Being outnumbered by the small beings is in turns lovely and terrifying and hilarious and very, very in-the-moment. I spend most of my time trying to give the older kids the parent time they need and they keep surprising me with all the little things that change in a kid’s life on a daily basis. As I write this, I’m carrying on a conversation with Ana about what’s going on in Pet Town. One of her favorite activities is role playing with her toys. Apparently the animals are busy splashing and tickling each other – activities she happens to know quite a lot about.

Little Mouse is getting big so fast. She is very aware, always looking around. She grins at every opportunity and has continued experimenting with different sounds. Sometimes you’re talking to her and right as you finish a sentence she’ll go “heh!” and it’s all interactive and awesome.

I don’t know how Julie does it because Angie wants to be in her arms about 23.5 hours a day. The 30 minutes of freedom is partly from Mouse deciding to tolerate daddy for a few brief minutes but mostly because she really enjoys her swing.

Cute baby is cute.

Earlier today I spent 20 minutes or so catching up on my feeds. Okay, I had the best intentions, really. I ended up spending the entire time reading everything I missed during the last two months over at Cool Tools. This feed has been in my reader ever since I discovered RSS and, for a gadget freak like me it is like crack. The first thing I noticed was the review for the Blender Bottle. I hate mixing up protein powder when I’m not at home because every container I’ve tried either leaks, doesn’t mix properly, is virtually unwashable, or some combination. This may be the answer.

Aiyah! Why didn’t anyone tell me that Leatherman has a new, slimmer, full-size multitool on the market? The Skeletool looks like the perfect update to the tremendously useful Leatherman Wave. I carried my Wave whenever I left the house (but especially at work) for years and loved the combination of an easily accessible blade with good sturdy needlenose pliers plus phillips head and several flat head screwdrivers. The only problem was that the edges of the steel frame weren’t quite rounded enough and the significant heft and bulk caused it to slowly cut its way through my trouser pockets. I like to keep my geek side under the radar when possible which rules out the belt sheath as a carrying option. About a year ago I got fed up with buying new pants and started carrying the Kershaw Ken Onion Leek instead. It’s super slim and lightweight and is a great little knife but doesn’t do much for all the other multitool applications. The Skeletool is about half the weight of the Wave and retains all the most important functionality. I should plan to catch up on Cool Tools reading at this time every year when I’m trying to figure out how to spend the remains of my department’s fiscal year budget.

Categories: angie, kids and parenting, toys
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Kevin has owned his new car for less than 2 weeks, and it’s already been washed twice, once by the dealership on the day he bought it, and once by him last weekend. Now he’s outside washing it again.

I’m glad he likes his car

I’m at 36.5 weeks. Only 3.5 weeks to go, unless the baby decides to come early. Yesterday I had another ultrasound. We learned that she is already 6.5 or 7 lbs. From here on she’ll gain half a pound every week. Also, her head is already resting down in my pelvis in the ready-to-be-born position. Good girl!

“She can come anytime,” my doctor said. I’m excited. But I need her to give me at least another week to finish up stuff at work.

Today I went to a conference in the OC and ran into some friends I used to work with. They asked me how the pregnancy was going. When I told them all of the above, they were excited for me but also slightly uneasy.

“Why are you here?” They asked accusingly. “You should be home! Resting!”

“It’s okay, my hospital is on the way home,” I joked.

Off to start finishing up all that work I was talking about…

Categories: pregnancy, toys
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When I started talking about getting a ‘sporty’ car a few years back, I saw it as the final realization of a dream that started when I was about fifteen. My first two car choices were driven primarily by a severe income shortage. The 70′ VW Beetle that was given to me with only 220,000 gentle miles on it and the ’93 Civic VX hatchback which was the first car I actually bought.

These days when I think back to ’93 it’s usually to recall the year in which I met Julie. We got married a year later, started talking about having kids, and rather suddenly I found myself driving an ’00 Honda Odyssey. Now there’s nothing at all wrong with the Odyssey. I still think it’s the greatest minivan on the planet and when I bought it I was very much taken with the idea of carting the family around in a big comfy boat van.

As the kids grew up and started calling it “Daddy’s car” to differentiate it from the Prius which was of course “Mommy’s car” I started to think that perhaps it would be fun to get something a little smaller and more responsive. I missed driving a manual transmission and feeling a connection with the pavement.

Which takes us back to the quest for a ‘sporty’ car and several years of trying to reconcile my new, family-oriented life with my nearly twenty year old lust for something fast and entirely irresponsible. I have read reviews, stared at specs, and created massive spreadsheets. It turns out the main problem I had wasn’t picking a car, it was picking an acceptable level of practicality. All the cars I wanted in my teens were two-seaters or 2+2 at best. Given the realities of picking up the kids after work every day, these cars would end up sitting in the driveway while I slogged around town in the minivan M-F. Then there were the times I swung the other direction and convinced myself that I really didn’t need much ‘sport’ in my sports car to be happy.

K: Well, I’ve picked my new car.
J: Again?
K: Yep. Civic Si Sedan.
J: A Civic?
K: No no, it’s fine, it’s a 5-seater. They’re bigger than they used to be.
J: A Civic?
K: It’s the Si…
J: Your mid-life crisis car will NOT be a Civic.

Well, I’m definitely too old to be having a quarter-life crisis so lets call this a one-third-life crisis. Whatever. I’m fortunate to have a wife who absolutely refuses to back down when she knows I’m being a stupid-head, so she forcibly kept me away from Honda dealerships until I found something better.

Yesterday she bought it for me.

Seats five. 6-speed manual transmission.
Five doors. 1/4 mile in low 14s @101mph.
Room for groceries. Turbocharged 2.3L DFI.
Nice smooth ride. 18″ alloys on multi-link suspension.
Did I mention the five seats? Limited slip differential.
$21,800. 263hp and 280ft*lbs of torque.

When Alex first saw it yesterday he said “Yeah! Daddy got his race car!” and when I picked Ana up from the babysitter today she ran out into the driveway, hugged my car (!) and jumped into her car seat.

Categories: kids and parenting, shopping, toys
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Monday morning, while I was still struggling to get out of bed, Kevin went to the kids’ room. By the time I finally got up, they were already out of pajamas and in their school clothes. Kevin pointed out that he had dressed them both in green.

“That’s nice,” I said absent-mindedly. Meanwhile I dressed myself in blue. It wasn’t until I got to work that I realized it was St. Patrick’s Day. Duh.

I’m in the 34th week now. For some reason my weight hasn’t changed. I’m still at +20, but it feels like +100. My backaches come and go with no apparent cause other than the fact that I’m in the 3rd trimester. When I sit too close to or on the ground, it takes me a long time to get up on my feet. And forget about climbing stairs. You might as well be suggesting I climb Mt. Everest.

The baby’s movements have been intense. Sometimes she’ll jab or kick so hard that you can actually see her fist or foot against my skin, stretching it several inches out. Kevin has been taking video. I’m too self conscious to share them at this moment. Maybe I’ll change my mind later.

We’ve had American Idol Encore for 5 days now and we’re still singing our hearts out. Alex has almost mastered “Black Hole Sun” and “Rio,” and tonight he started learning “I Just Died in Your Arms.” Kevin’s been getting great scores on pretty much every song he tries, even ones with female vocals, like Madonna’s “Holiday” and Fergie’s “Glamorous.” My (now not so) secret ambition is to get 100% on “Midnight Train to Georgia.” You can stop laughing now…

Categories: kids and parenting, music, pregnancy, toys
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Yesterday morning, on the drive to daycare…

Ana: Mommy, can you still call me Ana when I’m big?

Me: Of course, sweetie.

Ana: Can I still play Littlest Pet Shop when I’m big?

Me: You can play with Littlest Pet Shop for as long as you like.

Ana: *beams*

When I got to work, I had to write a report on what I’ve been doing for the past 2 months at the request of a higher up, with time estimates for each project. (It wasn’t targeted at me; all of my coworkers had to do it.)

I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. Sure, it felt good to see how much I’ve accomplished, but I already spend 2 hours a month writing reports with similar content, and this report just added 2 more hours to that time. I could have spent those 2 hours doing something more productive.

Today was a good day. I stayed home, supposedly to sleep in (2.5 hours), eat all day (20 min) and do nothing (0 min), but I ended up cleaning the kitchen (1.5 hours), filing paperwork (1 hour), stopping by the post office (10 min), going to the credit union (1 hour), and writing a letter to the editor (2 hours) in which I referenced Jay-Z AND Neal Stephenson. Kevin was so highly amused by the letter he ALMOST forgot to remind me about how I should have been taking it easy.

Categories: famous people, kids and parenting, toys
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