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September 13, 2005

Yup, they ceased.

Last night she demanded I stay with her. I tried leaving once, no luck. She jumped up and followed me down. So I had to stay with her until I woke up at about a quarter to 10.

She doesn't exactly "ask" for things, she now says that she "needs" a thing. "I need my cookie." Note that the posessive pronoun means that she already owns the cookie, she just isn't holding it at the moment.


Then when I went down into the basement to put away a stack of tapes she climbed into the kitchen before me and turned on the light. Then as I walked down the stairs I heard "I'm closing door now. Good luck, Tata!"


As we walked home from Mass she examined the storm sewer cover out by the street. She informed me that there are monsters down there. She then proceeded to rip apart and drop daisies down it.


As for the younger one, he is finally wandering around playing by himself. I sat in the living room yesterday night while he wandered around, coming back occasionally to touch base with me. He is now at the burbly stage. And add a huge dose of wiggles to that, diapers are currently a battle.

Posted by paul at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)

September 12, 2005

Will wonders never cease?

It was a weekend of MUCH work and even a couple milestones!

Lets start with Saturday. Poor Mel was mostly abandoned with the children for most of the day. I grunted up at 09:00, quietly took some work clothes and tip-toed down the creaky stairs. Down there I hastily dressed, used the bathroom and started down into the basement to WORK.


The first task of the day was two-fold. Run laundry and get the three stacks of server equipment installed into the server rack. I had purchased a used server rack for $25, but a full-sized rack won't fit in the basement. It would have been close, the rafters are almost 7' from the floor. But my chosen spot has a (now) unused steam pipe running over it. "So cut it down!" you may say, but that's a lot more effort than I can spend this year. It has a skin of cloth covering a layer of asbestos, so that will have to wait for another season.


So I just start moving things around when I hear some rythmic tapping over my head. BUSTED! I was only up for 40 minutes (including bathroom time) before Mel and the smallest child came down. *sigh*


Anyway, to cut it shorter, I have successfully migrated ALL of the server you are reading this site onto the rack. I cut some "rails" to put the server and drive cage on, put in a shelf for the dual UPS's and stuck the monitor and keyboard on top of the server for now. It's probably too high for my wife, but it's a LOT of stuff to pack into a small space. Thus I was able to move out the tiny little 19U rack and the small pile of bricks it was sitting on out of that corner. I was also able to "neatly" route and label all of the power cables.


WHY did I do all of this right now? Two major worries.




After all of that I have also framed in and hung a breaker panel in the attic. No, I haven't wired any power or anything into there. That will come. Soon.


Why run power to the attic? Because I need to re-power the second floor. Apparently under each light fixture is a ball of 70yr-old wire. I've seen 4 lines running into the space under a light. With no box, just a brace to hang the light off of.


But why now? Because I desperately need to insulate the attic. We had some horrible gas bills last winter, and I have to fix that. And the only real way to re-wire the second floor... is up from the attic. Since I am already going to


JUST so that I can put in the insulation, I might as well run the new SAFER wiring since the ceiling and walls are going to be exposed. It's like an episode of Monster House or This Old House. Every time I look behind a wall or fixture I find MORE things to fix!



And now for the Good News! The oldest one has GONE TO SLEEP BY HERSELF TWO DAYS IN A ROW! As in, I tuck her in, turn around and LEAVE. While she is STILL AWAKE! I'm in shock! Putting her to bed means I lay down beside her until one or both of us is unconsious. AMAZING! Will this continue? Could the specter of free time truely be approaching? We shall see!

Posted by paul at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Over the top

Small children. A nasty sickness with nasty headaches. For both parents. Yet the three yr old is all full of energy and ready to throw tantrums. What's this a recipe for?

First off, she has started refusing food. Doesn't like what's on her plate? Shove it away and say that she is done. And I had thought that she would not enter that stage. At least she will accept the demand to TASTE something, and if she hates it I WILL not force it. At least for something new. *SIGH*

And then there are the toys. Counting the original that Mom had hidden away from a garage sale over 20 years ago, we have at LEAST three put the shaped peg into the shaped hole toys. They are all plastic, with all kinds of nice, perfectly eucledian shapes. Both children love to spread them around, watching them tumble in the air, bouncing merrily on the floor, and scattering to the FIVE corners of the room. Even the round ones make perfect little caltrops. Especially when hidden under piles of clothing shed by the merrily dress-up playing daughter. *ow*

So, today was a bad children day. The littlest one wasn't too bad, just severely needy. He demanded to be held, but then wanted to be able to wander AT THE SAME TIME. But apparently he is also suffering from the same bug that has attacked the rest of us. The result? A warm application of nature's Perfect Food soon brought him to a limp and slumbering rag doll in his mother's lap. This is while his big sister shreiked to the world that she is tired, does NOT want to sleep, does NOT want to eat, feels bad too but will NOT do anything nice except fuss and jump on her poor Tata. All this while bashing him on alternate spots of his body with alternate spots of hers. All this on a guy whose head hurts too much to do much more than moan at her to be gentle, to please stop, etc...

While all of this is happening, her kind mother, who also looks to have been in pain also yet STILL somehow managed to create a dinner somehow also fell asleep on the sofa.

So, Paul, how did you EVER get to put down another entry? I told the older child to go up to her room (a remodeling odessey that is nearly complete), gently took the little one up to bed while somehow leading mom to the bed as well. It only took about a half-hour to get the toddler to sleep. After which, while my head still hurts fiercely, I have already watched one show that I have been missing and have finally updated this blog! BTW: I love my Tivo. It was a wonderful Father's Day gift.

And now for a small funny. I just noticed a commercial from the muted TV (Closed Captioning is a God-send for families with small children. Thank you Matt and Steff for that idea!) Whomever came up with the idea for the commercial is DEFINATELY in the SCA. The car in question, an Eclipse, drives around town. It apparently is royalty, for every vehicle that it passes closes it's headlight covers (lowers it's eyes) and drops it's front suspension (bows). *chuckle*

Speaking of which, I need to get back into fighting again. But it's rather hard to do so with small children that need your attention and a mother that desperately needs some help and time away from them. Oh, and the small major matter of near crippling shyness combined with a new group of complete strangers and being fiercely TIRED all of the time now.

And so there you have it. A new post to waste more space on Google and other web spider's hard drives. And just to waste even MORE space for them, a made-up word that they will now have to key on for the rest of eternity. Bolyflompination. So there.

Posted by paul at 09:33 PM | Comments (1)