You have to Excuse me

Image by Graham Ballantyne via FlickrAutumn's favorite song is "Home for a Rest" by Spirit of the West. Normally, during the slow part at the beginning, she used to say:

"Wait for it."

Meaning, wait for the jumpy part. So when she didn't say "Wait for it", I asked her what she says. And, for the first time ever, she sang the tune.


Watch.

Gave me a lump

It's an old video, an old story, and I don't want to look it up to see if it's a hoax because I liked it.

Gavin and Autumn

Maybe we're just lucky.

At some point, the people told us, Autumn would ask us to send back Gavin. The thinking is simple: for the first two years of her life, we doted on her. Storytime at night. Walks and hugs for just her. Kisses, attention, our complete love, all hers. Exclusively.

And then along comes this dude (pictured with the dad-dude):


And next thing you know, it's sharing attention. It's sharing hugs, kisses, and everything. And yet, all we hear from her is

"I love baby Gavin. I wanna kiss 'im. I wanna touch 'im. I wanna hug 'im."

Pure love. Now, one day I might link to this post with a comment about how she asked to send him back. He is, right now, rather easy. He doesn't demand a lot of prolonged attention. Admittedly, he's up a bunch of times in the night, and we have to give him attention, but for the most part, we can devote a lot of time to Autumn.

Take this moment. Gavin is sleeping in the swing (still the greatest thing for new parents). Autumn is watching Mary Poppins for about the 60th time (she even acts out some parts).

I can run over there and act out certain parts with her (we do a mean step-in-time), but she doesn't need us.

Lets see how long that lasts.

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The 3 trillion spending spree

I gave up trying to spend all 3 trillion. It's a lot. Try if you'd like. I would be, as you can see, the proud owner of the Sabres though. Then I would cure AIDS.

Weird

No idea what this is. But weird. Even weirder, the HamesWeb mini-putt game.

Everybody knows that Zombies eat brains

In parise of my vac sealer

I just had roast turkey and potatoes. The potatoes were new, the Turkey was left over from Thanksgiving.

Thus, the title of this post. That's it.

Way cool

This is a video of people from 1 to 100 playing a drum. Awesome.



Hey parent's, does this give you any ideas? I want to shoot Autumn doing something every year. Maybe the yellow balloons.

Rockstar curling

So, I signed up. Why not, really. The 'try-outs' might be in Utica, and driving to Utica for a day might be worth it. We'll see. In the meantime, check this out, I suspect these dudes will be signing up as well.

Most watched football game

In November, 2007, Arsenal played Manchester United. According to the Guardian UK:

'...an estimated 1 billion people around the world watched Arsenal's match with Manchester United..."

The Premiership is thinking about playing league games outside of England. Arsenal V Blackburn in Toronto, for example (I made this up because Rhona and I watched Arsenal V Blackburn Rovers in London).

And we worry about the Bills playing a game a year in Toronto.

Funny

My friend in New Jersey sends me a clip from a Toronto radio station about a caller from Texas. It's hilarious.

Try curling

This morning, the Y guy from WGRZ News came to our curling club to try curling. Since they start their broadcast at 5:00AM, we had to be there at 5:00AM. Today is gonna be a long day.

This is the link to see the video. It's not working for me though.

See here to get it for real.

"I put power tools in the hands of second graders"

I love TED talks. They are so good. This quote comes from the presenter.

His talk is called "Five dangerous things you should let your kids do". Simple things to do to raise kids to be confident, creative, and in control of life.

1. Play with Fire.

Take a look for the rest.

Year in review part 2

This is part 2 of the year-in-review. Here's part one.

It’s good to be a walker in the summer. Because mom, Lucy and Autumn take long walks around the city in July. They walk to Delaware park and hit every playground in a five mile radius. They walk the streets and mom takes a good deal of photographs. Autumn gets a sandbox, and the little courtyard at our house becomes our little playroom. Mom and Autumn are really bonding, and she’s really clingy. At the first moment of fear, panic, or pain, she runs to whoever is closest for a hug. It’s truly awesome.

Milestone: Autumn eats a blueberry. Every other food takes second place to her new fav.

August is hot. Not only that, we’re realizing that Autumn doesn’t sleep through the night. More times than not, she’s up at somewhere between 2:00 and 3:30 AM. We contemplate the whole ‘cry it out’ thing. She wins every time. On paper, the ‘cry out’ method seems so simple. She’s go to sleep, and from there, we will get to fall asleep. In practice though, it’s horrible. She coughs and sputters, and cries and wails in such pain that we cave and give her what she needs/want. We’re getting better. We go camping for the first time. Mom gets a new camera and takes a ton of great pictures.

Milestone: Autumn says ‘ball’ and means it.

By September, Autumn is running around everywhere. Our child-proofing on the go strategy leads to a couple of minor mishaps, but for the most part, she contained. We can take her out for dinner, but there’s a risk. Case in point, a night out at our local pizza joint, Casa Di Pizza. After furiously eating some pasta, she takes a good long look at us, and vomits all over the place. Mom grabs her and contains most of the vomit on her sweater while dad collects dinner suddenly to-go. Ten minutes after throwing it all up, Autumn is back to her happy little self. Rhona and I spend a wonderful weekend in Cleveland for our five-year wedding anniversary. We have a fantastic and grown-up weekend with dinners outside on both Friday and Saturday nights.

Milestone: Rhona and Matt celebrate 5 years of marriage.

In October, we learn that we’re pregnant, due date May 31st . October, however starts with Rhona feeling incredible cramps and pain in her belly. After a day of doctor and specialist visits, Rhona is admitted to the hospital for observation. No one can figure out the reason for the pain, and the tests they can perform are limited because of her pregnancy. They rule a lot out, but the waiting and the stress is enough to send us all over the deep end. Not knowing is the hardest part. Having Rhona in the hospital, even overnight, had me thinking about life without her. It’s something we can’t have. We need mom more than ever. She was released, and to date, doesn’t feel the same pain as she did early in the month. October ends much better with Autumn trick-or-treating as a cow.

Milestone: She says MOO when you ask her what a cow says, unless of course she is wearing a cow costume.

November sees the pregnancy progress more smoothly. Mom can’t rest as often as she’d like thanks to our little peanut. But mom is doing a wonderful job making it all happen. This is the month she takes her final comprehensive exam for her masters, and passes. It’s official: mom simply has to complete her thesis and will officially have a Masters degree in Student Personnel Administration. We’re incredibly proud of the work, time and effort mom put into earning this degree (six years of part time schooling). We celebrate with a big turkey dinner on her birthday (which is also Thanksgiving).

Milestone: Rhona passes her exam.

Rhona finishes her thesis and officially completes all requirements for her Masters degree. December sees us mom and dad giving each other our one big Christmas present. We are getting our front room in our house renovated. It’s called the living room, and it is in fact the room we live in. Meaning, when the renovations start today! We’ll be confined to the other rooms in our house – except for the dining room, which contains all of the living room furniture. Chaotic yes, exciting definitely!

Milestone: We write this year in review.

We have been looking for the perfect house. Not being the right time to find it, we are taking steps to make this one OUR perfect house. It’s a house filled with laughter, dancing, hugs and kisses. Autumn makes the days seem, at the same time both hard and long. But they are also rewarding, exciting and fulfilling. There is no doubt in our minds that staying home with Autumn was the right decision for us.

Have a happy holiday. And if you ever want to follow the action on a more day-to-day basis, contact us. We’ll show you how.

Happy Holidays!

Shovel not-ready

So, this morning I shoveled. Then, stupidly, I left the shovel on the front porch. It was kind of a crappy shovel, but it got rid of the snow. Anyway, we took off for the day, and when I got home, we were shovel-less.

Someone took it.

Now, on the face of it, that's alright. But here's the rub. Someone went into our courtyard, and took my back-up shovel. So we have no shovel.

So, I took off to Home Depot looking for a shovel. They were closed. Went to Wegmans, they were sold out. So, I have no shovel.

Did I mention that there's two feet of snow?

Autumn got elfed

My mom, Autumn's nanny, elfed autumn. Look:

Go ahead, elf someone.

What to do when you renovate

We're renovating our living room.

Look at those two words: living, room. It's not only the largest room in our house (more than twice as large as the next biggest), it's truly the room we live in. It'e the room with the TV, the computer, and Autumn's toys.

We're getting it turned into the room we've always wanted. Which is exciting, though daunting, since we can't use it while it's getting remodeled. That said, i thought I would put together the top ten things to think about when renovating your living room:

10. Next time, get it done in the summer. I'm just saying.
9. Bake cookies. lots of them. Or bake a cook. Or cook. You'll be spending a lot more time in the kitchen listening to talk radio, so you might as well cook something good.
8. Hang out in bed. Admittedly, this is wishful thinking. Autumn might be willing to spend about 10 seconds in bed. After that, you're done.
7. Walk. (see #1).
6. Go to a friend's house. True, we have Autumn, so it's bit more than just getting in and hanging out. However, if you read this and you're within a drive, there's a chance you might find us on your doorstep.
5. Cruise around Buffalo in the car. A. This gets Autumn to sleep (see #8).
4. Beg and plead for contractor guy to go faster.
3. Get outta dodge. Head to Canada, drop off Autumn and Lucy at happy grandparent's and go out to dinner in Toront0.
2. Repeat #3.
1. I think you get the message.

Update: our contractor was suppose to start tomorrow. The room we live in, AKA the living room, is empty of furniture.

Only now, he isn't starting until next Monday. ARRRGGHH. Deep breaths are required. And perhaps beer.

If you like it, mixx it

From today on, if you like something you read here, feel free to mixx it. Mixx is a cool new social bookmarking site. We'll see how it goes.

(p.s. don't mixx this post)

This calls for a joke

You've seen the ad that goes: apply directly to the forehead. Right?

Some enterprising ad guy (and it would have to be a guy) could have some fun with this:

Practice your vocabulary, feed the world

Seriously. Each time you get a word right, you feed someone a grain of rice. not a bad diversion.