It's All About the Kids

I had a recent conversation with my sister-in-law, Pam (PAAAAMMM), on Facebook. She's married to my little brother, Michael and living the dream in New York (Yonkers). She asked me how I was doing and I started rambling about how "Patty's doing this," and "Amanda's doing that..." Nothing about myself. At one point I said something like..."cause, you know, it's all about the kids." Her response: "yeah, yeah, sure. The kids." This turned into a running gag. She'd ask me about work. I'd find some way to bring the kids into it and she'd say "yeah, yeah, sure. The kids..." She'd ask me if I'd seen any movies lately. I'd say no "cause, you know, it's all about the kids." "Yeah, yeah, sure," she'd say. "The kids."

On that note. Here are a few pictures of the kids. Cause, you know, it's all about them...

Here's Patty accepting her swimming trophy. As you can see, she's a little excited. (On a side note. Check out the pants her swim coach is wearing. Are those dogs?)


Amanda is eager to get married. She wants to marry me, but I told her I'm already married to mommy. She said that I can "un-marry mommy and marry her instead." I told her I'd think about it.


I took this picture of Becca for two reasons. 1. because she's adorable. And 2. because Kristin absolutely hates the little hair bow that she's wearing. She thinks that babies who wear them look ridiculous.

Our Garden

It's been a pretty hectic summer so far, what with taking care of Becca, carting Patty to and from daily swim practices and meets, and trying not to lose my patience with Amanda when she misbehaves (which is ALL the time), so posing on this blog hasn't been a top priority.

In between taking care of the kids and trying to keep the house from exploding from the piles of dirty diapers, laundry, dishes, trash and disgusting cat hair and feces, I've been spending my free time in the garden. As you can see from the picture, we've had a good crop so far. LOTS of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini and peppers. Yummy!

Our First Grader

Well…almost.

Patty’s got four more days left of Kindergarten before she’ll officially be a first grader.

We’re very proud of her. She had a great year!

And today she turns six.

While I was up walking the floor with Becca at 4:30 this morning it reminded me of the many, many times I did the same thing with Patty when she was a baby. It’s amazing how fast the time flies. Before you know it Patty will be in middle school, high school, college, married, kids…OK…STOP!

I don’t want to think about her getting any older. Only because then I start to think about ME getting older, and that’s just depressing…

(Way to end this post on a high note, right?)

Happy Birthday Patty!

Our New Family

Yep. We’re now a family of five. And we’re doing quite well integrating Rebecca (Becca) into our crazy lives. She’s doing great - eating well, sleeping better than expected (she slept for 4 hours the other night), peeing, pooping, crying, etc.- all the things a newborn is supposed to be doing. She’s also surviving the constant touching, poking, prodding, kissing and fighting over who gets to hold her next from her two big sisters.

Car rides have become especially fun, as Becca’s car seat sits between Patty and Amanda. The other day while Kristin was driving, the older girls constructed and hung a pretty impressive mobile, using a variety of different color pipe cleaners, to the handle of Becca’s car seat – all without Kristin’s knowledge. “They were being so quiet back there I thought they were sleeping,” said Kristin.

Great.

After seeing the mobile and noticing how it hangs precariously close to Becca’s mouth, I now plan on removing any and all contraband (things that the girls could “discreetly” use on the baby) from the backseat of Kristin’s car, including any and all markers, pens, pencils, crayons, nail polish, lip gloss, makeup, snacks, juice boxes, water bottles, stickers, etc…God forbid they get the bright idea to make her up to look like Hanna Montana one day…

Our New Addition!

Rebecca Jo Stevens
Born May 14, 2009
11:59 a.m.
7 lbs 4 oz
17 1/2 inches

More pix and details to come. Stay tuned...

Our Three Weeks

With three weeks to go till our baby’s official due date, Kristin has begun her weekly pre-baby doctor check-ups. These visits last about 5-10 minutes, in which the Doctor looks at Kristin’s tummy, confirms that the baby is still, in fact, inside her, and sends her home with a quick “see you in 7 days” smile.

She had an appointment this afternoon. And according to her Doc, she is already dilated 2-centimeters and could potentially go into labor in the next week or so. His declaration most likely means she won’t have the baby until sometime in mid-June. She’ll be 12-pounder. And a boy…who knows.

“Oh. And here’s the kicker,” said the Doc. “I’m going to be attending a conference the second week of May and will be out of town. But don’t worry. We’ve got a plethora of 22-year old interns that would be more than happy to deliver your baby while I’m sunning myself in some tropical location, attending my oh so important conference…”

Ok. Maybe I embellished a bit on that last part. But as soon as Kristin mentioned that her Doctor was going to be out of town, the only thing I could think of was that scene in the movie Knocked Up, where the Katherine Heigl character is in the bathtub in active labor while Seth Rogen is yelling and cursing into the phone to her Doctor, who is out of town on vacation…

Our Worms

We had a fairly productive weekend - full of yard work, building swing sets, trips to the dump, oil spills, spa days, sorting clothes and broken riding mowers...pretty much what you would expect for our household. Not much more to report. I'm a bit frustrated that my riding mower broke AGAIN. This time it was the drive belt. I don't think I can fix it w/o hiring a professional. Good-by tax refund. So much for saving the moola for more important things...like say the added cost of clothing and feeding a new baby (arriving by stork in the next month or so!).

I took a few minutes this afternoon to snap some pictures of the girls. They have this strange fascination with worms*. Here they are posing with some of their new pets.

Enjoy!

(* My lovely 9-month pregnant wife just informed me that the kids were most likely playing with a nasty, plant eating, vegetable killing grub larva and not a nice friendly inch worm. Oh well...)

1:05:25

I did it! Last Saturday I joined 32,000+ other runners, joggers, walkers, costumed superheroes, Indiana Joneses, a man dressed as a giant cockroach, Ms. Pac Man, guys dressed in drag and other weirdoes in the Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond.

I'd be lying it I said it was a piece of cake. It was tough. But I did it. And it felt good to cross the finish line.

I am a little upset at my time, however. I wanted to finish under an hour.

I blame my phone.

My handy dandy Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phone is equipped with a neat little fitness application that I’d been using for my training. It tracked my running distance, calories burnt, time, mph, etc. Really cool, right? Well…not really. Turns out I didn’t calibrate it correctly. It was off by about 0.3/mile. I discovered this at around mile 1 of the 10k, when I looked at my phone and it read “1.3 miles.” I quickly did the math and realized that I’d be running about 2 miles more than I had trained. This put a damper in my run. I think I walked more than I ran those last 2 miles…

After I came to terms with the fact that finishing under an hour was out of the question. I changed my goal. I spotted the cockroach guy about 100 yards ahead of me and was determined to get a better time than him. Turns out, however, cockroaches are pretty fast, what with having six legs and all…

I did end up passing the Ms. Pac Man guy and a guy wearing a diaper, though…so I had THAT going for me.

Our Crazy Weather

So, last week the Richmond area suffered the worst snow storm in more than 10 years. We got 8+ inches of snow. The kids got their first taste of "real" snow. They went sledding, had snowball fights, made snow angels, ate a LOT of snow and generally had the time of their lives.

Our house got hammered. We lost a few big branches and half of a tree from the weight of the snow.



Fast forward one week. On Saturday and Sunday it averaged 80 degrees! We spent pretty much the entire weekend outdoors. And the kids, of course, had a blast!


Oh...and I snapped this picture of Kristin when she wasn't looking (she's going to kill me). She is really looking all cute a pregnant :-)


We've got only about 2 1/2 months to go before baby #3 arrives. We've been throwing names around. On top of my list is Zelda, but for some reason keeps getting shot down. I think it is a perfectly good name. Kristin does not...

Our Tooth Fairy

Hey. Remember this blog? I sure as heck don't. My laziness knows no bounds!

Anyhoo...Patty hit an adolescent milestone today. She lost her first tooth! OK. She didn't "loose" it per say. More like I yanked it from her gums...blood and all...

She was a trooper though. She didn't shed a single tear. It also probably helped that I put a numbing cream on her gums before I did it.

The tooth fairy is coming tonight! And apparently is much richer than when I was a kid. Rumor has it she's getting $5. Mostly because the tooth fairy's wallet (or purse) doesn't have any smaller bills in it.

That's all I got for now. I'll do my best to try and update this thing more than once every few months...


Peace out.