House Broken!

What a process this has been! We heard so many suggestions...everything from "they'll figure it out on their own when they are ready" to "let them run around naked and they'll want to use the potty". Luckily, I have been blessed with a supreme amount of patience to persevere through the lengthy process!

Actually...truth is that I'm lucky that I have a beautiful wife with the patience to persevere through the process. Anyone who believed my previous statement probably shouldn't be reading this blog!We tried just about everything. We let her go naked. We forced her to sit on the potty. We bought pretty Dora undies so that she would (hopefully) want to keep them clean. There were times where none of that seemed to work. The amazing thing about kids is that everything just "clicks" all at once. Looking back on Julia's development, that's the way it has been. You try and try and try to get them to do something and just when your perseverance is shattered, out of the blue they do it!

Getting her to go pee-pee on the potty wasn't too tough. She got that consistently pretty fast...although we did have a stage where she was going for Mommy and school, but refused to go for Daddy. Given that I have her alone on weekday evenings, this was a frustrating time period.

Poops were the big challenge. I feel like she was scared to go. She would save them up and then just explode in a massive accident...rendering irreparable damages upon whatever cute cartoon character she had been wearing that day. Then one day it happened! It happened at school, but she did it!We had been promising Julia a "Special Treat" when she finally went poops for the first time. So I picked her up from school and they told me of her massive achievement and I took her to the toy store to pick out a toy. I was willing to deal with the "I want that...and that...and that..." because it was worth it! I was SO proud of her.

A couple weeks previous, she had been looking at a store flier that had Pillow Pets in it and she told her Mommy that she wanted the Blue Dolphin Pillow Pet. As we walk into the toy store, she spies a bin of these overpriced, under-supportive pillows and said to me, "Daddy, I want the Blue Dolphin Pillow Pet". After letting her hold it for a bit, I convinced her to not make such a rash decision and look at some of the other toys in the store.

We finally find the Dora aisle (yes...she has her own aisle) and Julia starts to vibrate. I was certain that we would be walking out with some sort of Dora play thing. I let her check everything out and play for a few minutes. Her excitement was amusing not only me, but several other store patrons who stopped to be entertained by her for a moment. Finally, I squatted down next to her and asked which toy she was going to choose.

I was really expecting her to ask for all of them and get upset when I made her choose. I'm pretty sure that's what two-year-olds do. But she knocked me on my heels when she said, in a rather matter of fact way, "Daddy, I want the Blue Dolphin Pillow Pet!"

The three of us left the store together that night, happy as can be..."Squeaky" the Blue Dolphin Pillow Pet, who had found a little girl who was going to love the heck out of him, Julia because she got Squeaky and me because my little princess could not have made me prouder that day!

-Andy

Fall Chores

Our game of catch up is almost complete. Falling behind on the blog saddens me. Our intent is to keep this going as a chronology of our family. Occasionally, I go back and read some old posts and that's what makes this thing so rewarding. I can't imagine how cool its going to be in 20 or 30 years!
Last year when we attempted to involve Julia in our Fall leave cleanup, pretty much all she did was cry. What a difference a year makes! She's all about it now!!! When I took her outside to rake, I gave her a little sandbox rake while I went to the garage to get my rake. When I came back out, she already had about a four foot circle raked up!
She helped with every aspect of the job...raking, bagging, running sprints up and down the driveway, going down the slide, and most importantly jumping in the leaves!

I think she had a blast...hope she still feels that way when she's fourteen and I'm waking her lazy but up early to rake our leaves! When we finished, she and I were walking up the driveway to come inside and she says to me, "Boy Daddy! Raking leaves is hard work!"

For the second year in a row, we "hosted" Thanksgiving. I say that because this year, Courtney's Dad (aka the Big Man and Pop) had a procedure done and in order to make it a bit easier on him, we packed up and took the show on the road. It was like a Top Chef challenge where they change the venue on you mid stream...so it was pretty cool.

Everything went smoothly and I'll be honest...it was a pleasure to cook at Grandmom and Pop's house. Ma Jones has a pretty killer kitchen. Although it was weird preparing a meal in an oven that was accurate.

After dinner all the grandchildren helped with the tree decorating. Jules (of course) was all about it! Although I don't really remember this part. I think I had fallen victim to a tryptophan overdose!-Andy

Cooking with Minnie Mouse

It is ironic that I am writing a post about cooking as I sit here eating one of the worst egg sandwiches that I have perhaps EVER made! Nothing aggravates me more than when I screw something up cooking. I am much more forgiving of others cooking mishaps then I am of my own. It is critical that my creations come out perfectly every time!
Hopefully in time, I can teach Julia a few tricks to help her to be a fantastic cook, but for now she'll just have to pretend with her toy utensils and plastic chicken legs, cookies, etc. We do make quite the pair in our aprons though!

Just after Julia was born, I went on a business trip to Orlando and for the first time (of many many more since) I bought her a toy. It was a little stuffed Minnie Mouse. I think it was like thirty bucks, but that's what I get for buying it in Orlando...besides, I would have spent anything on it. I remember my dad coming home from business trips and being so excited to see what he brought us. Even though Jules was only four months old, I knew it was something that I just had to do.
Now I would like to think that my little stuffed Minnie influenced her Halloween costume decision, but I'm sure the Disney Channel had more to do with that. Nonetheless, she dressed as Minnie for her first actual trick or treating experience. Major kudos to Mommy for making an AWESOME Minnie Mouse costume! I was awefully impressed! She even tried to make the ears and got close, but eventually had to just buy a pair.
Here are Julia and her cousins heading out for a major candy haul!

-Andy

Elmo, Princesses and Pumpkins

October was a BIG month for Julia. I've noted before how she is my little helper, but she is just starting to understand some of what we're doing. It is becoming more than just doing what Daddy does. For instance, she knows what a pumpkin is and what a jack-o-lantern is.

































So like every other house in America, we too need to spend money on pumpkins to make sure that their life doesn't end in vein, rotting in a field, but rather are wasted properly as jack-o-lanterns. This year we even saved the seeds to roast them...but I kinda messed that up. Courtney found a good recipe for them and I left them in a bit too long and the delicious recipe tasted only like burnt.

Now a couple weeks prior to this, Julia and I on a father/daughter excursion, drove all the way to Bivalve to get these pumpkins. They were grown by kids in our Westside Summer Camp and I wouldn't buy my pumpkins anywhere else. Jules picked out each and every one of them and got one for mommy, daddy, Julia and Mia. She never forgets Mia!














So now came the day to carve. As you can see, Courtney and I got all dolled up for the event. Good thing that we're not in too many of these photos. Julia jumped right in. She was pulling out seeds, telling me where to cut the eyes and nose and loving every minute of it! For me, this was really the first "holiday" related activity that she's gotten into to the point where I had immeasurable fun watching her.

Earlier in the month, we went to see Sesame Street Live...Elmo's Healthy Heroes! I thought the girl's head was going to spin. The show was later than her typical bedtime, but she was so good! She was totally captivated and was basically vibrating with excitement. I have discovered that "vibrating" is a true description of what a child does when they are really excited. I LOVE when she does it!














Julia is getting pretty independent. She likes to try to dress herself. The other day, I came into the living room where I left her with her pajamas. She was still wearing her clothes from that day. From the kitchen I heard her yell, "Daddy! I did it all by myself!" I ran into the living room to see Julia now wearing her pajamas over her clothes! Here's a shot of Julia playing dress up with some princess clothes!










She is after all...my Princess!!!

-Andy

Dawn of a New Day!

I can't believe that we haven't had a post since July! Well we are back!

So many things have happened recently to get us motivated to get this blog back to where it should be. Yeah, there's Julia...she's growing like a weed, partying like a rock star and shaping up to be a MAJOR Daddy's Girl. But that's not all.

The Huskies are on a huge roll. Football is headed to a BCS Bowl and basketball recently beat the #2 and #9 teams in the country on back to back nights...let alone what the women's hoop team is doing (can you say John Wooden?).

Then I go and read Rhino's Blog (linked on the left) and realize that he is significantly out blogging us...and his rants are pretty entertaining too! To top that, there's a certain Beck family in NC with a new beautiful baby Carly that is just kicking our tails in blogs! And they're talking trash about it! Oh! It's On!

But the major motivator here has got to be the Boston Red Sox! In honor of them making their biggest off season move since signing Manny (LBMF's namesake for you long time blog followers) in 2001, WE'RE BACK!!! We are out of retirement and back in the game!

No, we're not back in the blog game...we never left. It was a sabbatical. Actually, Julia has been holding us hostage during every free minute we have. No...we're re-entering a much bigger game than that. Apparently, we enjoyed sleepless nights, spit-up and exploding diapers SO much that we're going to do it all over again, starting in May!

In honor of this series of significant developments, I feel that we should give our unborn child an appropriate moniker. Hereforth, our unborn child shall be known as LBAF, in honor of Adrian Gonzalez coming to Fenway Park this Spring! Just as Manny did, I'm sure Adrian will deliver another World Championship or two. And it will start Little Baby Adrian Fenway in the right direction as he (God...please! I need backup here!) becomes an avid Red Sox fan.

In another coming out of retirement story, I had the pleasure of donning the tools of ignorance for the first time in about twelve years this summer, as I was invited to play a game with my brother in law Nate's men's league team. And what an experience this was! Good news is that the soreness went away yesterday!















It was kinda like riding a bike! I never missed a beat!




















Too bad they don't make chest protectors that cover the belly!




















A massive swing and miss here, but I did go two for four with a couple RBI's and runs scored.




















Hopefully one day there will be a picture of me and Julia with her wearing the 'gear'!

-Andy