Where does he put it all?

I used to think my son had a hollow leg. Shane packed away so much food at meal times, a baby explosion would not have surprised me.

Now that I know the trick to this feat, it's no longer quite as amazing.

Blast from the past alert - Shane was trying to unlock the iPad and I was watching the slideshow of old pictures flashing in the background. Lifehouse's "Hanging By a Moment" was playing. This old beaut of a picture popped up. I don't think I ever posted it, so I decided to post it now.

Playground Pandemonium

Shane's changed as he's grown, but his love for the outdoors and running have been constant. Combine those two loves, and my son is one happy toddler.

Thank God for tot lots.

Shane and I go on a walk every night. On these walks, we stop at the many different playgrounds we stumble across. Shane tears around at full drunken sailor, falls, laughs, and wears himself out for bedtime.

Yes, my son runs like a drunken sailor. Just look at those arms flailing! Captain Jack would be proud.

Filming Shane can be a challenge, though. If you want some more behind the scenes footage, click to see more!

Either iPhones are easy to use, or my son is developing a brain

Sorry there's no sound.

Shane actually first started unlocking iPhones a month ago. I got a GREAT video of him laying on Carrie and playing on the phone. My wife vetoed me posting it, because it was a great up the nose shot for her! Shane's learning new tricks every day, so I'm sure we'll get a good video with sound as soon as we remember to do it. I'd do it now, but Carrie is out of town this weekend for work. It's just Shane and I! Oh, the Shannigans we'll have.

House Carousel

We're hopping on the house carousel again!

We made an offer on a townhouse over the weekend, but found a better opportunity for a single family home. Last night, I wrote my little blog post in between negotiations and check-ins from our agent. I'm thrilled this opportunity came up. For one, Carrie was stressed and down in the dumps, because she felt she hadn't found our next home yet. There were two homes she liked that had contracts offered while she visited them and she visited a bunch of other properties she didn't feel were up to snuff.

Have I mentioned my wife knows a lot about houses? When we walk into a house, she's noting the type of cabinetry, styles of carpet, and who knows what else! We dabbled with the prospect of buying a house and she shocked a builder by identifying the style of granite they used. At another house we walked into, I found out that wood laquered cabinets was a phase in the 80s that didn't last for a multidle of reasons. No, I don't remember all the reasons, but I do remember I was impressed my wife new all of them.

Why is this important?

I have not seen the house I'm contracted to buy. I signed the contract before I looked at the pictures online.

It sounds foolish, but I belive the smarter a person is the more they can acknowledge the knowledge of another. My wife knows much more about houses, updates, and how to spot shortcuts in construction than I do. I'd be more the fool for pretending I know more than I do.

Next Tuesday will be fun, though. I'll get to see our future home at the home inspection.

Faith based scam?

So, I got an odd letter in the mail the other day. It was from St. Matthew's Churches and had a bunch of text all over it talking about how I needed to open it and receive God's blessings.

Now, I'm a Christian. I believe in evangelism and reaching out to others.

I'm also an American. Whenever I see something that claims to be awesome, I start wondering what the spin/catch is. Maybe it's the effect of the endless commercials and the pursuit of profit, but it's made me a little cynical.

Instead of throwing the letter away, I tossed it on my 'slush pile' of junk mail and promptly forgot about it.

Tonight, I finished reading my Bible for a little bit and remembered the letter. I went ahead and opened it up out of curiousity. I found a paper "prayer rug" and a "prophecy" that said I should tear up if I'm not going to read it.

First, a prayer rug as a 'medium' to communicate with Jesus goes up against everything I've come to understand from reading my Bible. The New Testament warns against using psychics and mediums. The Holy Spirit follows after Jesus' resurrection to allow us to have a personal relationship with God. No divine stationary is required. I really don't know how a paper prayer rug is supposed to save my soul. There's an optical illusion to it as well, which I guess is supposed to inspire. A gimmick.

At this point, I feel a little sick to my stomach. Using faith to fleece the flock? The letter screamed "scam!" I went ahead and opened the 'prophecy' to read it next. It's nothing I'm going to quote here. It does touch upon many Biblical promises, but the scriptures it quotes at the end stood out to me: Joel 2:28-29. By coincidence or design, I finished reading the Book of Joel before I read the letter. The scriptures were referenced inaccurately; far from what could be considered a difference in translation. I threw away the letter, or I'd quote it directly, but it basically talked about praying and getting all sorts of good stuff. I was surprised that the letter didn't ask for money directly. I guess that happens after you write back.

My wife, ever the researcher, immediately took to the internet. She found a blog, the Pondering Pastor, who pointed out some inaccuracies, and ended up looking up the Better Business Bureau's report on St. Matthew's Churches. Apparently, they don't count as a Church/non-profit because they won't release full financial statements. That was something of a give-away when we noticed their website was a '.com' and not a '.org.' Wikipedia claims that after you reply to the first letter, future letters will come from the 'church' claiming you need donations for your prayers to come true. Yes, I know wikipedia is not the fountain of impossible to alter truth, but the whole situation reeked enough my wife and I felt we had our answer. I'd post the links, but....well, battery is dying as I type. If I have time I'll update it tomorrow.

Evangelism, I can support. An attempt to extort money and profit based on someone's faith and insecurities? That's horrible.

One Tough Baby

Shane's one tough baby. He came home from Nana's house with a cut on his nose today. He's had a few abrasions on his fingers, a skinned knee, and bruises on his shins as of late.

Why?

Two reasons: 1) He can get all sorts of places he shouldn't, and 2) the boy has no fear.

Actually, the whole no fear thing could be summed up as "no survival instinct." I like to think he has total faith in Mom and Dad's ability to protect him from serious harm every time he tries to run off a slide at full speed.

Honestly, my son is amazing. I know I'm biased, but it is true. When I had the tutor family watch him several weeks ago, they were shocked when Shane tried to scale a fence (successfully). At the playground, Shane can climb up ladders, steps, and even this one chain-link rope ladder. He scrambles up to high places that he has no way that he knows to get down (save running or diving off the edge and making Da-da catch him or stop him short).  On the home front, no table is safe. If there's a chair nearby, Shane can be on top of it in under 10 seconds. If there's no chair nearby, he's learned to push one over. He startled Carrie and I today by reaching up and dragging over the small table in our kitchen awning. The little Houdini has also learned how to undo the velcro ties that hold one of the baby gates shut.

My son is amazing. His full baby intellect is geared towards how to get places he really shouldn't be able to reach yet. People see him, and I think they misjudge his age because of his size and what he's physically capable of. My little monster dwarfs some two and three year olds on the playground. He's not capable of the speech and logic they are capable of yet, but the other parents do see that as much as they see me shadowing a rambunctious runner bigger than their own spawn. 

Shane is one busy boy! He's going to be a bruiser when he gets older unless I can train some empathy and "look out for the little guy" into him.

Shane Games

Shane gave us another scare in the wee hours of Thursday morning. I'm beginning to think that parenting is half responding to imaginary crises and half responding to real crises. You just don't know if it's a real crisis or not until after you start reacting.

At 2 AM, Shane started a coughing fit in his crib. He did not cry, but the coughing continued until 2:20 AM when Carrie got worried enough to get out of bed. I admit, I wasn't at that point yet, but I was laying awake listening. I was more worried going in there would prevent Shane from going back to sleep since he wasn't crying yet and that that would upset him and cause everyone to get up.

Carrie was also extra-sensitive at this point. We got a text over the weekend that her father had a coughing fit that caused him to pass out. He fell on the hardwood face first, broke his glasses, and gashed his forehead. Everyone was worried about his heart, but after being at the hospital they determined his coughing fit was severe enough that it had cut blood flow to the brain. Very scary. You can see why Carrie would be extra worried when her son starts having a coughing fit after what happened to her dad.

Where was I? Oh, right. A little after 2:20 AM, Carrie has a warm bottle and goes to check on Shane. She starts to panic and call for me. She says that Shane wasn't responding to her when she first tried to wake him. When I get in the room, he starts to vomit what looks to be mucous. Shane's still coughing.

Carrie is scared. She starts saying, "We need to call 911."

I'm worried, too. Thankfully, I'm normally calm in the moment of a crisis (the jitters may hit me later when the adrenaline dumps out of my system). I flip the light on and look at Shane's face and lips. I don't see any blue tinging. There's no sign I can tell of that he's short on oxygen. The coughing is unabated, and he's clearly not well, though. He's crying off and on in the gaps between coughing, but the fact he can cry is a sign that he can breathe.

Carrie's still asking for an ambulance. I don't want to call one out for a false alarm, but I also know my wife well enough that we're going to end up in a hospital. I tell Carrie to go start the car. Giving someone on the verge of panic a job is a good way to focus them. I can't see any sign that Shane is in immediate danger as worrying as the situation is. I want to get him outside, because the cold air helped when he had the croup cough last time. Shane vomits more mucus on me to let me know that he really is sick.

By the time we get to the hospital, Carrie wants me to run into the ER with Shane while she parks. "Don't let them make you wait!!!" Shane's happy as a horse in a field at this point. I think he remembers the hospital fondly. All the lights and attention! I have him standing on the stand-in counter coughing and cooing when she comes sprinting.

I admit: last time when Shane ended up having bronchilitis I had thought it was going to be unnecessary to go the ER. That time, I was wrong. This time, I was right. Nothing showed up on the x-rays. Shane's oxygen levels were fine. He had a slight temperature and was cranky, but otherwise doing well. Hallelujah!

I am glad we went to the ER to get everything checked out, but I'm happier that I have good health insurance. Shane's doing fine now as if the whole thing never happened. He's still stuffy and congested, but that's been the status quo with his allergies. He has an appointment for allergy testing on the 17th.

That's one more scare to add to the tally. I'll have to post more of the fun Shane stuff later on. It sounds like he's waking up from his early nap. I managed to type in three quick posts! Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

House News

Sad news on the house front.

The lead tests all came back way positive inside and out.

The bottom of the report said that >0.5% weight was the federal definition of lead-based paint. The actual values around the house were all over 20% and as high as 34% in some areas. The average was around 29-30%.  Carrie and I ended up walking away from the house.

People have expressed their condolences, but we don't really need any. It sucks we didn't get a potential single family house, but we're only out the time, home inspection bill, and crooked lead tester's price (he'll be getting a nasty google review at some point). The people who own the house, now have to disclose to anyone interested in buying that they have lead paint. That's going to cost them a much prettier penny than we paid. I don't think they had many offers (if any) before ours, because the house had been on the market for close to 40 days when we stumbled across it.

We're back in the hunt. We're in a little bit more of a time crunch since we have to close on our house June 6th. Back-to-back closings aren't likely as we haven't found another house to put a bid on yet. Carrie was disheartened yesterday, because she found a great prospect and discovered a Radon test while she and Barbara, our agent, were walking around. Someone had put a contract on it that morning. There is a townhouse near us that's up for less than ours, but may be another good turn around prospect several years down the road.

We'll just have to keep on looking.

New Korra Conspiracy Theory

My wife sent me this email out of the blue a few days ago:

"If [Amon] truly is missing his face, he could have made a deal with Ko, the face stealer, for the power to remove bending. But, he still has his eyes...."

One of the things I love about my wife is how passionate she gets about things. We have a Potato GlaDOS on a shelf, and a Bazinga! shirt in her closet. Can you tell how much she loves her TV? I think she's still holding to her first prediction about Amon being Aang's son, but I didn't doublecheck before I wrote this.

I'm the one who started her on the whole Avatar binge. During Snowmaggedon, I showed her the original series. We watched several episodes together and then I went outside to shovel out the cars. I ended up helping out several of the neighbors and spent more time outside than planned. Naively, I assumed my wife would wait for me to come back to watch further into the series. Carrie was 8 more episodes in when I finally got done. I didn't want to watch things out of order and she didn't want to wait for me to catch up.

She finished all three seasons by the end of the next day.

Today's a new episode day for Korra and I am prohibited from watching it before Carrie gets home from work. Can you see the irony?

Like, whoa busy

Life has been way busy lately.

Some highlights:

-Shane's allergies are still going full force. He was a sniffly, snot-dripping, cough-fest today.
-He also got his head stuck in the cat door today. I got the phone call from Carrie while I was at work.
-I was at work until close to 6 PM today getting ready for being out to do the portfolio assesments
-Carrie went through hours of phone time today working on the mortgage documentation
-She was also stressed out from our jerky lead testing contractor who showed up an hour and a half late on Tuesday. He lied on the phone to Carrie, and then the seller's agent about being "10 minutes away" at the 30 and 60 minute late marks. He added a surcharge to the bill, too. What a dick.
-Packing and weeding through old items has begun.
-Shane is incredibly athletic for a baby his age. He can already climb ladders, chairs, tables, and get just about anywhere you think he can't. I'm both proud and exhausted from chasing after him whenever he's awake.
-We're still rocking no computers. I haven't had time to play a video game, though, so I guess it's not much of a loss. I'd update my journal more, but there's normally not a lot of time.
-Plus, I don't want my lack of time to sound like whining. Life is just busy with working, parenting, buying and selling houses. God has blessed us greatly with our son, our jobs and our opportunities.
-I'm looking forward to summer, though. A break from the ever present drama of working in a school will be nice.
-Oh, and no word on the new job bit. I sent my resume in for two positions a couple of weeks ago, and I've heard nil since. There's two more opportunities that just popped up (including my alma mater) I plan on applying to. Hopefully, someone will bite. There's a lot of competition it seems.
-There've been good/funny stories too, but there will be more to come. I can't write down everything, since I'm too busy living it! That's not a bad thing in the long run. I wonder if I'll ever re-read this post or just glance over it and say "Nah. There's something more interesting to read elsewhere." I guess this is more of a "post so I don't feel like I'm negelcting the blog" post.
-I love bagels now and forever.
-...and don't forget tea. The best drink ever.
-If I stop drinking it, the caffeine monkey will make my head hurt.
-I'm going to stop rambling and go wash baby bottles now.