Thanksgiving in SB

So we just got back from a visit to SB to see Nana and Boofin for Thanksgiving. We celebrated an early Christmas, and I was reminded of how nice it is in my home town at this time of year. Warm 70s days, clear skies and the town looking as beautiful as ever. Katie got many new princess presents, as that theme never sees to get old with her. Andy's highlight was a remote control train -- he was mesmerized by that thing and would sit there and watch it indefinitely. The train had a very loud "Choo Choo" speaker sound which caused Daddy to dismantle the whole thing in an attempt to mute the speaker so the rest of us could recover a small amount of sanity. We had a nice traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Went to the park and the Sea Center. And got to spend some good quality time with Greatgrandma. Thanks for the fun Nana and Boofin!

A Whale of a Time

During our Santa Barbara visit, we went to the Sea Center our on Stern's Warf. I had never been before and was excited to check out the cool marine biology-style exhibits that I had heard about. Katie, Jen, Andy, Nana and me headed in to check it out. It was really cool. Lots of hands-on exhibits for the kids and cool Channel-Islands information. Both kids were eager to touch and pick-up the sea-life in the various tanks throughout the place. I was pretty surprised when Andy wanted to pet the shark. We had a great time.

Sunstar Fish or Macaroni? you decide.

Andy pets the baby shark.

Humpback hanging in the entry.

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

Yes, he is a handful.

No, he is not as sweet as he looks.

Yes, we love him to death, Even though he is fully into the terrible twos. He's a goofball when the spotlight is on, and a terror when you are tired. After torturing us all day, I finally got him down tonight, and as I was putting him to bed, he says, "I love you daddy." gives me a hug and a kiss, and goes straight to sleep. Yet another chapter in the "parenting is a trip" book I must write one day.

Terrible Twos and Changing Hues

The short days of Fall are clearly here in San Diego. Early sunsets, those strange long shadows, and the full swing of week 11 NFL football are just some of the overbearing reminders that the holidays are nearly here. Yes yes, I mention footbal in order to call attention to the fact that the Bolts just eeked out over the Broncos in a spectacular Sunday night game for the division lead in the NFC West and are creeping up on the conference pole position! Considering that some of my loyal readers are from the fair town of Denver, I must remember to be humble as we round the corner for the San Diego hosted version on December 10th.

It seems that my son has decided to finally enter the terrible 2's. While I thought we would luck out and see his happy-mischievous personality stay dominant, it seems that Andrew has given birth to Mr. "Mine". Today we went to the park to play some soccer and ride bikes. Andy could not get over the concept of sharing the ball, and spent most of his time wailing in jealousy if anyone else tried to kick his toy. Not to mention complete lack of regard for the rules about not using hands! This has pretty much extended to everything -- instant tears whenever he is told 'no', etc etc. Oh well, Katie seems to be taking it pretty well considering she has to deal with him basically trying to abduct anything she touches. I'm continually amazed at her willingness to share and unconditional love for her brother.

Back to another good note, I received a new job position at HP. It's going to be quite a change as I move from marketing product management to strategic business planning and I am excited to take-on this new challenge. I'm changing buildings, bosses, divisions, and roles. Should be an interesting new year. Jen has been awesome and supportive in helping me make these decisions over the past week, and we are both glad to have things ironed out and decided.

Lights, Camera, Action!

So our little Katie has had her first major acting debut in La Jolla this week with back-to-back performances in 2 different shows. On Tuesday she played a "Lady who buys shoes" in her acting workshop class at the La Jolla YMCA. And on Wednesday, she sang in her Preschool Thanksgiving Paegent. She seems to ham it up with much glee. During her performance as the Shoe-Lady, daddy was front and center with the camera, snapping photos like a shutter-bug. Katie actually noticed this during her scene, and instead of continuing with her part, she stopped and began to strike multiple dramatic model poses with large smiles. This set the audience into a roar as the room stopped to give Katie the spotlight (even though she had a rather minor part in the show.) Andrew on the other hand, would wait for nice quiet scenes and then bust out laughing at the top of his lungs any time the actors would do anything remotely funny, "HAHAHAHA HA! Funy Da-Dee! HAHAHAHA!"

Oh yes, they were quite distruptively entertaining.

It's ak-shually a Kitty-Kat

Katie has a new shirt that she is very excited about. You can see it in the picture to the right. She is so proud of it that she likes to walk up to people and let them know this. Interestingly, she has a slightly different perspective on this shirt than would the average person. The following is the conversation I had with her when I came home from work, reagrding this fantastick new shirt:

Katie: *Proud and bold" "Daddy, do you like my new shirt?"

Steve: "Why yes Katie, it's really cool, I like that Santa."

Katie: "Ak-shually, it's not a Santa, it just loooooks like a Santa..."

Steve: "Oh really?"

Katie: "Yes, it's ak-shually a Kitty-Kat! See, these are his curly whiskers."

There are lots of things I correct Katie on, pronounciations, manners, etc. but when it comes to stuff like this... no way. I mean, these are ak-shually the lenses of a child -- the ability to see what others are too grown-up to see. So anyhow, if you bump into Katie, I'd recommend commenting to her about what a nice Kitty-Kat shirt she has.

Nature Walk

Well, being in the heart of the subburbs, we dont always have access to the most natural surroundings. However, there are a few trails are suitable nearby where we can see some things other than concrete and lawns. This afternoon we went for a little trek down behind our house. Andy is just getting old enough where he can walk some and Katie is a trailblazer. It was windy and brisk, and we didn't see all that much. Highlights were flowers, dirt and a few bugs and birds. Katie and Andy's favorite was definitely the KitKat Bar we split at the end of the walk. I have a goal to do a lot more camping this year. I took Katie for an overnight last year and I was amazed to find out recently that she remembered just about every detil I could question her about. Hopefully we can get out there a few more times this next go around.

Super Fort

(The above picture was taken in the dark with the night-setting on the camera, hence the ghosting and light streaks. I'm trying to learn how to do cooler things with the camera, it has lots of interesting features and I feel like there is a lot to learn int he creative area of digitial photography.)

We had quite an exciting night tonight as compared to our usual routine. Jennifer and the kids decided to turn the living room into a fort -- complete with pop-up house, catipillar tunnel, and other neat climb-under things. In the house were pillows and beds for each of the kids. We got out the flashlights, turned off the house-lights and played and played. We had never really done this at night with K&A before so they were delighted. There was a good amount of singing for some reason as well. Andy did a very comical rendering of "Itsy bitsy spider" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Much fun!

Sound Bites

OK, so in the spirit of continuing to 'leverage' ideas from megzo, I have a few sound bytes for you to sample. Enjoy!

Katie - "Part of Your World"

Andy - Counting in Spanish

I can't sleep...

So tonight Katie was having a hard time going to bed. It's not uncommon that both kids resist bedtime, why sleep when you can play right? Usually we have a routine to help this along. Bedtime stories, milks, etc.

Anyways, I put Katie down to bed, tucked her in, started her music, and bid her goodnight. Soon after she comes creeping out to the living room...

Katie: "Daddy, I can't sleep."

Steve: "I know Katie, but you have to try, it's past your bedtime."

*Walks katie back to bed and tucks her in*

Katie: "Daaaaaady, I can't try..."

Steve: *Wistfully* "Just close your eyes and picture princesses and castles..."

*Katie closes her eyes tight for a few seconds*

Katie: "All I see is the color black."

The Black Knight that ALMOST was...

Not often, but occasionally, I find myself having a ‘vision’ of an experience that I would like to make happen for our family. Not like a crazy voodoo-Indian-sweat-house kind of vision, but more like when you imagine ‘exactly’ how you want something to be. For example, this Halloween, I really wanted to make Andy a cool Knight costume. I used to love dressing up as a knight when I was a kid, playing with wooden swords and all of that. So anyway, I decided to inflict this vicarious fantasy on my son this Halloween.

I did some pretty serious preparation for this project. I got a bunch of cardboard from work. Bought some black spraypaint (Oh yeah, it was going to be the cool-evil black night baby!). I went to the toy store and bought a foam sword. I got a tailor’s measuring tape and fully measured Andy from head to toe. I sketched out a full suit of armor. I got down on my hands and knees in the garage and started cutting, and cutting, and cutting. I sweat, I slaved. I finally got a cool helmet and chest-piece made-up. The chest-piece even had these near strings to tie it together – I mean, it was cool! I then painted the helmet black.

Well after all of this work, I decided to try it on my son.

The second I got the helmet on Andy, he totally flipped out – crying, fighting to rip it off. He hated it. I was thinking to myself (ummm, OK this is a problem!) I tried a few more times over the course of the week and got nothing but the same reaction. Dejected, defeated and frustrated with my son, I shelved the costume.

After thinking about it, I realized that it was pretty foolish of me to expect he would like it. I started to consider that I should certainly be frustrated with myself, and that Andy was merely a victim in this delusional fantasy of mine. I thought about similar things my parents used to try and get me to do that I didn’t like. I am pretty sure all parents and kid’s have this relationship to some degree. Anyhow, it was funny to look back and compare my uber-excited anticipation against the actual outcome. So, no Knight costume this year. But hey, there is always next year right? 

Bye Bye

Well, grandma and grandpa have left and headed back to Colorado, and we are back to just the four of us. We miss you guys already! Grandma and grandpa bring many great things when they visit and we will have to go though some withdrawls as we adjust to thier absence.

Special things we will miss:

- Andy's bedtime buddy.

- Carmel apples, donught holes and special sweets.

- Starbuck's Morning Mochas.

- And of course, the mountains of help around the house and with the kids.

Thanks guys for the great visit, hope you had a safe trip and we will see you soon.

Beauty and the Bat

Well, Halloween is all done! We had quite a traditional night here in San Diego. The kids got dressed up and we took some pictures. Andy was a bat, and Katie was a princess... Princess Lea to be exact. Every time people would see her they would try and guess who she was... "Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty?" and Katie would always say, "I'm Princess Lea!" I watched Star Wars with them a few weeks ago and I think the name stuck in her head more than the image. You can see by her costume that this is little respemblance to Princess Lea. This disconnect left many of our trick-or-treat hosts rather confused.

So we hit about 20 houses. Quite a bit more than previous years. It was chilly here but we used the wagon and a blanket. Katie was real bold as we went to each house. She would ring the bell, bang on the door, and say loudly, "Is there anyone home here?!" meanwhile, Andy would hang back and hide behind my leg, waiting to see if some monster or foo foo (dog) was going to leap out when the door opened. The whole 'scary' houses thing was a bit much for him, but he stayed brave and had the hang of it by the end of the night. The two of them were giggling and squealing in the wagon the whole time as we went from house to house. They were begging for more as we tried to herd them back to the house at the end of the night. At the end of the night they were completely wiped out, as were all the adults.

ARRRRR!

"Swab the deck ya lilly-livered scallywag! Hoist the mainsail or it'll be to Davey Jones locker for ye! It be time to seek out me buried treasure!"

Katie has taken a keen interest in playing 'pirates' lately. I'm not quite sure why. I think it started after I saw Pirates of the Carribean II and then I started talking like a pirate one night. The next thing I know, all Katie wants to do is play pirates all the time. So we decided to go full-bore the other night with hats and swords and the whole shebang. We even made a couch-cushion ship, a treasure map, and gold-lego treasure. There were sharks, and cannons, and much sailing of the high seas. Of course somehow Ariel found her way into the fantasy as well...

Much of the time when we are playing pirates, Katie and I make hooks with our fingers, wincey-faces, and take turns saying "Arrrr!'. (See picture)

Katie: "Arrrr!"

Steve: "Arrrrrr!"

Katie: "We're good pirates though, OK daddy?

Steve: "Arrrrrrrrrrr!"