She makes it easy

Many of you probably saw pictures of Amelia's first real haircut on my Facebook page, but I'll go ahead and post one or two on here as well. I am so proud of this little girl. She sat in her fire truck chair without any hesitation. She wasn't afraid at all. To my surprise, she didn't even bat an eyelash when they brought out the blow dryer. It was as if she has done these salon trips 100 times. Can you get a love of salons and spa treatments handed down genetically? Knowing her mother, that would probably explain it.

Black Friday

We decided to go ahead and take the plunge into the madness that is Black Friday. We didn't go all out and wake up at 4a.m., but we did brave the crowds at the mall. For certain, there were people everywhere and the sales staff was out in force. While I didn't like the crowds and hassle of it all, I was fortunate enough to not have anyone really infringe upon my personal space. I was a little surprised, however, that I was not approached by ONE salesman the entire time. I'd see them hand something to the person in front of me, look at me, and move on to the next person. At one particular point it occurred to me why this was happening. I have decided not to shave this entire week since I am either not working or having a relaxed dress code at the office. Additionally, since it was cold outside today, I threw on a zipper-front, hooded sweatshirt. Thus, I had put these two great looks together in one masterpiece look I like to call "The Homeless Pedophile". This look is salesperson (and normal human) repellent. Sure, I could be exaggerating how bad I looked today, but the fact that my wife keeps calling me Chester the Molester is not helping my self confidence.

Once a coach...

I just saw a segment on ESPN about John Wooden. For any of you who don't know him, he was a hugely successful college basketball coach. He is now 99 years old. They were talking about several facets of his life, yet one in particular caught my attention (other than the fact that he hasn't had a drink for 77 years). It was a story about his wife- the only girl he ever kissed. His wife of 53 years passed away 24 years ago. She died on March 21st, 1985. Since that day, on the 21st of every month, he writes his wife a love letter. By my calculation, he has written her nearly 300 letters since she has left this Earth. As if this wasn't enough to make him husband of the century. He declined UCLA's offer to name the court after him unless they included her name...and it had to be listed first. This man is commonly known as the greatest coaching mind of all time. I'd say this story makes it pretty clear that his coaching ability came in a distant second to his ability to love his wife. In a weird way, his story pushes me to love and appreciate my wife even more than I already do - perhaps the old man is still just teaching us younger guys a lesson. Once a coach, always a coach.

Rest easy

It is after midnight, I very likely have to work tomorrow, yet I cannot compel myself to go to bed. I might be the worst person I know at going to bed. I wouldn't say I am the worst sleeper because once I get to sleep, I'm pretty good at it. However, I really suck at that period of time after you put it in cruise control for the night and before you actually fall asleep. For some reason, during this time, my mind decides to start going 100 miles an hour in any and all directions. I've mentioned on here before that I am working on writing a story with a friend of mine. Roughly 50% of all my ideas for that come AFTER I want to go to sleep. Sometimes I am smart enough to scribble these ideas in a notebook, usually they fade before morning. Occasionally, I use that period of time to write on this blog. I keep thinking of all I could accomplish if I could actually channel this erratic mind into a single direction. Additionally, this is all juxtaposed with my wife, who can literally say goodnight, roll over, and be asleep within seconds. There is certainly and enviable peace to that. However, I think it is these little ticks that make us who we are. So, rather than fight it, I'm going to go ahead and embrace it....and keep my notebook much closer at all times.

Turkey Day

As expected, I woke up this morning missing my family severely. It is never easy to be away from them, but it is even worse on holidays. Fortunately, I am very excited about being able to spend time with Meggan and Amelia without work or travel getting in the way. So, rather than go on and on about what I am thankful for, I'll just say a few of the important things - God, my family, and Mexican food. Happy Thanksgiving everyone

Please pass the ham

Well, tonight was quite an experience for me. This was the first time I have ever been in charge of pulling the "stuff" out of the turkey. Let's just say, without running you through my inner monologue, it was not a shining moment for me. First of all, I was completely ill prepared for this endeavor. I had never really seen it done before and I had no idea what I was looking for. Thus, leaving me with one very undesirable option - sticking my arm in there and digging for gold. So, there I was, somewhere between doing my best Grey's Anatomy surgeon impersonation and trying not to lose my watch inside a turkey when I came across my target - a frozen lump of disgust. So, I pulled this mess from the turkey and began to beam in triumph. At that point, Meggan decided to crush my dreams and tell me I had to pull an additional item out of the neck. Seriously, out of the neck?!? So, pulling something from the ass of the turkey is just not enough? I have to go down the hole formerly know as neck. Sweet. Needless to say, I did not enjoy any part of that action either. However, I did get the job done eventually with a final tally of: 2 lumps of pure nasty removed, 0 watches lost, 3 near barfing incidents, and 1 perfectly primed turkey. All in all, not a bad deal. Of course, there is no way in hell that I am going to eat that thing tomorrow.

What did I miss?

It is 10p.m. and I am still sitting in my office with no end in sight to the workday. So, this means I did not get to see Amelia at all today. I'm guessing today is the day she decided to sprout teeth, walk into the kitchen, and make herself a damn quesadilla. I hope I still have some time with her and didn't miss all of those milestones...although, after the first 14 hours of work today, I sure could go for that quesadilla.

9 months? More Like 9 Seconds

Tomorrow, Mia turns 9 months old. When you first have a child, people come from all corners of the world to give you advice. The number one thing you hear is to appreciate the early stages because they fly by. The only issue with this advice is it is one of those things you can't really even comprehend until you have been through it and no longer need the advice. I have made a healthy attempt at mentally filing away all the memories and capturing all the moments. However, even with that, I cannot believe my baby girl has grown so fast. It seems like yesterday that I was driving her home from the hospital at about 30 mph with both hands on the steering wheel not knowing what to expect next. That same little girl can now literally stand to lean over and give me a kiss - a wet, slobbery, uncontrolled kiss, but a kiss. The only other time I have been more reminded of my inability to freeze time, and of the impossibility of stealing a few extra moments, was on my wedding day. Much like with Amelia, I tried to savor every moment from the first time I saw that beautiful girl to the fleeting seconds in which she leaned over to give her new husband a kiss. So, I suppose the only advice I have for anyone having a new baby, or getting married, is to enjoy the moment DURING the moment...and take lots of pictures because it goes by too quickly to soak it all in.

Parents' Night Out

Tonight, we took advantage of the luxury our daycare calls Parents' Night Out. This was a much needed date for us. Because we don't have a built in babysitter in the form of family, we rarely get the opportunity for a night out that doesn't include a diaper bag. So, for our date, I took Meggan to see the new Twilight movie. From the world of tangential thought...here are three things I am secure enough in my masculinity to tell you about tonight(ordered from least blow to my masculinity to borderline completely emasculating) 1) Even though it is primarily for young girls, I actually enjoyed the movie quite a bit. 2) My wife, sitting right next to me on a "date" let out a sigh (along with the rest of the ladies in the theater) when Jacob took off his shirt for the first time 3) I actually argued with my wife over which guy was better looking (I went Edward). Now, back to Parents' Night Out. We had a really great time at the movie. It felt nice to get dressed up, to be out and about in the crisp night air, and most importantly to push the pause button on being parents for a few hours. As nice as the night was, I feel like this may be our first and one of our only nights out. It seems as though Amelia had a different experience. I'll put it this way, when we arrived at daycare after 9:30pm...she was awake. I'm not sure if she was confused because she was at school or embarrassed because she was in her pajamas in public with her hair a mess, but either way, she decided she had no interest in going to sleep. I'm just hoping she can make up for the missed sleep over the night because an Amelia who is not on schedule is not an Amelia anyone wants to be around. Oh well, even if she causes a little trouble, the night was still worth it to me.

Good Bye Lieutenant Dan

Tonight, Mia finally decided she'd had enough of dragging her pitiful, little legs around the house. She moved into the territory of full blown crawling (which for the record, Sophie wanted to point out she had been doing since birth). I was about 99% sure she was never going to crawl. I thought she'd be one of those kids who went straight from flopping around on the floor to walking. I suppose I was wrong. So far, my prediction on the necessity for dentures is still holding true. Perhaps that will be the next milestone to fall?

Blog

Well, I have started to make a minimal effort to change the look of the blog. Unfortunately, a sweet little fact that I uncovered is that I apparently suck at it. I seem to have forgotten every computer class I ever took even though I majored in Information Science. Thus, even simple HTML is out the window for now. So, if any of you know of any free sites where I can download some templates without getting a virus, let me know. Until I either find a site, or get more than 20 minutes free time for blogging, it's going to have to look about as attractive as a dumpster fire.

Who needs sleep?

Last night, I'm pretty sure I heard Meggan reciting this to Amelia on the 3rd time she woke us up:

The Best Medicine

Since Amelia thought it was a good idea to keep us up all night last night, I think it would be very safe to say today was not the best day. Additionally, it would be fair to guess that I did not come home in the greatest mood. I'm pretty sure Mia sensed this and decided to cheer me up by showing me how well she could crawl. So, as I watched her do her best Lieutenant Dan impersonation and drag her little legs across the floor to get to me, all the tiredness and stench of my bad mood went away. Every time something like this happens, it blows me away to see how easily she can put it all back into perspective for me. I hope it takes her as long as possible before she figures this out or I am in real trouble. I'm probably already too late.

And down we go

Mia currently resides in the worst case scenario of being great at pulling up on things, but really crappy at standing up. For instance, last night, she was able to pull herself to a standing position from being seated on her changing table using just the wall. However, once up, she was only slightly able to stand by leaning against the wall, hands and legs spread, as if I were a cop searching her for drugs. So, it came as no surprise when I received news today that she had her first accident at school. Apparently, she pulled up on a toy box and then took the opportunity to faceplant into it giving her a little bruise under her eye. Thus, here it is...her first boo boo (other than the fiasco that I refer to as my-stupid-dad-dropped-me-on-my-coconut-and-had-to-rush-me-to-the-emergency-room-gate)

Veterans Day

I'd like to wish a Happy Veterans Day to all the current, former, and future soldiers. Today, I'd especially like to thank my two nephews, one of which is currently in the Army and will shortly be deployed to Iraq and the other who will very soon be off to join the Navy. Both of these young men joined the Armed Forces during a time of war. Their bravery, and the bravery of those like them, will allow them to defend our great country - a task that is likely more important than anything I will do in my life. And, for that, I am grateful.

The Dichotomy of You

You are the highlight of my day
Yet, you are the reason I am so tired at night
You can change my entire perspective with a smile
Yet, you can break me with your tears
You are the reason I work so hard
Yet, your absence makes me hate being at work
You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen
Yet, it wasn't easy to strip that title from your mother
You give me hope for the future
Yet, you provide a glimpse into my past
You are who I live to protect
Yet, you are to whom I have to teach life's hard lessons
You make me want to be a better man
Yet, you remind me of how great it is to be a kid
You can't quite yet control your own body
Yet, you can make me do anything you want
You remind me of all that is good in this world
Yet, you cause me to worry about all that is bad
You have shown me how strong the love of a father can be
Yet, you have brought me an even greater appreciation for my mother
You belong to me, Mia
Yet, my heart belongs to you

I guess it's a matter of perspective

Today, at church, we started a lesson on the end of times. Regardless of my thoughts on my own salvation, this talk always frightens me. So, how did Amelia react during this very serious, most fundamental discussion on Christianity? She laughed her head off. She very rarely laughs out loud, so I don't know what tickled her fancy today. I'm not sure if it was a sign from God, but I think I'm going to take it that way.

Let's try again

Well, here is a 2nd try at posting a song we played at my wedding. The other one got yanked from Youtube due to copyright laws. I'm sure this was brought on by it being posted on this immensely popular blog...or not.

1,2,3

Tonight is our 3 year wedding anniversary. Rather than gross out all of the blog readers by going on and on about my wife, I'll just say that I thank God every single day for blessing me with such a wonderful woman. She is my best friend and I could never have asked for more. And with that, I leave you with my favorite song from our wedding day....

Precious little time

Tonight was seemingly my millionth daddy and Mia night while Meggan worked. I'm pretty sure she works more nights than most bartenders. It was a fairly normal night. Amelia was incredibly excited to see me at daycare and equally incredibly unhappy about the menu for dinner. There was an incident tonight, though, that brought an important mindset to light for me. Amelia was in one of her moods where she just really couldn't stop being fussy. I had tried everything I could to entertain her and turn things around. None of the usual tactics were working - her new musical table was boring to her, she had no interest in Dora/wonder pets/anything on TV, and even Sophie's continual peskiness did not do the trick. After multiple outbursts of crying and my escalating frustration, a stark realization occurred...I only get about 3 waking hours per day with Amelia during the week. One of those hours is spent getting ready for work. Another is spent eating dinner, getting a bath, and getting ready for bed. Roughly 20 minutes of the remaining hour is spent on the ride home from daycare. That leaves approximately 40 unencumbered minutes per day. I have 40 minutes. That's less than one episode of a television drama. Why the hell am I getting flustered during the precious little time I get to hold my baby girl?!? The moments where my daughter reaches out to me to be held are fleeting. With that in mind, I scooped her up tightly in my arms and for the next half hour got every bit of baby sugar I could. I've never been shy about telling everyone how much I love Amelia. It's been glaringly evident to anyone who sees us together. However, for me, sometimes it does take moments like tonight to remind me to actually stop what I am doing and actively love her with all my heart; to place a premium on every second I get to spend with her. As tomorrow comes and the hassles of work and the pace of life begin to pick up again, I hope I am able to reflect back on tonight to remind me that a fussy baby, a crying baby, even a screaming baby is still by far the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and I am so lucky to have these times with her.

Trick or Treat

Yesterday was Amelia's first Halloween. We didn't do any trick or treating, but that doesn't mean we didn't party. Amelia had one of her friends over to celebrate the occasion...