Dinner troubles

The twins are being difficult at dinnertime these days. I mean, even before the fevers. They've become quite picky, and of course, they don't like the same stuff. Hannah prefers to scream at her food rather than eating it. Robby enjoys deliberately and carefully dumping his milk all over himself. And they both have somehow gotten the idea that the food is only good if you take it down from the table and walk around with it. Seriously, a couple nights ago, Hannah was crying and screaming in her booster seat, so we got frustrated and said, "Do you want to get down?"...she made her "yes" sound so we started getting her out, at which point she grabbed two of the chicken nuggets she'd been screaming at to take with her. When we took them away and put them on the table she screamed and leaned over to get them. So we put her back in. At which point she refused to eat the nuggets. The process repeated then several times. Where did THAT come from?

That's all for now. Keep checking in.

Matt

Fever

At any given point in the house right now, up to 3 kids have temperatures over 100. Kind of a rough couple of days. So far I've managed to escape it - not sure how, but here's hoping it continues.

Actually, given the way the season started, we thought it was going to be a lot worse, but the kids have stayed largely healthy until now. I credit a lot of that to Steph and her drill-sergeant command of the hand gel routine.

Steph is developing a minor addiction to Mario Kart - so cute!

See you later, all...

Respectable effort on my part

We scored the double overnight - twins with Grandma D, big girls with AS&UG. Which meant that the wild and crazy Specters actually went to 2 social events in one night - unHEARD of.

And then...the next morning, we were able to sleep in until 8:45 or so. No stinking way. Amazing. This helps make up for being awakened 3 times by Faith the night before telling us that she saw scary things with her eyes closed, AND with her eyes opened. Which prompted me to ask her exactly what we were supposed to tell her at that point.

Not to sound callous, it's an ongoing issue. Steph is very good at being comforting yet firm in those situations (and of course they always go to HER side of the bed...) but after the 3rd one I had had enough.

I will be making my yearly awkward and uncomfortable jaunt to OMEA this week - at least it's in town this time around. I will be sure to file a report about how I'm the creepy-looking guy in the general music sessions. No one wants to sit next to me. Well guess what - that's fine by me. I'll be digging out the dark dark music for the iPod to wash off the happy stink. [shudder]

Plans are coming together for the summer - more on that later. We're also starting to think about throwing a decent-sized party for our anniversary this June - being the 10th and all. Even toyed with the idea of trying to get our wedding parties back together. Hmmm...that would require me bringing in people from Cleveland, Las Vegas, the Oklahoma Panhandle...and ironically, the dude who I might have the hardest time finding and convincing to come is the guy who lives here in town. Anyone with contact info for Vic Gaskins...please give me a call.

Thanks all,
Matt

Uneventful

Not much to report - I wouldn't be posting at all but for my recent resolution to do it every day.

Robby really likes to play with the toy kitchen these days. I would say he has a future as a chef if not for the fact that he likes to stand on the open oven door and slide the knife through the closed microwave door. I hope he's not getting it from watching me.

Horkleshnoff

So one of my zaniest ideas in getting Faith to control her sassiness was coming up with a silly word that I could say to her to remind her that she was going down a dangerous road with her behavior. Obviously if she's feeling defiant, she likes to say the opposite of what we tell her, so coming up with something that had no 'opposite' would take away the option of her 'talking back'. And, it would sort of hopefully do the old zen master trick of shocking the mind into awareness by NOT following any logical pattern of thought. Or at the very least, derail her grumpy train with a word that just sounds silly. She agreed, and we agreed that we would regualrly change the word to keep it fresh. So now, in our house, when Faith starts getting nasty, we tell her "Horkleshnoff".

Of course, it's really just me. Steph can't ever remember what the word is. We decided that she should get to choose the word next time so that she can remember it. But...at least so far...it seems to work. When I say it she looks at me very angrily, but she stops what she's doing long enough to keep her out of trouble.

And I haven't even had to yell it yet.

Matt

So far so good

So, yesterday...

Well, first I should mention that I lost my wedding ring on Monday. We think it fell off at DSW - just one more reason to hate buying shoes. Pretty much hopeless at this point, because if it IS around the house or one of the cars...well...we may never find it.

Yesterday I made a haphazard first attempt to have 'daddy school' with the girls. Crazy idea of mine that the kids aren't getting enough of their parents' specialized knowledge. Just to have little 20-minute or so 'lessons' about things I want them to know, or things I think they ought to know a little better than the average kid. I decided I wanted to teach them a little about brass instruments, since they can't seem to get the names right. Brought everything in, let them play them, nothing fancy. Nothing too exciting or fun for kids, but it was bugging me that they still get trombone and trumpet mixed up, so I wanted to start with that. In other words, this one was for me.

Went ok. I'll make the next one more fun for them. It's hard, because as Steph pointed out, we don't want to step on what they're getting from Kindermusik...and they're at different places developmentally. We'll keep trying. First 'mommy school' is Friday.

Had a good meal out at Gold Star - they have a Kids Eat Free on Tuesday deal, and we have been doing SO well with not eating out, we don't feel bad when we do it as seldom as we do. Probably the first meal we've had in a long time which did not involve a single child screaming all the way through. It was blissful. Skyline is far superior flavor-wise though...

That's all for now - expect another update tomorrow.

Renewed commitment

I've done this before, and I will try yet again.

There is a spectrum of communication, which deals with importance and frequency. They are inversely related. The more often you talk to someone, the less important or momentous the subject matter is likely to be. You can trace this over history, in a general sense, truncated below:

Most of human history: Letters. Sometimes painstakingly crafted, works of art in themselves. Sometimes the only surviving documents about people who have long since passed...and yet we can learn so much about their worlds, their lives, their realities. But at the very least, they contained a certain weight, a certain critical mass. People wouldn't take the time to send a letter saying "Not much happening here". You knew when you had 'enough' to take the time to write.

Fairly recently: Email. Easy to send at relatively convenient times. Free. Correct spelling optional. Since there is no act of writing, easier to put together, and ultimately, reasonable to send out with very little actual content. But still, it takes some time, so usually you have SOMETHING to say.

Allow me to pause for a moment and point out the similar history of written communication in the world of art. Moving from ancient times, stories passed on through oral tradition, painstakingly memorized and repeated, people devoting their entire lives to retelling the story......on to novels, crafted over years and years and as a result, limited in quantity but all the more precious and valued. You could go two different directions from here - novels give way to short stories, but short stories largely die out - they can't seem to find a home, and the amount of work needed to craft them far exceeds the appreciation. But in the meantime, in our modern age we start churning out formulaic novels and so our favorite 'authors' can put out an impressive body of work but the value of each individual one becomes less and less.

And here now, the paths of communication and art converged somewhat, a few years ago in the world of blogs. Communication like a letter or email, but put out there for all the world to see and judge like a work of art. And the main criticism with blogs back when they were a fairly new phenomenon was that it was people's random thoughts and who really cared? Blogs were everywhere, people would write what they thought when they thought it, and we could all SEE it. But each individual blog post was less and less important. Who can remember a blog post that changed their life?

But this wasn't enough. We pushed it further along the spectrum. Next it was facebook, with status updates about what people had for dinner, or the condition of their sprained ankle, trumpeteted like a billboard for all your 'friends'. And it went even further with twitter. Happily, twitter still seems to have a decent backlash population...those who think it's a little silly. But most of my peers in 2010 are quite comfortable with facebook and its place on the communication frequency/importance spectrum. It seems to be where we are right now, and I respect that.

But for me, I fit more in the blog category. I'd like to think of myself as a 'letters' guy, but the fact is, I don't have time. I'd love to have the freedom to sit and construct a beautiful thought and then translate it to words for all to understand...but I have sibling fights to manage and diapers to change. The only reason I have the freedom to put all THIS into words right now is that it's 'records day' and all my 'records' are up-to-date. So while I don't have time to make all my thoughts beautiful and reasoned and heard, I also don't want to let my communication slip into virtual belching of whatever trivia is happening at that moment. I still want my communication to MEAN SOMETHING.

This is why I don't do facebook. It's too far in that direction for me. People say I'm stubborn or a snob. I'm not. I don't criticize most people for doing it - I may make fun of some of the worst excesses, but by and large, people are staying connected that way, and good for them. I just fit somewhere else right now. And having this blog seems to do it.

There's just one problem.

I really really suck at keeping it updated at all.

So I am going to try one more time.

Recognizing that my ability to post less often but with more important and meaningful info is not particularly keen right now, I am going to try to post once a day. Really. I am. It's on my list. If I can make myself get up early to work out, I can stay up a few minutes later to give a daily update on the goings-on in the Specter Family, which is what most people who follow it really want in the first place. So the posts will mean less, but they will at least be regular...and more important than a tweet.

So, keep checking back. Expect daily updates for real. Now.

Thanks all,
Matt

Post-holiday decompression

The big days have come and gone. Everything went very well. The twins especially seemed to love all their new toys. It was so nice to be able to stay at home all day on Christmas. I had trouble this year getting the Christmas feeling, but I feel good knowing that it certainly felt like Christmas on Christmas day.

It was a very good Christmas and Took Birthday season.

No big snow yet here...I have a feeling there won't be one this year...but Steph has pointed out that I say that every year. Good point.

Nice to have another year of a decent amount of time after Christmas before going back. 2012 will bite - the 2nd is a Monday so we'll start back right away and have a full week, I'm sure. Not fun. But, for this year, we have until the 4th which still seems far enough away that we don't have to think about it yet.

Happy Holidays all!

Matt

Oh Boy...

Just a quick update. We were SO happy to see everyone last night!

We were NOT so happy to be awakened at about 1:30 this morning to Mari freaking out that she had just stepped in vomit. Faith (top bunk) had thrown up, we think in her sleep, and had managed to do it over the side of the bed. Her bed was nasty, as well as the side of Mari's bed (bottom bunk) and the carpet below. Nice. Matt and I work pretty well together as a team for these middle of the night crises -- not the first for sure and certainly not the last -- but it still stinks. And I couldn't get back to sleep until like 3:30 this morning.

Ah well. Back to reality, right?

Now to get everyone healthy before Mari's 4th bday party on Wednesday! I can not believe she turned 4 years old yesterday! Let's hope her 4 years old year is easier than her 3 years old year...

Steph

They're Baaaaaack...

Oh my.

Gonna be a rough few days transitioning the girls back into being home. Pray for us.

I mean really pray.

Hard.