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Posts Tagged Thomas

Rebooting the Blog

Sep 6

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Writing and Philosophy | 2 Comments

The blog has been out of action for about 10 months or so, give or take a post or two.  Competing in IFComp 2010 took an enormous amount of effort, and I burned out hard after the competition was over.  I let pretty much all of my creative activities drop, and am just starting to put the pieces back together.  This blog was the last piece of creative expression to go and will be the first to come back, but I’m going to pace myself this time.  I’ll start with a post a week, and if I can sustain that I’ll try to move back to two or more posts if I have sufficient content and time to write.

It’s not that I lack for material — far from it!  A lot of things have happened in the intervening time.  We’ve had wild and wooly changes with Katherine’s autism — most notably, she now has diagnoses for autism and Tourette’s Syndrome, and is on medication to help with the severe tics she has as well as the anxiety those tics create.

I’ve read tons of good books, seen a lot of good (and bad) movies, and have played some of the most cinematic, richly-produced, narratively advanced PC and console games I’ve ever seen, all of which I’d like to discuss and review at more length as the weeks go by.

On the personal front, I injured my knee (again) and recovered, got back playing racquetball regularly, and started lifting weights, which puts me in probably the best overall physical shape I’ve been in for years.  The kids continue to grow and develop.  Thomas continues doing well in school and competing in various sports (flag football is the newest addition).  Jonathan has developed into a little charmer, talking constantly and grinning at you with his winning smile — at least when he’s not throwing a full-bore terrible twos tantrum.  Robin continues to do the impossible on a daily basis, keeping the kids and Katherine’s staff organized and productive.  When Jonathan goes to school and she’s ready to work, she should be able to step right into a CEO or COO position without blinking an eye.

And, of course, when October rolls around, it’s going to be IFComp season once again.  I don’t have a game in the Comp this year, but that means I can write reviews while it’s in progress, and I’m planning to cover every entry this year.  I can’t wait to see what returning veterans and new authors alike have for us this year!

Finally, I’ve also linked the blog to Facebook, to provide folks that prefer social networking an easier portal to see content here.  I hope it works properly — let me know if something seems messed up.  So watch this space in the coming weeks for more updates.  We’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

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Moaning Myrtle Has Left The Building

Jul 26

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Humor | 2 Comments

My son Thomas has been voraciously reading the Harry Potter novels.  He’s now over halfway through the second one, and asked me the following question at dinner the other night:

Dad, why does Moaning Myrtle hang out in the bathroom?

I responded:

Well, she died in the bathroom, so that’s where she haunts now.

I kind of expected that to be the end of the conversation, but he had a followup:

Dad, did Moaning Myrtle die on the toilet, like Elvis?

Now, Thomas is 9.  I’d bet serious money that he has no idea who Elvis Presley is.  And he’s 9.  Did I mention he’s 9?  How did he possibly find out that Elvis died on the toilet?

No, I think she slipped and fell and hit her head.  But how did you know that Elvis died on the toilet?

Of course, I’m waiting with bated breath to hear this one.  And I guess it makes sense in retrospect:

Anthony [a kid at school] told me!

So now I’m left with trying to envision just how this came up in conversation.  Were they discussing Pokemon or their favorite Wii games, and Anthony just happened to bring it up?  “Yeah, the penguin suit is really cool, but the fireflower lets you shoot fireballs.  Hey!  That reminds me!  Did you know Elvis died on the toilet?”

I’m just coming up short here.

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A Special Morning at the McDonald’s Playplace

Jul 6

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

On our last day of our 4th of July staycation, the whole extended family went out to McDonald’s for breakfast.  We chose this for two reasons:

  1. We’d eaten all the eggs and didn’t have anything prepared for that morning, and
  2. It had been raining constantly for the last 24 hours and we wanted to get out of the house and go somewhere the kids could play.

So we ended up at Mickey D’s.  We deliberately chose the one nearby that doesn’t have video games, so we wouldn’t have to constantly chase the kids away from them.

When we got there, there was only one other family there.  A deaf man was there with two cute little toddler girls.  We couldn’t tell whether they were hearing or not; they just signed to communicate with their dad.  Over the course of breakfast, several other families arrived as well.  Towards the end of the meal, Thomas was walking around with a little Hispanic girl that either couldn’t or didn’t speak, and who looked slightly dysmorphic.  She was hugging him with a huge smile on her face, and wanting to hold hands as they went around the play area.

It was fairly obvious that she was special-needs of some sort; after Thomas and the girl played together for longer, her mother came over and told us how wonderful she thought Thomas was, as he was “the only child that was ever nice to her”.  Even allowing for a bit of maternal exaggeration, we were extremely proud of Thomas for his kindness and tolerance for being hugged and fussed over, even though it was obviously a bit embarrassing for him.

Shortly before we left, another young boy came in with his parent or caregiver.  He was an African-American boy who looked to be about Katherine’s age, and he was also either mostly or completely nonverbal.  He bounced a lot and hooted, and was approximating some sign language.  He had the hugest grin on his face the whole time; it was obvious that he loved being in the Playplace and was having a great time!

So, counting Katherine for our family, there was exactly one couple there who did not have a special-needs child at the Playplace that morning — Robin’s sister and brother-in-law Polly and Rick.

I think before we had Katherine and learned to understand and deal with her autism I would have been really freaked out with that many special-needs kids around.  But given where we’re at and what I’ve learned over the past few years, I just enjoyed the fact that everyone was playing together really nicely and having a great time, whether or not they had any disabilities or differences.

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Swimming Weekend

Jun 21

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

We had a pretty good weekend!  My mom came down to watch Thomas’s swim meet on Saturday morning, but also got to see his baseball game on Friday night.  Thomas got two good hits but never really got the ball in the field.

At the swim meet, he demonstrated improved form in his freestyle, breathing on both sides and getting his arms out of the water, but his kicking is still pretty weak and not propelling him enough.  He ended up either fourth or fifth out of six in freestyle.

He was last in backstroke — we definitely need to work on that stroke — but in breaststroke he did great!  He was second place in his heat and his form looked great — if he hadn’t kept looking to the side to see how he was doing against his competitors I think he could have won.  He also had by far the best breaststroke form in his heat, so he should only get better with time.

The rest of the weekend was fun also, although Katherine had an upset tummy early Sunday that really made her miserable.  Fortunately, she had recovered by evening and had a good time swinging out back before bath and bed.  Before my mom left, we went to the new Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant up in Shawnee, where the food comes out on overhead tracks to your table.  That was pretty fun, and was a nice way to end up the visit.

Below are some movies of Thomas’s swimming. In freestyle, Thomas is second from the right. In breaststroke, Thomas is in the far left lane.

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Baby Monkey

Jun 14

Posted by Robin Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

Jonathan only moved from belly crawling to hands-and-knees crawling about two weeks ago and now he is pulling up to a full stand on furniture and climbing full flights of stairs.  We’re going to need some more baby gates! I’ll need to look back and see how that compares to Thomas & Katherine.

There is at least one thing special about Jonathan and that is his magical ability to spit out medicine no matter how I contrive to give it to him.  First we tried moving him to lay on his back so the medicine would immediately flow to the back of his mouth.  No dice!  He blocked it with his tongue and pushed it right back out.  Then we tried sliding it in just a little at a time thinking it would be harder for him to catch and push back with smaller amounts.  He could sometimes still make a direct spit and if he couldn’t he would let the meds roll around in the back of his mouth until it mixed with enough saliva to give him a spitable quantity.  We tried adding sugar water to make it more palatable.  Then, at the recommendation of our pediatrician’s office, we tried mixing it with chocolate syrup.  But by the time we got around to making it taste better he was already firmly attached to his no-medicine policy.

Jonathan wants to control his destiny at all turns.  He even feels strongly about being able to voice his opinion.  Thomas used to slump into a relaxed stupor the second the binky made contact with his mouth.  Jonathan likes the binky on his own terms when he is already happy but views it as a gag-order when he is crying.  If he is upset, he wants you to know it and is not interested in being pacified by a pacifier.  He has two approaches for dealing with an unwanted binky.  First he came up with a move Thomas calls the “power spit”.  Little J uses his tongue to shoot for distance.  Most recently, as he has gained more motor control, he pulls it from his mouth and spikes it on the floor.  He really slams it down as though he needed to emphasize his point.  Fortunately he is a pretty sweet tempered little man so hearing his opinions is usually pretty pleasant.

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Thomas’s Birthday Party

Jun 2

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

Two weekends ago we had Thomas’s ninth birthday party.  We recently joined the new Lifetime Fitness here in town, and they have a party package, so we decided to give them a shot.  Although the kids had fun, I’m not sure I’d do this again.  We got the use of an aerobics room to eat pizza and cake, which was fun — the kids ran around and played in the big open spaces and had a good time.  After that they all went out to the pool.

That’s a story in itself:  when Robin had set up the party originally, they had said that the outdoor pool would be open the weekend of the 29th.  The party was the weekend of the 22nd.  So you’d assume we’d be in the indoor pool.  When we got there, everyone was outside and we were informed that there was no choice; the party would have to be outside.  They did scrounge up some sunscreen, since no one had brought any.  Unfortunately, it was not waterproof or water-resistant, so we ended up having to go get our own from the car.

I supervised Katherine most of the time while the other kids all swam around in groups and played.  We had a bit of an issue when we couldn’t remember how many of Thomas’s school friends actually showed up for the party; Robin thought there had been only four, and I only remembered three.  We could only locate three in the pool.  To resolve the issue, we wanted to get the release forms from the party, but the three staff kids (and I do mean kids; they had to be just 15 or 16 years old) had not been thorough about getting the forms signed, so that wasn’t conclusive.  They also hadn’t been paying much attention during the party, being much more concerned with flirting and talking amongst themselves.  Anything we wanted to have done we had to push them into doing, and they spent no time actually playing with or leading activities for the kids despite the fact that their presence was required for the duration of the party.

We left with a pretty negative impression of the Lifetime Fitness party setup; I think next year we’ll go back to the Matt Ross community center or try another set of activities.

On the plus side — as I said, all the kids had fun and we got some great pictures.  Here they are!

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Family Gallery

May 3

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

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

Apr 30

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | 1 Comment

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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Weekend Travel

Apr 12

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

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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A Singing Turnip, Benjamin Franklin, and A Real Baby Doll

Mar 22

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

It’s been an eventful last few weeks with the kids.  I haven’t had the pictures downloaded, so I’ve been putting off writing about what’s been going on, but now that Spring Break is here I can catch up a bit.

Thomas has had several school activities, including his school musical and a major history project.  For the musical he was one of the vegetables.  He chose to be a turnip, so Robin made him a purple turnip costume.  He had a speaking part (one line) but sang all the songs as well.  The performance was very cute — I wish I had video to upload but our video camera’s battery was dead.  I took quite a few stills and got most of his classmates.  Here’s a pretty good one of Thomas delivering his line:

He had some difficulty with the hat, but other than that he had a great time and did very well!

For his history project, he chose Ben Franklin.  He didn’t know a whole lot about him before he started, but by the time they were done with the project he’d researched quite a bit.  We helped him do a timeline and a name poem, and Thomas chose a representative sample of his inventions to feature on his trifold poster.  And of course, he had to dress up like Benjamin Franklin.  Unfortunately, this project came right on the heels of the musical, so Robin had to make two costumes in quick succession.  Luckily, Benjamin Franklin isn’t that tough of a costume.  Here’s what it looked like:

One of the nice side effects of doing this project was that he got more interested in inventions and electricity.  He’d gotten an electronics kit from my folks last year, and had played with it a little, but after doing this project he got it out and started making all sorts of circuits and playing with all the components, and generally having a great time with it!

Lastly, Katherine and Jonathan have had their share of playtime as well.  He’s a very sweet baby and very tolerant.  Katherine sometimes shows interest in interacting with him and sometimes doesn’t.  But recently, she wanted to feed him a bottle.  So we… well, a picture is probably worth a thousand words here:

As you can tell, Jonathan thought this was hilarious, although he may have been confused as to what the bottle was actually supposed to be, since he doesn’t take real ones.  This cute scene didn’t last long, as I’m informed, but it’s typical of how she wants to play with Jonathan.  That’s not all that’s been going on with everyone, but it’s a good sample of the pictures we’ve gotten.  I have some good video of Thomas playing basketball, also, that I’ll try to upload soon.

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