Turning Leaves

Turning Leaves

Album | Slideshow

I was on a roll there for a while with frequent posts, but then life went and got busy again.

The most exciting news at the moment is that Charlotte appears to want to potty train herself. She sees Audrey using the bathroom and she of course wants to be like her big sister. She's just starting, but she'll point to her diaper and signal that she has to go, and she'll use the toilet! We'll see if it lasts. It would be ironic if Charlotte were potty trained before she could talk.

One day Carol was in a bind about what to do with Charlotte while she took Audrey to preschool. So I took the morning off and hung out with Charlotte. The weather turned out to be more pleasant than expected, so we went to the beach. We had fun just hanging out together. The beach photos of Charlotte and me in this album are from that day.

As I've said, I'm trying not to obsess about Charlotte's lack of talking, but I do think about it. In the end, it'll happen when it happens. It occurred to me that I could go back and look at video of Audrey - maybe I completely disremember where she was at this age. Charlotte has been making a few efforts. She likes to say "yellow".

Audrey continues to spout pearls on a regular basis. One day (I can't remember the situation) she exclaimed, "Great Ceasar's ghost!". In the middle of one night when she came to our bed scared, Carol said, "You'll be OK." Audrey said "I don't want to be OK!" Another time Audrey told me, "I'm just popping a bubble in my bottom."

Some background for the last Audreyism: 1. We often set the kitchen timer to motivate the girls to do something. Examples are "dinner is on the table for 5 more minutes" or "we'll get out of the tub in 3 minutes". 2. The girls don't watch much TV. Audrey gets some time on the PBS kids channel in the afternoon if Carol needs to get some work done during Charlotte's nap. But on weekends they get to watch Disney movies on DVD.

Last Wednesday we bought two DVDs: "Jungle Book" and "Cars". Audrey asked about a hundred times if she could watch them. After hearing the standard answer (we watch movies on weekends) every time, on Thursday Audrey asked me, "Dad, could you please set the timer for Saturday?"

We ordered a compressor and a spray gun for Carol's furniture business. She'll be able to spray the primer coat, background color coat and the polyurethane at the end. Not having to do those three tasks by hand should save her a lot of time. The goods are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

I'll break in the compressor and gun by painting the trim for the studio. I cut it all a couple of weekends ago but was too lazy to paint it all by hand. Once the trim is installed the studio is essentially finished.

When we built the garage, we demolished a couple of sections of concrete block wall that have been here since shortly after the house was build in the 50's. The north fence is now out of sight behind the garage, so while I had finishing it on my list it was out of sight out of mind. The neighbors finally asked us to fix it (it had a dogtooth edge and was also a little unstable due to cracks from the demolition vibration). I tried for a month to find a mason and finally got one to give a bid. It was affordable, but he couldn't do it until December 21! Apparently fall is the busy season for masons; who knew? We couldn't wait that long, so this last weekend I did it myself. Had to disassemble a bunch of the wall end back to where the cracks were, using a demolition hammer to chisel out the mortar. Same for the west fence. Then I used the demo hammer/chisel to clean the old mortar of all of the blocks so I could reuse them. That was some hard work. Then I rebuilt the north fence and provided a clean termination and also closed off the gap between the fence and garage, and put a new clean termination on the west fence. I used a big gas-powered concrete saw to cut the blocks for the ends and corners. It was about 18 hours of labor and very exhausting with lots of stooping and lifting heavy blocks (they're not cinder blocks, they're an old aggregate block that I don't think they make anymore) and flying grit and dust. I now know I don't want to switch careers and become a bricklayer.

Carol took the girls to Richland for five days to visit her parents. They'll be heading south for the winter pretty soon and the girls need time with their grandparents. Carol had the usual relaxing time and the girls got plenty of playground time as well as treats from Grandma like ice cream cones at 10 in the morning.

Meanwhile, My school is in full swing again too. I set the bar high for myself by getting an A in the first of the three semesters of the course during the summer. Now I of course have to go for perfect grades in the whole series. This semester the course is Biostatistics, a body of knowledge that is used heavily where I work (although not directly by me). It's great to learn what the heck those scientists are talking about, but it's also hard work! I spend about 8-10 hours a week studying and doing homework. The mid-term is this Saturday. I should be studying for it right now.

Lastly, I'm surprised by the psychological difference I feel at work now that I'm a full-time employee. Even though I always acted like a part of the team, now I really feel like a member. Plus, the project I'm on at work got especially interesting and I'm learning a lot. So I'm really enjoying going to work everyday. The sense of security, illusory as it is in my business, is nice.