Archive for category Family

Spinning Up on Racquetball

I’m back on my feet, my knee is getting better all the time, and it’s Corporate Challenge time!  I’m not sure where last year’s representative Scott went this year; I was expecting to have to face him again.  Instead I am playing a couple of guys I’m less familiar with.

I had my first match today.  The guy I played, Brett, was a very good player.  He’s a lefty, with a very powerful forehand smash and a pretty good backhand.  As long as I drove hard for the balls and remembered to shoot to my forehand (which is far from natural for me) I had good success.  When I tried to play my standard game, shooting down the left side, he’d put shots away with regularity.

I beat him in straight sets, but he was a great sport and we had a good time discussing our strengths and weaknesses after the game.  It’s fun to play someone with a radically different style than you’re used to, and since I basically only play one guy anymore, everyone has a radically different style than I’m used to.

Next up is Stan, and if I beat him I get to play in the actual Corporate Challenge tournament for the first time in at least 4 years.

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Baby Katherine

It’s not a secret that Katherine is jealous of baby Jonathan.  She certainly makes no attempt to hide it.  In the first days after he came home she would make an extremely obnoxious noise when he was nearby, and was prone to telling us “Down baby!  Down baby!” when we carried him.  There’s still quite a bit of direct jealousy, but currently her preferred expression is to try to emulate him.  Well, either that or to say “No baby cry!” when he’s being fussy.

She started her emulation process by trying to climb into his high chair, which didn’t work particularly well.  She then moved on to his Boppy seat, which she can just barely wedge herself into.  She also spends a lot of time in the rocking chair in his room, which is where Robin nurses Jonathan.  Lately she’s been trying to swing in his motorized swing.  It has a weight limit of 25 lbs. — she’s 45.  She’s now also developed a fake “baby cry” that she uses when she’s playing sometimes.

Yesterday she tried jamming herself into Jonathan’s rear-facing infant seat.  She was able to do it — by squeezing her knees up to her head.  Robin took the opportunity to fuss over “baby Katherine” and put Jonathan in the booster seat, which greatly amused Katherine.

I’m just concerned that we’re going to find her lying in his crib, or trying to put on one of his diapers one of these days.

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Lost Domain

Due to a SNAFU with Namecheap, I lost my domain for a day.  Combined with a power outage due to a storm here, we were left with no webpage, and when I got the computer back up, still no webpage and no mail forwarding.  So I quickly re-upped the registration and got everything set up, but I had lost the post I’d sent to my email account.  I should be able to retrieve it tomorrow.

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Family Gallery

Thought I’d share a selection of some of the best pictures from the last couple of weeks.  Here you go!

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The Swim Meet

Thomas had a “mini swim meet” yesterday as the finale for his 4-week swimming class.  I did not get to go, but Robin did, and took a lot of video, which I’ll get up as soon as I figure out how to import it from Windows 7.

Thomas swam in 3 events — he got 5th place in the backstroke (although 2nd through 5th were all very close), 4th place in the crawl, and 1st in the breaststroke.  He would probably have done even better on the breaststroke had he not paused to look around at his competition during the race.

He was very happy and excited to have done so well — Robin said that he was hamming it up the whole time, particularly during the ribbon awards ceremonies, and I think we now have a future swim racer.  Video to follow (hopefully soon).

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I’m Not Dead Yet

Sorry for the lack of updates; I’ve had a bad cold that knocked me out of work for a day and a half, and came back to the office in the midst of work and family emergencies.  I’ll try to get back to a proper update schedule starting next Monday, after I’m caught up and (hopefully) sane again.

Until then, have a good week and weekend!

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Third Time’s the Charm…

… or is that “three strikes and you’re out”?  Jonathan and Robin are sharing their third cold in about a month.  The two of them just don’t seem to be able to catch a break.  Jonathan seems to have an ear infection this time around; he’s still the happiest little guy you could ever meet, until he goes to nurse on Robin’s right side.  Apparently that position combined with the suction or swallowing really hurts his ears, and he just bursts into pitiful tears.

With any luck, they’ll come out of this one quickly, with renewed immune strength, and we’ll have a nice, illness-free spring and summer!

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Weekend Travel

For the third weekend in four weeks, we took it on the road up to Nebraska.  The event this week was my niece’s first Communion.  Thomas had a soccer game this week, and we’d missed last week’s already, so we decided to stay for the game and travel up after that, making the trip was pretty short.

Despite that, it was more pleasant than last time, particularly for Robin.  The last trip was great for me, but Robin was horribly sick.  This time Robin was healthy, so she could actually participate in conversation.  The kids slept well, so even though we had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to the church service, everyone was pretty much ready without major attitude issues.

We went to my brother’s house after the service for a great breakfast.  Brooke opened her presents and then challenged Thomas to a giant Super Smash Bros. tournament in the basement.  Watching her perform combos as Zelda with the Wiimote while wearing what looked like a miniature wedding dress was pretty funny — I wish I’d gotten pictures of it.

All in all, a good trip, but we’re looking forward to being in town for a few weeks so we can get caught up on home maintenance and geared up for spring and summer!

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Knee Update

So after two days of getting serious about the strengthening exercises and wrapping my knee, the pain is almost completely gone.  I’m still going to keep this up for at least a couple of weeks, but I’m pretty amazed at how quickly I’m bouncing back now that I put some effort into figuring out the right way to go about taking care of my injury.

Corporate Challenge here I come!

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It’s the Knees, Always the Knees

I play quite a bit of racquetball.  For almost 10 years, I’ve played several times a week, eventually getting good enough to get to finals in our state tournament in B division.  Unfortunately, I also apparently don’t spend enough time working on quadricep strength.  If you let your quads get weak, they don’t do a good job of holding your kneecap in place, and you can get dislocation injuries and pain.

It’s happened to me once before, and I was able to rest and restrengthen the muscles, and drove on.  Now it’s happened again.

I’m kicking myself, because the exercises to keep this from happening are easy and quick; it’s just my own laziness that left this door open again.  And if I can’t get things strengthened up, straightened out, and fully healed, I won’t be able to play in this year’s Corporate Challenge tournament.  I dropped the ball last year and didn’t get to go; I don’t want to miss it this year.

So it’s quads every morning and night until May; we’ll see how it goes from there.

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