Chainsaws and Poison

I’m pretty sure when they say things get better with age they are not putting memory in that category.  And considering my mildly bad memory right now, I’m guessing it is going to be really bad in another 10-15 years.  With that said I guess I should be posting for historical record, or at least for my own memory, some of the cool/funny/original things that Ellie is doing as a 3-year-old.
 
The one that was the cutest, but no-longer is the cutest, is when she folds her hands across her body and stomps with one foot and says, “I’m mad.”  It was cute in the beginning because usually it was because of something like, Bauer wouldn’t throw the ball back to her, or when she would run around the house with her blanket tucked into the back of her shirt she wouldn’t start flying.  But now it’s gotten to the point where she says it and she’s really mad about something, thus pouting, or crying…no longer cute.
 
She’s replaced the cuteness with a little Queen.  One of the current TV commercials that seems to get played a lot in the early evenings is for a radio station. I’m not even sure which one, but they play Queen’s We Will Rock You as a music bed as they flash all artists that they play on their station. Clearly it’s on a lot because the other day she was sitting in the chair, just hanging out and that commercial came on. I didn’t pay much attention to anything until I heard this little voice in over on the chair say “we will, we will, ROCK YOU.” I turned quickly and caught her bobbing her head and singing Queen. I’m sure most of you know where music ranks on my list of interests, somewhere between mowing the lawn and going to the dentist.  I was never into music as a kid, and still find very little use for it.  When my car radio station leaves sports, it will jump over to country, and if I’m really in a “shake-it-up” kind of mood, I’ll put on best of the ‘80s or ‘90s on XM, but those times are rare. So clearly the love of music gene didn’t come from me.
 
I’m also enjoying the fact that she hasn’t fully grasped the concept of time yet.  For her everything is 5 minutes. I’ll say, 5 minutes until bedtime, or 5 minutes before we leave.  And for her I think that translates to something is going to happen soon.  But the best part is when we are at the park and I’ll say “OK, we gotta go in 10 minutes” she’ll come back with “No, 5 minutes.” So everything else means we gotta go and do it now, but 5-minutes means in a little bit.  So for the time being I’m enjoying the fact that there is very little negotiating with her, it’s either right now or in 5-minutes.  Which I can live with.
 
Switching topics real quick, the one tough thing about being a gymnastics parent, is the uncertainty of the meet times.  It’s not like soccer or baseball where you get the schedule before the season starts and you can pretty much lock in the day, then block off a few hours. With gymnastics, each meet is different, and since they are two-day (sometimes three-day) events, you don’t get the exact day or time until a couple weeks before that meet.  So we usually just block off the whole weekend, then the specific four hour block once we get the start time.  And since our social calendar doesn’t really fill-up that quickly, it’s usually not a problem.  But this past weekend it did get a little tricky.  Katelyn had a meet (maybe Friday, maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday) and it was also the weekend of Disney on Ice.  So not knowing which day the meet was going to be, I only got two tickets, just in case they overlapped.  That way I could go to Katelyn’s meet and Steph could take Ellie to Disney on Ice if they happened to be at the same time.  Well, turns out that they didn’t overlap.  Katelyn’s meet was on Friday in San Jose , which was nice and convenient, leaving Saturday for Disney on Ice.  So Steph took Ellie to see Disney on Ice with Ellie’s friend Leah and her parents Marisa and Jig.  Which meant that I had about 2 hours of free time before I was going to meet them for dinner.  And since the weekend before was filled with kitchen duties, and lots of cooking, I decided to get back to some caveman roots.  So I messed around with the chainsaw and sprayed poison (I sprayed the backyard with Roundup.  I’m sure that will be an ongoing topic for this blog as I attempt to redo, or at least fix-up, the backyard). Basically I got in touch with my inner Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, ARGGHH ARGGHH ARGGHH!
 
With a that said, I am accelerating the Spring Cleaning this year.  With the baby set for mid-may I’d like to have everything situated in terms of my usual spring duties by mid-April because I’m guessing, and this is only a guess, that Steph may have a list of things for me to do in those weeks leading up to the due date.  So I can’t drag the cleaning out until June this year, gotta get it done in the next two months.

Comments