A First

Amanda has a brutal day on Tuesdays. She has to get Lily to preschool by 9:15 (but no earlier than 9:10), get over to church to lead a Bible study, get back to the preschool by 12:15, eat lunch with Lily, and then get Lily to dance class by 1:15. Monday was not the easiest day and we had been very sleepy for various reasons over the weekend (i.e. thunderstorms one night brought Lily into bed with us). That night as we went to bed I prayed for a good night of sleep.

I got up around 5:30 and had my normal workout. I didn't remember hearing Amanda feed Noah, but that could have just been because I was sleepy too. He got up around 7:00. Turns out that he slept from about 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM.

In case you're wondering, he hasn't repeated that. He was up around 5:00 today. The good news is that he slept until 8:30 after that feeding. Life is so much better for all of us when Noah sleeps well.

First Aid

We had some excitement yesterday. I was working from home and heard everyone come back from some time at the park. I heard Lily screaming, which is nothing new. I came upstairs expecting to have to take her downstairs for a timeout. Turns out that she closed the car door on her left thumb. Amanda said that it was wedged in there pretty good and she actually had to open the door to get it out.

It was a little purple and a layer of skin tore off. I got some ice in a paper towel and sat on the kitchen floor with her to administer a little first aid. After a few minutes of ice she was fine. She says it feels fine today too.

It's sad that my first instinct is that the screaming means that she is being disobedient, but that's what the track record shows. I guess, as they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results...check your prospectus carefully.

Bad Boilers

It seems that a little stomach bug is making its way around the house. Last night Lily didn't eat much for dinner and we quickly determined that she had a mild fever (around 100). Today Amanda has a terrible stomachache that started just after lunch and my tummy doesn't feel great either, though not as bad as what Amanda reports. So far Noah seems unaffected. Got to love those antibodies in the breast milk!

Last night was not such a great night. Noah wouldn't go down very well, so that kept us up until around 10:30. We actually did have some storms yesterday, which brought some nasty wind and rain. Though there wasn't thunder, the combination of wind, rain, and fever woke Lily up and she was screaming. We let her come into bed with us at 1:30, but no one really slept until after the storm abated and she went back into her own room at 2:30. Then my alarm went off at 5:00 so I could get my run in before going to church for the men's conference. I actually got out of bed at 5:30 as Noah was making noise. I brought him in to Amanda and came downstairs to do my morning routine (prayer, bible, stretching, checking the articles on the Indians). I heard Noah screaming on the baby monitor, so my run kept getting delayed by trying to soothe him.

I did ultimately get out after persuading Lily that she shouldn't leave her room until eight-zero-zero, though according to Amanda she still freaked out at seven-zero-zero. I got back around 7:40 and found Amanda lying in bed awake (since 5:30), Noah dozing, and Lily ready to get up.

We're supposed to babysit for friends tonight, but it might just be me going over there. No matter what, it's been kind of a rough day.

The good news is that the weather is gorgeous outside and I've found my pattern for watering the lawn.

Pray for Rain

I seeded the new lawn today. This process started when guilt and shame overtook me while my dad was visiting. My lawn had a preponderance of crabgrass. It also had a pretty nasty mixture of dirt, clumps of fescue, and some pretty healthy bermuda in the places not shaded by the pear tree. This was kind of a shame to my heritage considering that if my dad lived in Cary he would have the only green lawn on the street while everyone else's suffered the effects of our prolonged drought.

It felt good to work the land a little bit today. I put down some starter fertilizer, used the garden weasel to work it in, spread some seed, weaseled that in a little bit, then put down a little extra seed just for good measure. That last bit may have been a waste, but I just wanted to be sure...

I had planned to do this tomorrow, but we're supposed to get some rain today. I figured it would be good to get natural water on it rather than the sprinkler. Plus, it's been a crazy week at work, so I used about 90 minutes this morning to get this done. Amanda was walking with Noah during some of this time, so I had Lily outside with me.

As I was weaseling the yard Lily announced, "I'm getting tired watching you." Funny, but she wasn't the one with beads of sweat on the end of her nose.

I'll post more photos as we start to have actual seedlings.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

As readers of this blog know, Lily and I play games together. This is good because Amanda doesn't really care for playing games. I grew up as an only child and have always wanted a consistent partner for board games. I'm starting to get one.

A few months ago I bought a checkers set. I was looking for the traditional Pressman brand set, but I couldn't find one for checkers. Lily had played checkers at a friend's house and insisted that our checkers be red and black (Lily can be very particular). I found one that was red and black and it also came with stuff for Bingo and for chess.

Lily was very intrigued by the chess pieces. I put off talking to her about it because I know how complicated it is to learn. However, Sunday night she asked me to teach her how to play chess. We've played the past two evenings.

She is starting to get the hang of how the pieces move, which is good. She is still confused by the knights and the pawns, but I think that is pretty normal. Hopefully she will really learn how to play one of these days. I'm not expecting much for a while. I think that she is probably a year or two too young for this right now, but I'll encourage it as much as I can.

Her favorite thing is to play little games with the captured pieces. I think she enjoys that more than the actual game.

Drying Out

Our water woes are behind us! Through the magic of the internet we found a great plumber. He ended up charging around $300 to come out and fix the problem. He had to chip away some concrete and run a new pipe through the wall. What I didn't expect was that he put a lot of the dirt back in the hole. That was an unexpected, although welcome, bonus.

It turns out that our main supply line is what is known as "blue poly", which is the stuff that had the class-action lawsuit against it. In other words, it's a matter of time before we end up having to replace the main supply line. I'm not in any rush to do that though.

All Wet

I wrote about this in my other blog, but I think that this bears mention in the one that everyone actually reads. For the past couple of weeks I've noticed a hissing sound near the water pipe in the basement. I turned off the main shut-off in the basement, but I could still hear the hissing. I turned off the water at the meter by the street and the hissing went away. I called our general contractor and spoke to some coworkers who are knowledgeable about home improvement. We all came to the same conclusion -- trouble.

I started digging yesterday afternoon. I hit paydirt in the form of some serious Carolina mud. I could see the general source of the water, but I couldn't pinpoint it. I figured that I would have to do more digging today, but it turns out that I only had to spend another half hour or so on it. I found the source of the leak. It is really spraying out from inside the wall. I had hoped that we just had some PVC coming from the water meter and that I could just repair the break, though I dreaded how much I'd have to dig out to accomplish that.

So the good news is that I don't have to dig anymore. The bad news is that we need a professional to fix this. I have someone coming out on Monday. In the meantime, we're sort of camping out. We keep the water turned off except when we really need it. For those who are wondering, we save $90 by waiting until Monday to get this fixed. Personally, I don't think running out to the street to turn the water on and off is that big of a deal. I suppose if it went on for more than a few days it would be though...