The Blankie - Surviving the Night

It finally happened. Alex accidentally left his precious blue blankie at school. You see, sometimes he actually naps at school and needs it to sleep with. We didn't realize, until it was bedtime, that the blankie had been left. And we know that nobody messes with Alex's blankie when it is time to sleep.


Alex finds the blanket very comforting...

...when needing eyebrow stitches

...in social situations

...while picnicking at The Huntington

...when his geeky parents make him watch a rocket launch at 4am

...when attending the tour of California bicycle race

Alex even prefers it over hugs of his brother for comfort.
So, what did we do Thursday night, the night of no blankie? Well, we made a big production of looking everywhere for the blankie. We explained things to Alex when he suggested that we go back to school to get it, letting him know that school was closed and we didn't have a key and none of his teachers were there. We even offered him his original blankie, which he also would stick in his mouth for sleeping...

At a wedding in NYC

Much to our surprise, Alex accepted these efforts. We got him cuddled in a nest of other blankets and pillows and he fell asleep. However, he did wake up at 3:30am, not terribly happy, but went back to bed after about having about 4 different demands fulfilled. We were very glad that the next day, he found his blankie at school and brought it home.

Now you may wonder, why haven't we weaned Alex of his blankie? Certainty if Alex had a habit of sucking his thumb, using a pacifier, or carrying an animal everywhere with him, we would implement some sort of training regimen, right? I mean, we don't even take the kids places in strollers anymore or give them sippy cups, right? Why not figure out a way to get rid of this remnant from being a baby, nursing on a blanket?

The reason is simply sleep. Sure, he probably doesn't need the blanket anymore for sleep, but, Alex was such a good sleeper and great at self soothing (or blankie soothing, that Dan and I felt almost like real people that first year after he was born. We got a slightly adequate amount of sleep. This is in contract to the Will year where he didn't sleep through the night, any of the nights, until he was 9 months old. So, if Alex wants his blankie, it is his reward for being an excellent sleeper in those early months. It is indeed something priceless.

Snow Sledding Fail

One of the great things about Southern California is that we have access to both the beach and the mountains. It is possible to surf and ski on the same day. Of course, we don't surf or ski, but we do like sledding.

Last Year
Last year, on February 14, we headed up to Mt. Baldy, which is about an hour and a half drive from our house. The traffic up the mountain was pretty bad since there was both snow and some sort of traffic accident. It took so long that the boys fell asleep in the car on the way there. They conked out as we started the ascent up the mountain. Thin air, I guess.



Once we finally got there, the boys were in a good mood and had fun sledding. Well, Will immensely enjoyed the sledding. However, Alex could not be persuaded to play. We took him on a couple of runs, but he really wasn't into it.

Bundled Will Enjoying Sledding

This Year
This year, we waited until March 19. It had snowed two weeks prior and rain was in our local forecast, so I thought that there would be snow. However, were mostly rocks on the mountain, nearly covered with snow.

A tiny bit of Snow



We built a tiny, very dirty, snowman.

Will's New Catch Phrase, "That was not fun!"

Alternative Sledding
Fortunately, as we live in temperate weather, many of the schools host a Snow Day, our school being one of these.

Alex Dominating the Playground Snowball Fight

The Biggest Snowball!

Will Loving the Sled Run

Next year we plan to head up earlier. Or at least better track the snow availability. Mt. Baldy is a great location, it costs $5 to get an Adventure Pass allowing you to park on the side of the road. There is a nice, open space about 1,000 feet downhill of the ski area parking lot. Lots of long, gradual slopes, perfect for the little ones. And, as they get bigger, there are other slopes available right around there. You just need to wait until the rocks get covered by more than half an inch of snow.

First Day of "Kindergarten"

At the beginning of January, Will made the transition from his pre-school level class to the next level. It's sort of like Kindergarten. The 12 kids in his class are focusing on improving their handwriting and letter formation so that they will be ready for cursive. They write sentences in their journals. They add and subtract numbers. They improve their reading skills. So, even though the names of the classes at our school are atypical, I declare Will's first day of Kindergarten to be January 3, 2011.

Here are the boys being goofy at home. Will is dressed in his school uniform, a school logo shirt and dress pants. He even has a PE class uniform of sweats and school tshirt.


And here is the fantastic, artfully posed picture of Will going into his school on his first day...
Alex also got to move up from the Toddler level to the class that Will had just vacated. So while some of Will's friends didn't move up, they had Alex to take his place, making the transition just a little smoother. :) Alex is currently working on writing words, since it is easier to create something than it is to interpret an unknown (reading). He also enjoys writing his name, although because there is another Alex in his class, he believes his name is "Alex K," not just "Alex." His academic focus is on beginning word sounds. His developmental focus is on 'using his words' when he gets mad. He is doing ok with these objectives. He also seems to think that he is too old to nap at school, so ends up in bed early in the evening most days.

Both boys love their classes and have great friends. They love the music class, art work, and Spanish curriculum. And soon it will be warm enough to do swimming.

Congratulations to both boys on their advancement in education. Now if I could only convince Will that he needs to go to college when he grows up instead of his plan to "Be an artist and live at home," we will be good.

Happy Birthday to Alex!

Four posts in all of 2010 to the blog?! That is crazy. I must remedy this by posting about many things. I will post a bunch of stuff, then go back and make edits as necessary. To start, since I don't think I have actually posted about Alex's birthday individually, here is the Happy Birthday post...

Happy 3rd Birthday, Alex!

Turtle Cake!

Months and months ago, Alex declared that he wanted his 3 birthday to be a turtle birthday party with a turtle cake. I didn't think this was a big deal, turtles sound simple, right? But, oddly, there aren't a lot of turtle birthday party supplies out there. Sure, you can go with a general ocean theme, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (where to even start explaining that one?) The bakery that we got Will's Blue's Clue cake from didn't really even have any turtle designs. Of course, I was actually relieved to hear this given that Will's special and delicious cake cost a fortune.

So how did the above Turtle Cake come to exist? It took shopping at two different places, Toys R Us for the turtle and Costco for the cake. For under $20 total, enough cake to feed a bunch of people and a turtle to make Alex happy.

Turtle Party Bags!
We managed to assemble some Party Bags full of turtle goodies. We make it a habit to purchase our party bag supplies from Oriental Trading as they have fun activities at bulk prices. The bags themselves? We have tried Oriental Trading and Party City in the past, but the best deal is to buy either white or colored paper lunch bags from Target. They are super cheap and don't suffer from defects like the others seem to. Probably because they have to hold up to carrying a lunch for a kid. Add in a roll of stickers from Oriental Trading and you have nifty party bags. What kind of turtle goodies? Mostly art activities. While it is easy to fill the bags with candy, as a parent, I really appreciate it when there isn't candy in a party bag.

Turtle Activities!
We only had one turtle activity which was a turtle craft where you use stickers as a mosaic to decorate a picture of a turtle shell. So far, at the age the kids are currently, they don't need organized activities. Sure, we had the trains out and the toy cars with the rug that has roads on it, but we were depending on the novelty of the merry-go-round and the fact that kids can make their own fun. Then, a couple of weeks before the party, the merry-go-round met its demise after 2 and a half years of happy spinning. So we got a bouncy house.

A bouncy house!?
I am anti-bouncy house. Not that I have anything against them in terms of kids using them and having fun. Rather, that they are a big to-do and they are part of the cause of kids' inflated expectations of birthday parties.
This inflated expectation of birthday parties leads to kids thinking that they need a bouncy house, a person dressed up as a super hero or princess, an ice cream truck, a balloon artist, a pony, a petting zoo, or other crazy stuff in order to have fun with their friends. So I told myself that I would never get a bouncy house for a party. But, we ended up with a bouncy house. It was the perfect size for the party, we got to borrow it from friends, and the kids loved it.

All in all, Alex's birthday party was quite successful. Except for the part where I don't have very many pictures of it. Poor second child!

So, here is a picture from around the time of his birthday party to document his appearance as a three year old. :)

Only in Los Angeles

The Boys and I managed all of the following in one day:

• Drove Surface Streets to get to the Miracle Mile District


• Arrived Fashionably Late for an Event


• Went to the Beverly Center Because Social Media told us to


• Will was Recognized for 'who' he was wearing while on a red-ish carpet


• Won a Fabulous Prize


• Met Celebrities and took Pictures with them


• Boys got SWAG Bags


• Strangers recognized and commented on my TV show-related t-shirt


• Managed the Return Traffic down La Cienega Blvd and the Expressway

So what did we do?

Because we are members of the Natural History Museum, we knew that President's Day had a special event at the Page Museum near the La Brea Tar Pits. They have a realistic, 2-person-sized "puppet" of a Saber Toothed Cat. The traffic wasn't bad, but the iPhone told us to surface streets to get to Miracle Mile. We drove La Cienega past Rodeo to Jefferson then up Hauser Blvd.

This caused us to arrive fashionably late for our reservation, about 5 minutes. I opted to pay the extra cost to park in the Tar Pit Parking Lot, but alas, it was completely full. Cars filled the street parking too. So, we parked 'next door' at LACMA. By the time we got back to the tar pits, we were half an hour late. So, no Saber Toothed Cat to view. However, we did get to skip the line and use our membership status to explore inside the Page Museum, working to pull things out of tar and watching the coin donation pennies spinning around their funnel before falling into the collection hole. While we were looking at the exhibits, we did see the Saber Tooth Cat puppet go rolling by in it's crate. I think Will jumped when he saw it. So, prior to actually seeing the Ice Age Encounters exhibit, we are going to try to gradually ease Will into the idea of seeing a giant Saber Tooth Cat.

On the way back to the car, we wandered around and thru LACMA. I introduced the boys to Calder sculptures and Alex seemed excited that they were made by a guy named Alex. I also tried to get them to start recognizing Matisse cut outs, but there was only one example in the area where we were.

Next Stop - The Beverly Center. Because I am a fan, on Facebook, of The Imagination Movers, I get updates from their feed. It told me that for President's Day, they would be at the Beverly Center in the Sony Store. It was only a few blocks from the Tar Pits, so we went.

At the Beverly Center, there was a line to take a picture with the Imagination Movers. The redish-carpet line wasn't too long, but the guy helping out with the line and passing out the scratch and win discount cards did comment about how Will was wearing his Imagination Mover's t-shirt. Back in December of 2009 I took Will to an Imagination Mover's Concert downtown where he acquired the t-shirt.

Now Will thinks that his t-shirt was lucky and may have caused the scratch and win card to reveal the fabulous prize of a 14 mega-pixel Sony Cyber-shot camera.

After standing in line a reasonable amount of time, we got to talk to and take pictures with celebrities! Of course, standing in line around 4 in the afternoon is not something Alex was up for after not napping, so he sat on my shoulders while we were in line, finding great pleasure in mixing and tangling my hair with his hands. By the time we were inside, it was quite crazy and I told Mover Rich that I was having a bad hair day and perhaps I could get some advice from Scott. He commented that they all knew something about bad hair days. Now that I look at the picture, I see that Rich was indeed the one having kind of a sticking up hair issue.

I snapped some shots with my iPhone, which it turns out, has exactly the same case as Mover Dave's iPhone, which he had on him. I guess there are a lot of pockets on those jump suits.

The boys scored SWAG bags with nifty Movers' silly bandz, coloring books, temporary tattoos, and balloons.

Then on the way back to the car, the people in the elevator commented on my shirt, recognized the TV Show it references, and went to their car singing the song.

All in all, a great way to spend President's Day, although not very Presidential. But, it's not like we live in DC, we live in LA!

New Year, New Hair

During 2010, I grew my hair longer. Which, of course, meant that I spent most of 2010 with 'transition' hair. Fortunately, my hair is now long enough to pull back in a pony tail which makes it more manageable than the sticking out at the sides 'transition' style.

Here is a family picture from the Fall at the Wilderness Park. Because the kids live in a suburb of Los Angeles, sometimes we have to take them to dedicated parks to expose them to nature.

Kroboths among well-groomed 'wilderness'

I was even able to wear my hair in an 'up do' for the first time in a long time. I did express my concerns to my stylist as to whether an 'up do' was even appropriate for my age or if it would be too prom-night-was-more-than-a-decade-ago. She reassured me that it would be ok.

Well-groomed Kroboths

You may notice that I am slouching and trying to move my feet apart as much as possible in order not to tower over Dan here. It's a funny story...

I needed dress shoes to wear with my shiny dress. I had to wear the shiny dress because the company Holiday Party was being held at the Hollywood Magic Castle. So, the morning of the event, I went shopping. As Dan was at work, I took the kids to Nordstrom's Rack with me. At Nordstrom's Rack, the shoe department displays one of each shoe on the shelf, then you take the shoe you are interested in to the desk and they find its match. So, the boys managed to behave well enough, even helping me to look for shiny silver or red shoes. Then, we found a great shoe, I tried it on, it fit, and we went to get its partner. Unfortunately, things were slow and we were in a hurry. I tried on the other shoe, it fit, and we quickly purchased them and left. I forgot to try on both shoes at the same time and realize that they made me about 6'2" tall. I kind of towered over Dan. Fortunately there were still 2 people at the work Holiday party who I was shorter than, Jeff and Matt. But I did spend most of the evening hanging onto Dan for balance and staying close to the walls of the Magic Castle. Fortunately many of the hallways throughout the castle were narrow (walls close by) and the stairways had (oddly-low) rails.

So in summary, longer hair, taller shoes.

Bill Nye the Solar Guy

So a while back, Bill Nye the Science Guy stopped by work. I swear he looks exactly the same as I remember him from TV all those years ago. He's also just as goofy in real life as he is in his show.

When I got home that day, I went to the TiVo to set up a recording for 'Bill Nye the Science Guy.' I think I had watched it previously with the kids, but the concepts were a bit too much for the little guys. Unfortunately, the show wasn't currently available so I set up a wishlist to record all Bill Nye shows. It turns out that Bill Nye is on the 'Living with Ed' show. That is a show about Ed Begley, Jr and his quest to be super green with his house. Bill is Ed's neighbor who competes with Ed to be the greenest guy on the block.

It happened that our hot water heater had started to fail as all of this was happening. One of the 'Living with Ed' shows demonstrated Bill Nye's solar hot water heating system. Thinking this is kind of cool, we got some quotes to replace our hot water heater with a solar one. Along with those quotes, we got some solar electricity quotes.

A couple of years ago we had looked at getting some photovoltaic solar panels. At the time it didn't quite make sense. But, during our current investigation, we determined that adding some panels to the south-facing side of our garage roof would work out. Right now the state of California is offering a rebate on the panels and the Federal Government is offering a 30% tax credit. The rebate and credit cover about half of the panel cost. Then, the system pays for itself in 5-7 years with energy savings. Plus, adding the solar panels increases the value of our home, I believe more than the cost of installing them.

The solar hot water part wasn't nearly as cost effective, so we got a regular, but smaller than the previous one, new hot water heater. The kids loved using the box as a house.

Painting the Box House

Of course, the reason the kids were in swimsuits while painting is because we put them in the kiddie pool right after to try to get the "washable" paint off.

We had the same company, Moore Solar and Green Construction, install both the hot water heater and the solar panels. During the hot water heater installation, they were also doing the drawing for the solar panel plan. Dan was hanging out during the process since he had built the new stand for the hot water heater. Gas hot water heaters in garages need to be elevated and our stand had suffered some nasty water damage from the leaky hot water heater. Dan got to chatting about inverters and stuff and found that you can get micro-inverters, one per solar panel to better monitor individual panel output. So now we can monitor everything! Dan has taken up solar output monitoring as his new hobby.


The boys have taken up residence in their new, bigger-than-the-hot-water-heater-box house. It was the one that had solar panels in it.

Skylight Installed in this Box House

It took a while to get everything approved for the installation. In the city of Los Angeles, it takes about a half hour to get the initial plans installed. However, here in Redondo Beach, it can take up to 8 weeks. Fortunately, during the process, the mayor stopped by our house to talk about Measure G which was coming up in the November 2nd election. So I inquired as to the staffing level of the city planning office. After an email or two, we were promised expedition of our process and things finally got going for the install. However, we are currently waiting for final approval from the electric company before we can turn the system on and reap the benefits during the cloudy winter. Hey, at least we didn't do this at the beginning of the summer expecting lots of sun. As this past summer was one of the coldest on record, and one of the most dreary, maybe we are in line for a super sunny winter.

Summer Visitors - Dad and Lee come to California

Dad and an excited Alex

We had a great visit with Dad and Lee as they came to enjoy our warm weather... wait, no, that's not it. We have actually been having quite a cold summer. You know, about 70, maybe 75 degrees during the day, a little overcast, generally pleasant. You would think that living in Southern California would be hot all the time, but it is actually just nice. Yes, all the time. While that means that we have to tell any of our guests who visit that they should bring a jacket when they travel in July, it also means that we can grill in our backyard in February. I absolutely love living here.

So, Dad and Lee visited. The kids were so excited to have their Grandpa and Grandma at their house for about a week. What did we do while they were here? Somewhat of a repeat of their trip just a few months back, we went to the Getty. But, not exactly intentionally. You see, everything we need: work, school, shopping, beach, restaurants, Starbucks, etc are within three miles of our house. So I don't drive around a lot. I don't avoid it, but I have a limited view of where I am and where Los Angeles is (it's north). So, I got on the highway going north and didn't make it to the Science Center. That's off the 110, not the 405 which I took northish. So we went to the Getty. Will has enjoyed going there since he was 2 months old, fascinated by the artwork.

2 month old Will

Now, he and Alex are more fascinated by Holes in Rocks.

It was hard to get the kids to hold still for a picture since there were so many rocks around to sit by and climb on.

Wiggly Kids on Grandpa

Soaking their busy feet

Climbing on Rocks

Everyone making sure Alex doesn't fall into the fountain

If you too want to visit us and go to locations determined by picking a random highway and driving toward 'destinations' please let us know and we find something to fascinate a 4-year-old and a 2-and-a-half-year-old. And perhaps you too.

Raising Boys - Unique Challenges (and Benefits)

I'm very much in favor of experiencing the trauma of raising young boys and forgoing the hormonal mess that is dealing with 13 year old hormones of girls. And sometimes I just have to smile about it.

For you see, back during Spring Break, my boys were hanging out with some friends who have a house over in the exclusive Manhattan Village Community. It's a place that is popular with celebrities because of the fairly successful locked-down gated community with guards and such. Not terribly giant houses, but quite secure if you should do a lot of traveling but want a place close to the studios here.

So during Spring Break, quite close to Easter, my two boys ended up doing an Easter Egg hunt over at Manhattan Village. That's where they were when I went to pick them up after work. I managed to get in (walking) and found them at a wonderfully fun event with a bouncy house, magician, tasty sandwiches, and lots of chocolate in eggs. They were totally sugarfied. Given that it was getting close to dinner time, I attempted to convince them that they needed to take a walk back to our car which I had parked outside the zone of gated-ness. Oddly, they agreed, happily carrying their stash of chocolate in cutely decorated bags along the path.

At this point, Alex was still in pull-ups, so all was well there. However, the change in the routine of the week had caused Will to have a few accidents the days prior. So, as we walked along the green path, the whiny words, "I haaave to go potty" came from Will. And, since, after four years of having kids, I haven't quite learned how to translate my sarcasm into kid-friendly advice and because I was tired of Will having accidents, I said, half serious, "Why don't' you just pee standing up by this bush." Fortunately Will rejected this idea.

Well, he rejected the idea until about 20 feet further along the path when we weren't near any bushes and he had to go potty even more. The idea had sunk in that he should drop his pants and pee on the grass.

I showed that I was a good parent by resisting the urge to snap a picture with my camera phone. And we continued the evening without an accident or citations related to indecent exposure in a fancy community. :)

An Actual DAng-Adventure

That's right, we have children, but we escaped on our own adventure without them!
(Of course, when the kids get older and read this.. Kids, it's ok, we actually love you very much. Just because mommy and daddy want to take a trip every once in a while without you doesn't mean we don't enjoy spending time with you.)

Dad and Lee were in town between Christmas and New Year's. Yes, we do enjoy spending time with them too, but really, we hadn't spent time away from the kids overnight since July 2007. Oh wait, that was away from the kid, singular. It had been that long.

So Dan and I went to San Luis Obispo to stay at a gaudy hotel with a mediocre steakhouse.

The Madonna Inn is quite kitschy. But of course, since Dan and spent our honeymoon at similarly kitschy places, your stereotypical honeymoon spots of Niagara Falls, the Poconos, and oh, yeah, Fermilab, we had to try this place out. It is known for its 110 different theme rooms. There is a Caveman Room, a Victorian Room, and various other rooms. We stayed at the Hide-A-Way. It had rock walls, but that was really about it. It was no Poconos apple room.



We opted to have dinner at the on-site Madonna Inn Steakhouse. It was fully decked out in flocked Christmas Trees. The service was good, but it was kind of weird that our baked potatoes came still wrapped in the tin foil that they were cooked in.

Dan at Gaudy Steakhouse

After dinner we went to a movie. At a theater. Because that's just not something you can do with kids. We even saw the PG-13 movie, Sherlock Holmes. And since "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" was the last movie I previously viewed, it was quite enjoyable. Afterwards, we ended up back at the on-site Madonna Inn bar for desert which was also underwhelming with terrible coffee on the side.

The next day, Dan and I took a morning swim in the lovely outdoor heated pool which was part of the spa aspect of the Madonna Inn. It was steamy as they keep the pool at 80 degrees, but the outside air was quite cool. And it had a great view.

View at Madonna Inn

We skipped over to San Luis Obispo for a tasty, non-gaudy breakfast, then continued our adventure to San Francisco. We had considered going back home to manage the kids, but they were having a blast with Grandma and Grandpa at the Getty, so we kept going north. On the way, we made a pilgrimmage to TiVo World Headquarters. They were closed and didn't seem to have a gift store. I tend to have bad luck visiting the world headquarters of large technology corporations, like the time Neal and I went to Microsoft and couldn't get a tour.

Neal Wondering Where the Tour Starts

Before we left TiVo, we got this nifty picture of Dan there.

Dan at TiVo

San Francisco was neat. It was an exciting trip for Dan. We got to see a fungus store, and a very steep hill.

We also got to see Coit Tower, like on Little Einsteins. Plus, here is what Haight Ashbury looked like.

Thanks to Mike and Liz for the tour and entertainment!

Child Testing

No children were harmed in the creation of this post.

It is commonly known that about 4 years ago, I had close to zero experience with children. They were sticky, touchy, and loud. Now that I have sticky, touchy, loud children myself, I am fascinated by some of the things they do. Therefore, I feel compelled to perform Child Testing.

Inspired by Rocketboom's report about the NOM NOM meme, I searched for NOM NOM on YouTube from our TiVo. It came up with a video montage of NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM with some hamsters and broccoli. So I gave the kids broccoli and turned it on. Here is the result:

It amuses me that Will blindly follows what the TV tells him to do, stuffing the whole broccoli into his mouth while bouncing up and down and making NOM NOM noises. Alex tastes the broccoli initially, caught up in the emotion of the meme, then realizes that he has the ability to question the establishment and reject the broccoli.

And the thing is, it's not because Alex doesn't like broccoli as shown here in this video where the kids insist on eating more broccoli.

Are there any other memes that they should be exposed to? Hamster Dance has been ingrained in their minds.

Hello World!

Ok, so I have been lazy in posting to the blog. A terrible side effect of Facebook micro-blogging. (Side Note: It would be crazy if Will had his own facebook page for the sole purpose of playing Farmville!)

What are we currently up to? We are writing our Christmas letter. Yes, I realize that we have only a few days remaining to make it a Christmas letter prior to Christmas. We are trying really hard. It is likely that it will get written prior to Christmas, and possibly mailed after Christmas.

In the meantime, to keep things interesting, here is a picture from earlier in the year when we celebrated Alex's 1st birthday. Yes, it is sad, as a second child he didn't get posts about his 1-month birthday or his 100-days birthday or his 6-month birthday with a giant Bristol Farms 3-layer cake, or even, if you go back to check our January posts, his first birthday. This is just one of the things that I will try to blog about as the year closes.


This picture is great because:

• The Look on Alex's Face "What?"
• Lava Letters, "Happy Birthday Alex"
  
• The backwards 1. Backwards to everyone except Alex!
• We had to make a frosting lake because we had water dinosaur figures.
  
• There had to be more than 1 candle, because we needed more fire for the volcano. Just in case you couldn't figure it out, yes, volcano cake. It was Will's idea. Seriously. I was talking about how tricky it would be to make a dinosaur cake for Alex's dinosaur party and somehow my then 2.5 year old came up with, "Mom, we should make a volcano cake for Alex's dinosaur birthday party."
• Creative use of dry ice. Smoking Volcanoes!
  

Perhaps as we finish our Christmas letter, we will look at the things that we included in it and then do some catch-up posts. That is my Christmas wish. To post some blog entries. Let's see how it goes!

The Overuse of Technology

One of the core values of our household is the overuse of technology. We have various desktop and laptop computers with terabytes of harddrive space. We have an excessive number of TiVos (notice I didn't enumerate them, I lost track of the count a bit ago). We have had a SlingBox since 2004. We are connected to our iPhones and believe that every conversation with a question should end with a concrete answer provided by Wikipanion.

Of course, as Dan and I get older, we have started to realize that we are losing our edge in the realm of early adoption of technology. For example, we are committed to the un-jailbreaked version of our iPhones and didn't even really consider taking time to acquire and make the most of the google phone.

However, one of the advantages of being parents is that we can make our children pick up where we leave off in the area of technology adoption. We started to realize this when we acquired Will's laptop. Yes, Will has a laptop. Why? Simply because he needed one. Yes, he needed one.

As you may know, Will is 3 1/2 years old. We got him the laptop shortly before he turned 3. What were our motivations?

• Will has his own MP3s - I didn't want "The Wheels on the Bus" on my laptop / iPod. In addition to your typical kid's songs, he also has my favorite kids' songs. Specifically, "Beep, Beep" about satellites and "Friction." They can be found at Singing Science Records website. They were actually from old records, so be careful when you let your kids learn about the planets and Pluto is still listed. Perhaps you should get this shirt, just to make sure you have a way to explain the whole planetoid phenomenon to your kids.
  
• Given that Will has his own MP3s, he has his own MP3 player. It's one of those SANSA kids' players that you can shake to change the music. So it made sense to have a laptop. MP3 Player + music = need place to store MP3s for transfer to MP3 Player.
  
• Digital Photos - As his digital camera does not have a lot of space on it's memory card, Will needed somewhere to store his digital photos. Enter need for laptop. Yes, Will has one of those Fisher Price digital cameras. You know, the ones with the picture on the package of the camera bouncing down the stairs. He loves to take pictures of his stuffed animals, his brother, his books, and, yes, pictures of his parents. All pictures have the perspective of a person who is 3 feet tall. Will got his camera back in November of 2008 and even has some of his pictures printed and framed for the wall in his bedroom.
  
• Computer Games - Who among us doesn't like computer games. Will has a few that we got him back in last December. We haven't quite figured out how to set him up to play them on his laptop as he has a netbook without a CD-ROM drive, but that will come. Until then, internet games from kids' web sites work well.
  
• Video Conferencing - Will likes to video conference with grandpa. With the built in web cam in his laptop and the use of ovoo software, he is ready and able.
  
• You Tube - Will loves YouTube, especially the video of the cat batting at the printer with the shotgun sound effects. He also likes LED Sheep. But oddly, his favorite is a video about Solid State Drives that Samsung makes. He will watch it 10 times in a row if we let him.
  
• Movies and TV Shows - Even though it doesn't have a DVD drive, we are still able to transfer over movies and TV shows. Enter the magic of TiVo and video encoding. Dan does this part and it was quite useful on our road trip last spring to Baseball Spring Training in Arizona.

So, what kind of computer did we get? Originally we thought, we have tons of computer parts in the garage, including two bins labeled, "computer guts," why don't we build Will a computer? Then we realized that we would have to acquire a stable, non-flat screen monitor and find a location for the bulky computer. And let's face it, Will doesn't need his own home office... yet. So we went for the netbook. Given the choice between two different kinds that Dan was researching, we went with the one that was more "sturdy."

What crazy overuse of technology is next for our kids? Well, Alex will probably not end up with a laptop, or if he does, he will get Will's old one when Will gets an iPod touch. Hopefully not anytime soon. :) Until then, perhaps we will get them a theremin to develop their muiscal talent.

Cooking Kids
(Product Placement Post)

The kids love to cook. It is calming to them, it seems. What do they cook? Here, they use an apple bread mix from Trader Joe's.

Mixing Apple Bread

It worked out really well. Since one box makes about 12 muffins, I didn't want to make 2 batches, one for each kid. Instead, I split the box between the two guys. We easily separated the milk and melted butter into two parts, plus, the recipe called for 2 eggs, one for each bowl! As with most quick breads, this one warned against over mixing, but the kids love mixing and thoroughly mixed the top layer of their batter. They even paid attention when I told them the melted butter was hot and almost completely complied with the 'don't eat raw eggs' instruction.

After the kids were done mixing, Dan took the two bowls away to combine them and make sure there wasn't any dry mix in the bottom while the kids put cupcake papers in the muffin pan. Then Dan demonstrated how to fill the papers. The oven temp and cooking time need to be adjusted a bit for muffins as compared to the instructions on the bread loaf box. they turned out a little dark. However, we will do this again after our next trip to Trader Joe's. The muffins are good for dessert and breakfast the next day!

What else do the kids cook? Well, since Alex has decided the correct answer to "What do you want for dinner?" is "PIZZA!" we have tried making our own starting with some Boboli pizza crust. Here he is with his own creation:

Yummy! Even Uncooked

Ok, so most of the pepperoni and some of the crust bypassed the pizza on the way to Alex's tummy, but he basically got the idea about putting ingrediants on the crust. Here you can see two kinds of cheese and some brocolli. I like brocolli pizza, so that's what the kids get.

Will has also cooked cupcakes in the past and apple pie. What should we try to cook next?

Will's First In-Theater Movie

I have ruined my child for all future movie experiences. I took him to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" today... with an IMAX screen... in 3-D. And it wasn't even with the cheesy paper 3-D glasses either. The glasses looked like actual sunglasses and had big lenses so that you didn't have to keep adjusting the paper nose piece of other glasses every 2 minutes when they tried to fall off. Or when you moved your head to dodge the cheeseburgers that were raining down from the screen.

Of course, I remember my first movie theater experience. My family went to see "The Care Bears Movie" in 1985. It was at Studio 28, I believe, and was not in 3-D. I was nearly 10 at the time, and Robin was likely 7ish, so while there was a scary part of the movie, I don't think our parents were as concerned as I was today about the potential for needing to leave the movie theater with a distressed child.

Will did amazingly well during the movie. It helped that, unlike Disney films, there was no real villain. It was more of a story about someone wanting to be liked by others and gain his father's approval. It's tension came from the disaster movie part of it where a food storm threatens the small town and the world. There were none of the topics that Will has trouble with, such as getting lost from parents or just things getting lost in general. Oddly, the topic of attacking giant gummy bears was acceptable.

So, even though I wasn't able to capture any cute pictures of Will in 3-D glasses and post them here, I figured that I would blog anyway since Facebook is making me lazy.


And no, Alex doesn't get to go to a movie in a theater before he turns 4. Not because he is a 2nd child and unspoiled like our beloved 1st child. Unlike Will, he just doesn't have the attention span. Or perhaps he just isn't addicted to TV like our little Will.

I will try to blog again soon. Perhaps about the un-related, but matching eyebrown +stitches injuries acquired by the kids.

Our $5.47 worth of Fourth of July Fun

The longer we live in California, the more we realize that you really can't do much here. While most people view California as a laid back sort of place, it's really quite restricted by lawyer-induced regulation. One of those restricted areas happens to be fireworks. At least in Redondo Beach.

When we realized that Will was not going to take a nap today, we also realized that there was no way we could keep him up until 9:30 to see the start of the fireworks, much less later than that. So we went to Target to buy some last minute fireworks, thinking we would light them off in our backyard.

The guy at Target: "I think we have some sparklers over here" when I inquired as to whether they had any fireworks. Not that I would ever let my kids play with sparklers. I mean, they are burning magnesium at like 1000 degrees. But I figured, if they sell something dangerous like sparklers, certainly they might have a few cone-type fireworks that we could light and watch sparks fly up in the air while the kids maintain a safe distance?

This is what they had...


It's your typical, mild-mannered Party Poppers on the right. And on the left, it looks like cone-shaped fireworks. And something that says TNT on it? Surely these must be great, right? Oh, but wait, they are actually just slightly bigger Party Poppers. Yeah.

Fortunately, our kids are 3 and 1 years old and therefore easily impressed.

One of the Successful Pops (there were some duds)

Both kids enjoyed the "fireworks" and want more

The kids were ready for bed around 7:30 (yes, Will picked his bedtime outfit himself). Maybe next year we will see live fireworks. Or maybe we will hang out at home and watch the HD presentation of fireworks on TV like we ended up doing this evening. Clearly, we won't be finding any awesome legal personal fireworks. :)

The Best Home Improvement Ever

In our house, there is a lot of whining. I think it has something to do with having a 3-year-old who copies the 18-month-old who thinks he is now a terrible 2-year-old. One of the whining things that happens a lot is when Will wants to go to play in his room or go to the bathroom...

It's daaaaaaaaaaark!

Finally, the solution!

We installed these kid light switches. In the same week, we also started letting Alex sleep in the bunk bed. (No, we did not put either of the kids on the top bunk. The bottom bunk is a full-sized bed, so there is plenty of room for two little kids.)

For the last 3 years and 3 months, our mornings would start with yelling from the kid(s) room. Will has always woken up crying, probably because he was lonely. Alex is a much calmer waker. When they were in the room together, Will in the bed and Alex in the crib, the mornings would be somewhat calmer, with less crying, but still with the "mmmmommm, mmmmmmommm, mamadad!"

Now, with the kid light switch and the sleeping in the same bed? Mornings are much more enjoyable. Will gets up to turn on the light and start playing. Alex wakes up and gets out of bed to play too. They are not silent by any means, but are sometimes quiet enough to sleep through for a few more precious minutes. It's so much more peaceful than rushing to the room of crying/yelling kids.


And, since the light switches allow Will to turn the light on for the bathroom and his room when they are dark, less whining! Now, if we could just get the kids to find breakfast on their own in the morning.

Update: This morning, July 4th, they wandered out of their room, found apples to eat, and pillaged the "Hello Panda" cookie supply.

Mounting the TV to the Wall Project

The kids didn't nap today, so we put them to bed at 7:30pm.  This meant we had the whole evening free to do a project.  We mounted our TV to the wall, then pulled all of our "components" from the cabinent that had been under the TV.  This is part of the extraction results:


Notice the pile of wires in the background.  I got the job of separating them into individual wire units.  We had at least 8 ethernet cables and 3 routers in the stack of stuff.  We had all sorts of audio visual cables, including 5 cables that I had never seen before.  Somehow,  in the end, we had 9 left over wires and 2 ac adapters.  

Some organized wires

While sorting through the pile of wires, I felt like I was on some sort of "So you Married a Geek" reality show and this was one of the challenges.  You know, the wife decides to acquire a new piece of furniture (our old one was made for a corner, this one is much more streamlined) and the husband geek must deconstruct his entire electronic component set-up and reconstruct it on the new piece of furniture while the wife plays some sort of useful role.

Not Quite Finished

So that's what we ended up with.  I think it still needs some conduit or at least zip ties for the wires.  Also, we might put up some sort of shelf or backboard for wire concealing.  You may notice that we only have 2 TiVos and 1 Verizon DVR set up here.  Why would we use so few TiVos?  Well, let me explain.  While we do own 8 TiVos or so (it's hard to keep track), the TiVos shown here are special.  Or at least the one on top is special.  It is a series 3 and can record in HD.  It has 2 tuners so it can record 2 shows at once.  Plus, it has the Wombat drive to the left which stores an additional 500 gbs of shows.  So that's why we only have 4 DVRs (2 TiVo in living room, one in bedroom, one Verizon DVR in living room) running at this time in our house.  

Also, we get to try the same thing with the TV above our bedroom dresser.  There is only one TiVo in there which will remain on the dresser, so we won't have to assemble a cabinet of any sort.  

One step closer to organizing our house!

Picture Time!

As the children can now play for a few minutes by themselves, Dan and I have started on the 'home improvement project.  What do we have in mind?  We would like to do some of these things:

• Install skylights in our odd dropped ceiling.  It is in our dining/dan's desk area of our living/dining room space.  It looks like a school ceiling, complete with eerie florescent tube lights.  It needs some updating.
  
• Install solar panels on our garage roof after re-roofing it.
  
• Replace our carpet which seems to be taken out of a "My Name is Earl" episode when they have the flashbacks to growing up in their parents' house in the 70s.
• Remove the ugly kitchen wallpaper.
• Replace the tile counter top and maybe even the whole super low kitchen island.
• Paint!  So far we have only painted my office (orange), Will/Alex's room (green), and recently, the guest bathroom (sky blue).  Everything else is icky white.
• Mount TVs on the wall.
• Hang Pictures.
• Organize Kids' room. We have some toy bins ordered.  We anticipate them working better than the dumpable toy boxes and drawers they use now.
• Get some sort of playground surface for under the merry-go-round.  Right now we have those connectible work mats.  They help to protect the kids from scraping their knees when they fall down, but it would be great to have something that doesn't blow apart in the wind. 

Right now, it is picture time.  I was thinking about buying some sort of artwork.  

We wanted to start with the bathroom since we just painted it.  But then, I thought, why not just print out some of our travel pictures and put those up.  So last week at IKEA, we bought a picture frame to try out.  We sent some pictures to Costco.com to print to 20" by 30" size.  We bought more IKEA frames.  And now, we have 4 large framed pictures with which to decorate our walls.  Yea!

Here are some pictures of the framed pictures.

Snowy Tokyo Park Scenes

California Wave and Kauai Lighthouse

Yes, they look much cooler in person.  We are thinking about putting a set in our guest bathroom and are not sure what we will be doing with the other set.  We have many blank walls, so I think we will come up with something.  

So then, I got to thinking, in the grand scheme of organizing the kids room, we will be putting up pictures on their walls too.  We have a picture of Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave".  We have a glass picture of a fish.  But what else to put on the wall?  More of the pictures that Dan and I have taken?  Nope.  Since Will has his own camera, we thought we might try letting him use some of his own pictures to decorate his room.  He gets excited about the process of moving the pictures from his camera to his laptop with the USB cable.  Then he talks about sending them to the printer.  What kind of shots did we end up with for hanging?  Here is another IKEA picture frame, but this time filled in with 3 of Will's pictures.

Will's pictures are interesting.  What he chooses to photograph and the angle he shoots at just can't be duplicated.  Some of Will's other shots include me pouring dishwasher detergent into the dishwasher, pictures of his llama and his puppy posing, and pages of books he likes to read.  Then, there is that time he ran into the bedroom when I was getting dressed... we deleted that one immediately.

The Alex picture is funny because whenever Will takes a picture of Alex, it is always blurry.  They just can't both stop moving long enough at the same time to get a clear shot.  Maybe we will have to try some outside in bright light.  

Will actually chose the Alex picture above over another one.  He said that Alex was doing something funny and that he also thought the bib was silly.

Wiggly Will

In an effort to post things to the blog, I offer Will... trying to wiggle his nose.

Nothing Happening?

Perhaps you were wondering if our failure to post on the blog means that nothing is happening here in Southern California. On the contrary, we have now had two medium sized earthquakes in the last couple of days.

One on Sunday Night that was 4.7.

And one during work yesterday that was 4.0.

Now we do have earthquakes on a regular basis, but the thing about these recent quakes is that they have epicenters that are about 5 miles from us. Close enough to cause some adrenaline and send us towards a safe place under a table.

The kids slept through the Sunday Night quake, Alex not even stirring when we took him out of his bed. Our original nighttime plan involves us grabbing Alex and joining Will on the bottom bunk of his bed since it would probably be a reasonably safe place to be. However, that evening we experienced a tough time of getting Will to bed, so during the quaking we changed plans to shelter in a different place. Waking Will up would have been unpleasant.

For the second quake, the kids didn't really care either. When I picked Will up from school and asked if there was an earthquake, he said, no, there was just a bell and they were practicing their earthquake drill. Alex had no discernible comment related to earthquakes.

Other things going on? I'll post soon, I promise.