So Inclined

Quick update - been on the treadmill for 30 minutes for 4 days straight. Hooray for me. Had to go out and buy some new shoes after Steph pointed out that my heel was bleeding after working out. The new scale we bought is working out great as well - much more consistent than the junky old model we had before. Feeling pretty good about the progress we're making.

Keep wishing us good luck and good health!

Matt

Do Tread on Me

We bought a treadmill. Used it for the first time today. Made it to 22 minutes on one of the pre-programmed routines. The only time I have to do it without giving up further family time is to get up at 5am. Which honestly isn't that bad, I'm usually up anyway, but there's a big difference between lying in bed awake and speed-walking on a treadmill awake. My energy level the rest of the day will be interesting.

We've been eating better, attempting to lose weight and be more healthy, so this is just the next step. Way back in the day (before kids and between jobs) I worked out every day and was doing like 45 minutes on the elliptical consistently. I also weighed about 55 pounds less than I do now. I've lost about 10 pounds already this time around.

Anyway, I am going to attempt to add a minute a day until I can complete the 30-minute routines. Then we'll hold steady there for a while until it feels normal and then try to up it a little more. The thing about me is, all things being equal I am a fat lazy slob, but once I'm in the middle of this kind of project, I can be a machine. I'm the guy who'll hurt myself doing too much.

So, expect weight and endurance updates on the blog as well.

I also am really hoping to get back to posting videos to YouTube - my problems with the Moody Blues notwithstanding. Luckily, no one else has seen me as a threat and demanded my insidious videos be removed, so I don't anticipate any further problems.

Also added a link to the Towners' blog - check it out!

Matt

Weekly Update

Here I am at conferences again - no weather to report this time.

Normally I'd be hardcore working on vides right now, but I am feeling incredibly lethargic right now and can't seem to motivate myself to do anything. Been a long week. I am hoping that I can drag myself over to the laptop at some point soon to get a LITTLE something done.

Hannah finally got her first tooth. Robby already has 4. Their hair is also starting to really come in well - nothing like Faith and Mari had but enough that it makes them look a little different. Neither shows any sign of crawling or walking. Robby loves to stand - if we can help him practice he'll cruise soon. Hannah may sit for her entire life. She has a remarkable range of motion from the sitting position. She can flatten herself out on the floor to reach something and then prop herself back up. Meanwhile Robby can roll anywhere in a room within a matter of seconds. They've both started Kindermusik classes and are having a great time.

Mari is doing fabulously in preschool. She continues to absolutely adore the twins. She's also gotten a lot better about being calm and not loving them to the point of injury. She's also learned how to backtalk to her parents which is not so good. She still will give us Tookie face from time to time, and still loves to play dressup more than anything in the world.

Faith is also doing great in preschool, and is apparently well out of her shell there. She is reading chapter books at home, and doing so obsessively. She can't go from one room to another without carrying a stack of them around with her. She asks us what unfamiliar words are and remembers them well. While we're a little sad that she'll be going to Kindergarten in the fall, we're happy that she'll be somewhere where she can hopefully be a little more challenged.

All is well in the family. Snow days are behind us, the springtime grind lies ahead. Summer is starting to hover on the edges of our awareness. A return to the Beach after a 3-year absence, another epic RV adventure. Thanks be to God for all he has blessed us with.

Matt

Is this a weather blog now?

Okay, so I am sitting at "conferences" (which as I believe I have posted before consists of me sitting in my room for 3 1/2 hours by myself) and watching the snow come down. Reports of 1-2 inches per hour. And I can't leave for another 90 minutes. Now granted, the snow is supposed to let up by then. It's one of these clipper systems - powerful but small. But my drive home could be a disaster.

I might be here a while.

Anyway, usually during conferences (if my lesson plans are up to date, which they are) I work on videos - you know, those things I used to post to YouTube (I will again sometime). Well, this time I'm working on salvaging all the data I lost when the external hard drive with the video files crashed. Which involves importing the files from the DVD I made of the original mpegs...to make more mpegs. Lots of fun. But, it's working so far which means I won't have lost all the videos. Will be looking into purchasing online storage very soon - I don't trust myself any more - had too many USB device accidents.

Once that's done I will be as up-to-date as I've been on videos in a long time. I will be done through last summer - all I will need to still do is...some random baby and kids at home videos, Halloween of 2008, Mari's 3rd Birthday, Christmas of 2008, Babies first foods, and maybe another odd collection of things here and there. This is pretty amazing considering I've been over a year behind before. And really, I couldn't do it without conference night.

They just got on and told us we can go. I need to pack up the computer. Good luck, me!

Ice Ice Baby

It gets longer and longer between posts, doesn't it?

We are on our 3rd straight day of no school for ANY of us - the monster snow/sleet/ice storm has passed but the city is still basically shut down. I'm a weather buff and this storm was like nothing I've seen or will probably see again. The radar showed a solid line of precip from New Mexico all the way to the Atlantic, and I think that 80% of it psssed right through here. Usually around here if snow is coming, it might be a window of 6-8 hours at most...but this was almost 2 solid days of various forms of cold things falling from the sky. We have some pretty serious fence damage from trees falling in the backyard from the ice. Will have to post some pics of that sometime - not sure how we're going to go about that - the trees fell from other property, so it should be the OTHER guys' repsonsibility...and that will entail some awkward conversations I'm sure. Great.

Girls did some sledding down our driveway - had a good time until Mari slammed into the fencepost and hurt her arm. Oh, and the Directv dish is iced over so we have no signal at all. Meanwhile, we're all getting some cabin fever so we'll probably head over to G&Z a little bit today to have a change of scene.

Oh, and not long after my Columbus post, the hard drive with all our video and picture files crashed. We think we can recover the important data, but discouraging to say the least.

Gotta run. Thanks for stopping by.

Matt

Greetings from Columbus

I am out of town! (Which is why I have time to post)

Spending a couple days in Columbus for OMEA (music teacher convention here in Ohio). Could wax philosophical about the oddities of any convention...suffice it to say, I think a fascinating study could be done about behaviors by different professions at conventions...you throw a bunch of people together who 1) all have something in common and 2) care enough about it to spend 2-3 days talking about it, and you have a recipe for weirdness to be sure.

The problem is that it's now about 10 below with a wind chill in the minus-20s. I'm not entirely sure, but this could be the coldest weather I've ever experienced in my entire life. And in a few minutes I have to leave the warmth of the hotel room to get to my car and hope it starts.

I am enjoying the solitude but it will start to get to me soon. See, here's the problem: I officially have NO FRIENDS in the state who share my profession. I am the lonely creepy guy. Brian is here but the band sessions are in a different part of the building. All my friends from college are either out of town, out of the business, or both. Karen my colleague at school...goes to KMEA in Kentucky. So it's just me. Which again, I like...for a while. But by Saturday I'll be very happy to get home with everyone.

In other news, I'm back on the eating right wagon - lost about 10 pounds so far, give or take. I want to try to get it down another 20 or so, and then see what I'm feeling like. We're seriously looking into purchasing a treadmill to give us that extra exercise boost...but that's quite an expensive purchase if you want a good one. We'll see.

Thanks to all the family who are helping Steph out while I'm gone. It's not easy.

More later - the other big news is that the summer trip is officially being put in place...reservations are being made, which means I can start talking about where all we're going. Look for that soon.

Into the cold...
Matt

Finding Time to Post

Wow, it's been a while.

Christmas went very well. The girls were actually really really good - we had a present-opening procedure for our immediate family in the morning and they followed it very well. And then they were both pretty good at the big family Christmas event, and only started to get squirrely and antsy at the third session in the evening. No real complaints about that. So far, I wouldn't call any gift a total bust - a couple cases of 'you get what you pay for' but even those got one use out of them so it looks like we did really well. Faith actually didn't complain once about not getting everything she asked for...and that surprised me. Good for her. By now there are just a handful of things left that haven't been opened or used yet, and there are plenty of things still around that haven't been used much, so there's still a lot of novelty value to be had.

Overall, a really good break considering the circumstances. Steph is now recovering from surgery quite nicely and is lifting the babies again. Still trying to not push it TOO hard, but it's nice that I don't have to do EVERYTHING any more. I'm proud of us as a family - we really pulled together to make everything work. All the thanks in the world go to the extended family for all their help during the break to keep us all sane - thanks you guys - we couldn't have done it without you.

And so now it's back to work again - time to readjust the old bodies to the daily grind and hammer slowly forward. It's entering into prime snowday season in Cincinnati, but nothing good on the horizon yet.

Sorry so long between posts - there's more to say but that's all for now.

Matt

Percocet

All is well. Sort of.

Well, Steph is doing fine. Mari of course chose the day after Steph's surgery to catch a stomach bug, and couldn't even keep water down for 24 hours. But she's fine now too. I'm fine. And thanks to the incredible help we've been getting from the whole family, the house is in great shape and ready for guests on Christmas.

So yeah, all is well.

Steph is drugged up but slowly attmepting to decrease her dosage - she's ready to choose an increase in discomfort over a drug-induced haze 24/7. And she really really is finding it difficult to not lift the babies at all as instructed. But we've both heard enough horror stories about people who DIDN'T take it easy following this procedure that we're going to be extra EXtra careful.

Not much else to say. Wrapping is all done. We're ready for Christmas here. Bring it on.

Matt

Scarbelly part 2

Steph is at the hospital as we speak ready to undergo her hernia surgery. I am enjoying the calm before the storm. In a few minutes, I will start waking up the kids to get them ready for Faith's preschool Christmas concert down at Newport on the Levee. Steph gets everyone ready on her own every morning, so I know it can be done. I'm a little stressed about it, though.

Steph will be off her feet for a few days and unable to lift anything for 2 weeks at least. So I'm running the show solo (but with lots of help from our great family and friends of course). Not exactly the way we had envisioned the holidays, but as we say way too much in this family, it is what it is. Posting could be sparse again, but I'll try to sneak in a word or two.

In case I DON'T get back on between now and then, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Joyous Solstice, whatever your bent.

Matt

Two down, two to go!

I haven't posted for a while. So I figure I might as well do my part. Plus, I need an excuse to procrastinate on my lesson plans! ;-)

The kids are doing well. The title of this post refers to the fact that Mari is totally and completely potty trained now except for when she's sleeping. 2 kids down, 2 more to go on the potty training! Phew! We thought it would never happen with Mari and I'm SO glad that it did before her 3rd birthday (which is this Friday). Other parents might disagree with me on this, but I totally believe that in terms of getting kids potty trained during sleep, there are not special tricks really. At least when they're still in the preschool age. It will happen when it happens. So for now, we'll have to keep buying Pull Ups for Mari to wear to bed but that's SO much less than we had to buy before!

Which is also good because I had to buy my first pack of diapers for the twins the other day. They are 7 months old now and it's the first time I had to buy them! My wonderful, amazing school where I teach gives diaper showers for its faculty and staff who are expecting. In fact, I still had size 2's left over from Mari I had so many! The twins are in size 3 now and I didn't have as many of those. I'd say that not having to buy diapers for the first 7 months is great!

Along similar lines, Robby (for sure) and Hannah (pretty soon) are now officially too big for their infant carrier/car seats. Ugh. Robby's exactly 20 lbs and Hannah is 18 1/2. It's tough because those things make it so much heavier but SO much more easy to carry. Carrying a heavy kid w/ a handle is easier than carrying the heavy kid who is squirming in your arms! Plus, without the carrier, you can't just set them down anywhere and if they fall asleep in the car, you still have to get them out of the car seat as opposed to just bringing the car seat with you.

Since I'm having my hernia surgery this Friday (yeah, I know, I'm an awful mom -- having my surgery on Mari's bday -- I feel horrible about it...) I won't be able to lift anything over 15 lbs for 2 weeks. The reason we're doing the surgery during Christmas break is so that Matt will be home with me for 2 weeks and can help with (well, let's be real, DO) the lifting of our chubbah babies. So I told him that if wanted to wait a few more weeks to transition the babies to their "big girl/boy" car seats that that's fine. It'd be easier on him. Plus, that delays the inevitable of having to buy another car seat. It's amazing to me that we have our 3rd and 4th children and yet we'll still be short one car seat. Oh well.

So, that's about it for now. We're frantically trying to finish everything by Wednesday (the cleaning/straightening up for Mari's bday party for family/close friends) & then Friday (the wrapping, shopping and other stuff for Christmas day).

I hope you all have a wonderful, happy, fun, safe and healthy holiday!

Steph