The Specter Family Blog

Matt -- Steph -- Faith -- Mari -- Robby -- Hannah -- Salsa -- and........



Tuesday, February 3, 2009

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!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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

Friday, January 16, 2009

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

Sunday, January 4, 2009

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

Monday, December 22, 2008

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

Friday, December 19, 2008

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

Sunday, December 14, 2008

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

Friday, December 12, 2008

Cliche but true

I love the holidays. I really do.

I especially love the music. Since there are all these songs that we only hear during this time of year, they BECOME the holidays, they DEFINE the holidays, I honestly believe they create a change inside of us simply by being heard.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had a tougher time immersing myself in the holidays in recent years - the realities of organizing things with kids makes it much busier and less peaceful. And this year has been tough as well.

But yesterday I finally completed the process of importing all my Christmas music to iTunes and syncing up my iPod. Now understand, this took about a week - I have Christmas music that spans almost all genres and time periods. From "Hipster's Holiday" to the Empire Brass, I love it all. And so I hooked my iPod up in the car on the way to work today, set it to shuffle all my "Holiday" music and drove to work.

One of the first songs to come on was of course Mannheim Steamroller's "Deck The Halls". And I am almost ashamed, yet joyously happy to report, that I was almost immediately fully in the season.

That arrangement...is a total cliche to anyone who listens to holiday music. It's so omnipresent in the malls, we almost don't listen any more. And musically, it is SO CHEESY! The sounds are straight out of the Main Street Electrical parade - bad
80s synth like you wouldn't believe. Compositionally it's pedestrian. It is so DATED...

...and yet it WORKS. And I think it's because it was a fresh idea at the time. And that freshness is something that music can retain even if its component parts have worn out.

And as a musician and part-time music snob, I'm embarassed to admit that this piece of American Cheese has such an effect on me. Look, people. I think that Chip Davis has run the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas franchise into the ground. He has more albums out there than I even know about (and I am a completist with my album collections). I think his later attempts are largely uninspired attempts to recreate the magic of the first Christmas album. I've been to his live Christmas show - it falls into the 'so bad it's good' category.

But...

I can still remember driving to my grandparents in Pennsylvania with that music on in the car. It has become synonymous with the magical feeling of the holidays - of going to visit far-away relatives where great things happen. It is so cliche, so cheesy, so LAME...but it works. And I'm glad to say that I finally feel like Christmas has come into my heart now.

That's great, Chip.

Matt

Monday, December 8, 2008

Creepin' on

The holidays inch ever closer, and we still haven't started wrapping yet. I'm hoping to start tonight, but I'm doing the single dad thing tonight, so when it's all said and done I might be too tired to do anything. I think the trick is to get the wrapping supplies all organized and ready in the afternoon, so it's all there and in place when I need to start.

Trouble is, dad is hopefully coming over to help with the lights. Been trying to put the dang lights up for a week now, too. But our house is seemingly designed to resist all attempts at decoration and cheer. There's no place to attach anything. And I have an awful feeling that once we get it all up it's going to look bad, since dad and I are not the best at anything either mechanical, crafty, or visually artistic. But at least we will have tried.

And then the other trouble is that I have brass quintet rehearsal tonight at church. Yeah...I think I'm going to be way too tired to wrap tonight. *Sigh*

In the meantime, school plods on. Kinda fun time of year, doing holiday songs in class and whatnot, but on these days when I do different lessons with "12 Days of Christmas" in 3 different grades...man it's hard on the old voice.

Not much else to say - things will be interesting soon when Steph has her surgery and is out of commission for a few days. I'm not even ready to really think about that yet.

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by (the handful of you who still read it).

Matt

Thursday, December 4, 2008

The Sickness Unto Whine

Faith is sick. She's had a nasty fever for a few days (topped out at 102 but is getting better today). She also had a sore throat, although it took us a long time to get that information worked out - much like her father, she has trouble localizing internal sensations. Seriously, I sometimes have itches that I can't find. When the dentist tells me to move my tongue this way or that way, I have to concentrate and think very hard to even come close to doing what they ask. Likewise, Faith couldn't get any clearer than 'my mouth hurts'. And for a while, we thought it was her teeth. Then we thought it was a cold sore. Finally we observed her wincing while swallowing and were able to conclude that she had a sore throat.

Strep tests negative (although Faith didn't scream bloody murder during the swab test so I am suspicious that they didn't get far back enough). And ibu and tylenol do a good job of managing the fever. But in those moments when she's between doses, man oh man. Faith, when she has a fever, has a cartoonishly sickly look. Her whole face droops, her eyelids half close, it would be funny if it weren't so sad. And she came with her father's genes when it comes to fever. She's a mess. Not as bad yet as I used to be (I would hallucinate, sleepwalk and have serious sensory integration issues) but I think she might get there someday.

So, Steph and I have been alternating days off work. No way we're going to leave a sick 4 1/2-year-old, a rowdy 3-year old and 7-month-old twins with anyone else. We've also been praying that no one else gets this nasty virus...cross fingers, knock on wood, toss salt, etc.

Holiday shopping is nearly done - wrapping awaits....

Matt