:
Autumn:

“Daddy. Mommy. Me and my friends are going to get some cars. They are going to be pink, blue, white and pink.”

Mommy: “Two pink cars?”

Autumn: (helpfully) “No. A white and pink car.”
(In other words, it’s only three cars, not a total of four cars with two pink ones)

Autumn: (Continuing) “And my friends, benny, and boots the monkey, and Azario, and Dora, and, and…we’re all going to go to the airport and fly on a big plane.”

It’s often hard to keep up, but she’ll retell if you get confused. She’s awesome, and at times she knows it. Like when we go and visit grandma, she’ll walk down the middle of the hall, almost strutting past some of the people in the hall to get their reactions. When they smile to her, or say how pretty she is, she gives them a smile back and says thank you.

At this point in her life, she likes a full room. We’ll see how that goes when Gavin starts talking.

Now Gavin.

The little gavster is a smiling machine.

At this point in his life, he would dearly love to skip the whole crawling thing and progress right to walking. His most favorite thing in the world is to stand up, with help. Try to sit him down, and he locks his legs, refusing to bend them until you give him a little stand. He hasn’t yet mastered the art of flipping over, but he has flipped a couple of times. So it’s coming soon. Meaning, even though he’d rather be walking, he’ll be crawling before Valentines’ day.

One interesting thing about a boy as compared to a girl is in the diaper change. As soon as the diaper comes off, he grabs his package. If there is a nasty poopy, I have to position myself in such a way that I block access to his down under area or he’ll get poop on his hands. I had some poopy moments with Autumn, but I never had to block her from sticking her hand in it.

And now mom. Mom is looking great these days. We’ve been eating really healthy for the last couple of months, and the baby weight is flying off her. She’s in pre-Autumn clothes, and feeling good about life. And she’s an awesome mom and wife. How many wives are not only good with their husband flying off to curl for glory, but fully encouraging?

When the Gavster was born, we thought the first year would be tough. He’s up a lot, and she’s up in the middle of the night with a request to go potty, so it has been tough. But she’s been the glue that’s help us all together.

She’s a champion mom, wife, and best friend.

My little buddy

Rhona calls him Mr. Man, Autumn calls him Gabby Gab, and I call him little buddy. Either way, he's gonna be the little dude for years I think. He's the youngest brother, and since I get fixed on Friday, he'll presumably always be the younger brother.

He's smiley, happy, and chatty these days. He also flipped over on his own on the weekend (that's a milestone moment.) That means he should be crawling before the month is out.

Anyway, I took this picture today. I like the look on his face.

Curling in Boston

Here is where we're playing.


This is the Men's Locker Room at the Brookline Golf and Country Club. The curling facility is a little smaller. But this was a cool room to walk through.

I miss the wife and kids, a lot. But luckily, I have a lot of pictures of them on this computer. I can laugh and them laughing at the camera.

Skating with Autumn

Took Autumn skating for the first time. Here's a shot.