Shifting into Christmas mode

Thanksgiving is now behind us and we are shifting into Christmas mode. We spent most of the Friday after Thanksgiving getting down and setting up our Christmas decorations (our annual day-after-Thanksgiving tradition). I got the tree up first thing and we spent hours trying to locate a couple of problems in the 1600 lights that illuminate it. Once those problems were solved, Pam and Abby proceeded to decorate the tree while I set up other lights around the house, then returned to help them with the upper decorations on the tree. David did his part in helping to re-arrange the lower decorations. Most of those ended up back on the floor. We tried to be careful not to place anything breakable down where David could reach it, but he managed to find the one decoration we overlooked and promptly pulled it off the branch and then dropped it to the floor where it shattered. We hope we can get him to understand the decorations are to remain on the tree. Abby has been very helpful with the decorations this year. It is nice that she is getting to an age where we can trust her with a lot more.

Today, I think we're going to try to find some more decorations for the outside of the house and I'll be busy inventing ways to provide them with electricity. I hope the weather cooperates...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderfully delicious thanksgiving with many people in the house and lots of great food and happy times. We are grateful to all who came and contributed to this very happy day. Now our tummies are full and we're ready to sleep it off.

Happy day before Thanksgiving! We’re getting things ready over here and dealing with life as it happens at the same time. David had an appointment with his neurologist today and we have one more thing to be thankful for. David has been released from having any future appointments with his neurologist! Hooray! One more doctor no longer needed. David is picking up new words every single day and he has started counting things. He can count to five already.

This evening, we took the kids out to supper and Abby was quizzing David on animal names and sounds. She would name an animal and ask David what sound it made. He got most of them right, but every time she got to “horse”, David would reply with “horse.” Abby would laugh and try to correct him by saying, “No, a horse says ‘nay’.” She would ask him again about the horse sound and David would respond again by saying “horse.” After a while, it became a game between the two of them. Ah yes, I remember annoying my sister as well.

We’re going to have a house full of people tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to all the sights and smells and tastes, but I’m also looking forward to taking a big nap afterwards. (Ha! Fat chance.)

New video about David now online

I just added a link to a new video I made using photos of David from birth to now and set it to music provided by Rickey Wasson. The song that runs behind the pictures is called "Touched by the Master's Hand." I heard this song for the first time just the other day and immediately bought the album. I have been wanting to do some kind of slide show with a representative sample of all the photos we have taken of David since his birth and set it to music. As soon as I heard this song, I knew I had what I wanted to play in the background. Hope you enjoy the pictures and the music.

This shook our windows Saturday night!

For those of you who live in the same community we do, you may have been disturbed by a loud rumbling noise that went on for over 3 minutes before it quit. We heard the noise and noticed our windows were rattling quite a bit. My first thought was our heater was going out, but after verifying the heater was not on, we began thinking it must be external to our house. I stepped out into the back yard and the noise seemed to be coming from everywhere. I also heard a train's horn blowing about the same time and wondered if there was a train derailing nearby. When the sound stopped, we were left wondering what it could have been. It turned out to be a rocket motor test by a company called "SpaceX, who does rocket motor testing for NASA. I'm relieved to know it wasn't something more serious, but I wish we had been warned in advance. Here's a video of the rocket test. http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1475275870/bclid1493222307/bctid3060463001

Rob

It is the weekend before Thanksgiving and we are all quite busy. David has taken on the role of getting out as many things as he can and scattering them around the house as quickly as possible. His activities include rummaging through our closet and finding things he can get himself hopelessly tangled in, and then holler at one of us for help. Note the photo on the left. That was this morning as Pam and I were getting ready for the day. David found a Rubbermaid container of yarn and other supplies which he thought would be fun to wear; then drag from room to room before attempting to mummify himself. After rescuing him from this self-imposed peril, he proceeded to the living room where he found every book and magazine we had neatly stashed in the furniture and created a horizontal wasteland of paper. Lovely. We are trying to get the house picked up for Thanksgiving this weekend and into the coming week, but the kids aren't being much help at the moment.

Abby has been busy doing her own things as well. While she hasn't left the trail of carnage that David leaves, she can mess up a room rather quickly in her own way with dolls and toys and lots of art supplies. Abby has been fascinated by a comment from her teacher about having a little bit of Cherokee Indian in her family tree. There's a little bit of that on Pam's side of the family as well, so Abby has decided to let her tiny drop of Indian out to play for a while. Pam fixed Abby's hair up this morning in two pony tails, or "dog ears" as she calls them. I went to take a picture of it and Abby grabbed her Indian headband and feather and placed them on her head before I could snap the picture.

I'm hoping for an easy, short work week ahead. I only work 3 days next week, but I have a feeling my evenings are going to be busy at home getting things ready for the big feed on Thursday.

Stay tuned!

This has been a fast week for us. Time seems to have gone by fairly quickly. I like that on the weeks when I am on call. This happens to be one of those weeks. So, the faster we can dispose of this week, the sooner I will not have to worry about getting called back into work and messing up my evening or weekend plans. Thankfully, I don't get called in that often, but every now and then, I get hit with a particularly difficult problem and that tends to compound the stress of being called out in the first place.

The kids are doing great lately. Abby brought home her report card from school this week and she had some amazingly high grades. I was never this good in school when I was her age. I guess she gets her smarts from her mother! That's a good thing. I married a very smart and wonderful lady. Abby is continuing to learn more at her karate classes and hopes to get to the point where she can test for another belt soon. I hope to be there to record it like I did last time.

Next week, Abby's school is having a Fall Festival and Pam and my mother plan to go. I'll be at work, but it would be nice to attend. I probably would have asked off if I hadn't already taken some time off this month. I'll send a camera along with Pam. Maybe I can go next year.







Many people have come up to me and asked questions about how David is doing. I get a little surprised when some people are unaware that he is walking and talking now. In fact, he has been walking very well for over six months. He's also quite the daredevil and he will climb up on nearly anything. We're always getting him off chairs and occasionally a few tables. He seems to have no fear at all. The nicest thing for us lately is he has been really turning up the charm and he is working hard at trying to learn to talk to us. We work with him a lot on his words and he has been very responsive. Of course, we're still at the stage where only we know what he is saying most of the time. He likes to put his own twist on the words we teach him. For instance, when a big truck goes by his window in the car, he yells out, "truck-ieee!" That "ieee" suffix gets appended to a lot of the words he repeats back to us. It is very cute. But, he recognizes animals and other objects in books and calls them by name and/or makes their appropriate sound. Occasionally, he gets it a little wrong, but most of the time, he's right.

Our only concerns about David so far are the unknown future for his kindeys and his insatiable appetite for water. He drinks water like there is no tomorrow. We have had him tested for diabetes a couple of times and he doesn't have it. We don't know why he thinks he must drink so much, so fast, but we hope to find a way to get him to calm down about it. This should get easier to manage as our ability to communicate with him improves.

David is still doing great on learning to use the toilet. I am maintaining our nightly ritual of associating his bath rituals with doing his business in the toilet and not somewhere else. So far, it works very well. He always goes before the bath and usually afterwards, he will go again. If he feels the need to do more, he will say, "poo-poo" to me and I'll place him back on the toilet. He understands what that word means and he doesn't disappoint me when I place him on the toilet. He does it!

I am hoping to get some "pickin' time" in this weekend. There are a lot of songs that have been rattling around in my head all week and I need to spend some time trying to play them. So, if I don't get called in to work, I hope to wear my fingers down to nubs playing some Bluegrass!

Thanks for checking in.

Rob

Here is a peek at David's remodeled bedroom. We painted the walls blue, removed his crib and replaced it with a new toddler bed that looks like a car and put a rug on his floor that looks like an overhead view of city streets. David has been pretty good about the transition. He seems to enjoy his new room and we have had only minimal trouble keeping him in his bed so far.

Abby had a jog-a-thon at her school today. We all went to cheer her on. David decided he would do some running of his own, so I chased him around the grounds while Pam helped with some of the other events.

We're looking forward to a simple, but enjoyable weekend at home. Thanks for stopping by.

Rob

We’re having a busy week over here. I took off from work most of this week with the exception of Monday. We had decided to use some of this time to make some big changes to David’s bedroom. We repainted the walls, removed the crib and replaced it with a toddler bed that is shaped like a car. Pam continued the car theme with a rug that looks like a matrix of city streets and some other car-themed decorations. David loves cars, so we thought this might make his room even more exciting for him. The painting was a lot of hard work and most of it had to be done while David was away at “Mother’s Day Out.” Pam and I worked very hard on his room and I continued the work while Pam went out to pick the kids up from their schools. We’re happy with the finished product.

Our next big worry was transitioning David from a crib to a toddler bed. We didn’t know how he was going to react to having a bed that was lower to the ground and had no cage to keep him in. He got his first experience in his new bed today during his nap. He had fallen asleep in the car, so Pam picked him up and placed him in his new bed. David woke later in his new bed and seemed happy with it. Then, the real test came this evening when we put him in his bed while he was still awake. He got sad for a few minutes, but quickly figured out this was time for him to be sleeping and he went right to sleep. What a good boy.

Abby has been doing a lot of fun things lately. She’s still an insatiable book reader. She is learning more and more at her karate classes and she has been spending some quality time on the computer playing some games she likes. She’s getting really good grades in school and she is very cheerful and helpful at home.

David is learning a lot of new words and he is helping us potty train him. He is getting better at telling us when he needs to do his “#2” business. He comes up and says, “poo poo” and that’s our signal that he wants to go sit on the potty. He gleefully runs to the bathroom and lets us put him on the toilet. He almost always does something for us; not always what he told us he needed to do, but the cooperation is remarkable to me. We have not “officially” started potty training on him. I just put him on the toilet each night before his bath as a matter of habit and preventative measures. I don’t want any “foreign objects” floating in the tub, if you get my drift. He has caught on to the process and has been branching it out to other times of the day at his request, so this is great.

I’m hoping to use some of my remaining vacation time to work on my music hobby and hopefully have some quality time alone with Pam. We’ll see how this pans out over the coming days.

Rob

Greedy ostrich at Fossil Rim!

We took the kids to Fossil Rim Wild Animal Park at Glen Rose this weekend and we had a fun time driving around, looking at and feeding the animals. The highlight of our visits to the park has been the greedy ostrich that usually stalks you at the entrance or exit of the driving trail. During the past three visits, we have been attacked by the same ostrich and each time he has managed to steal our bag of food. But, this time the joke ended up on him as he got his head stuck in the bag! At least he was able to get it off. We nearly busted a gut laughing at him.

Before:

After:


The site is beginning to take shape, but I'm not done making changes and additions to it. I plan to link to more photos and videos as we go along, but you will notice a new link to our videos over on YouTube now. There is also a slide show of our most recent visit to Fossil Rim on the page as well. I'm still learning how to do all this stuff, so bear with me while I get up to speed on making this blog look the way I want.

Rob

Welcome to our new blog! Pam and I have been talking about moving our blog off of MSN for quite some time and we finally made the jump. I will be posting a link to this site from our old site so those who have been following our family story can keep up with us. This site is still undergoing changes and updates, so the appearance may change from time to time until we get it looking the way we want. Stay tuned for more news and posts.

Thanks for checking in.

Rob

Pam and I took David to a local museum to meet some friends and play.

The boys try out typewriters.