Going Out

It's been pretty chilly around these parts lately. Yesterday it was in the 30s when I took the pooch for a walk. So, because it's been so cold we have all been going a little stir crazy in the house so we have been venturing to shall we say, interesting venues with Q in tow to get out of the house. This past weekend we checked out Lowe's. Yup, that's the life we are kicking these days. It's fun to let your kid play with saws, drills and other pointy objects when someone else's liability is on the line. It's really unbelievable how big a Lowe's is and how much enjoyable family time one can spend in a 30 acre store. Shockingly, Lowe's didn't cure the cabin fever so we decided to go out for dinner.

When you go our for dinner at 5pm with the hope your one year old will not get crabby until after you get home you are afforded the best deals (happy hour!) and you only have to body check the over 65 crowd to get the best seat in the house. There is that and with it being fairly empty your service should be improved. So we went to a quasi bar-b-que Florida restaurant and decided to order the Qster some mac n' cheese. He insisted on eating it with a big person, awfully pointy fork. I obliged because dad's are pretty much here to push the envelope, let kids do what they aren't supposed to and give them a BB gun at far too early of an age to see if the old mother's adage of "you'll shoot your eye out" is true. So, of course I gave him the giant pointy fork. I was astounded to find out that the kid actually knows how to use one effectively. He was stabbing that pasta like he's been using one for years. And he was getting them into his mouth even though his fork was four inches longer than it needed to be. So our son is officially part of the civilized world. He uses eating utensils.

He wanted down by the end of dinner so I put him on the floor and this is the kind of place that allows you to discard your peanut shells on the floor (that's where the quasi part comes in) so he's digging the crunching noise. As Q is taking his sweet time winding his way through the tables trying to get out and avoid the speedy staff (it was like frogger because no one is looking out for someone 30 inches tall) the ladies are taking notice. Everyone is lovin' on little Q. He's got his farmer red/black plaid coat on and being all adult like cruising around so they are getting a kick out of it. We finally wind our way to the entrance and with it being early there is an abundance of hostesses; approximately 5. The oooh's and ahhh's come out in full force and he's loving it. So he just stops and poses, smiling for a bit giving them enough time to soak him all in. So handsome! One wants a hug and so he waits her out and goes in for the hug. Uh-oh. We are going to have to work on our stranger danger later. He wouldn't leave. Here we are like 5 feet from the door but he can't pull himself away from the lady action. He's a chick magnet. We'll have to take him to the beach when it gets warmer.

We finally get why people have kids - so they can get the chores down faster. Here he is outside raking the lawn for me. What a great helper!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A fundraising conference was hosted in Tampa this week so I had clients and colleagues in town. Instead of me traveling to them all of them traveled to me. That was a nice change of pace. Yesterday I spent the day at the conference and had lunch with some clients and then took a prospective client out to dinner to try to woo them into becoming one of my own. Since I was out late I didn't get a chance to see Quentin after saying our morning good-byes. My dinner went well, so I was happy to come home and share the events with Carrie. Quentin was of course fast asleep. As we were heading off to bed I picked up the monitor to take a look at the little rascal before hitting the sack and he was sleeping in tripod fashion. He was totally balanced on his forehead with his butt up in the air, essentially standing on his legs. I just figured this can't be comfortable so I set out to lay him down properly, cover him up and say good night. Carrie warned me not to do it. She said he'll wake up but I was confident I could sneak in there and push him down without him being any wiser.

Well, it turns out wifey knows best. I was ninja quiet entering the room, picked up the blanket and with Swiss watch making preciseness gently laid the blanket on top of him. In a flash he jumped up and I immediately realized why he was sleeping in the tripod formation. It was exactly for this moment. He sleeps that way so he can spring upon you like a cat waiting for its prey. He pounced on me. It was dark I thought I could blend into the darkness of the room. I was in a dark suit. I froze. Seconds seemed liked hours. I thought there is no way he spotted me. I must have nearly got caught, but still escaped. But no, my watch dog kid totally busted me. The water works came on in full force. "Why won't you hold me? Why are you imprisoning me in this crib? How come you don't love me?" he wailed. I tried the goodnight I love you approach but to no avail. The crying started at 10:30 pm. It was still going on at 1:30 AM even after numerous visits to comfort him. We brought him into bed with us as a last resort. Anything to hit the sack. Q is religiously getting up between 4:30-5 AM every single morning so to still be up at 1:30 AM and knowing our human alarm clock is going to actually get up at 5 AM at the latest thrusts an enormous amount of stress and anxiety upon you as you ponder how you will get through tomorrow's work day on three hours of sleep.

He's swimming in the bed. We have a giant bed, but it's not big enough for our son. At 2:30 I give up and take refuge in my man-room and let the real man of the house have three quarters of the bed as Carrie is now a refugee on the remaining quarter. I wake up in my Bucky Badger chair, because of course any self respecting man room would have one, around 3:30 am and listen intently to see if I can hear the throws of lightest sleeper in the world still tossing and turning. I find I have the TV tuned to black and white WWII coverage. I still love history, even at 3 am. I sneak back downstairs (notice the irony of dad banished to upstairs and child laying claim to adult downstairs) and climb into bed. Guess what? Q got up at 4:30 AM. Unbelievable. He was ready to go to like he had just gotten 12 hours. I don't think I am going to survive this child. Even the dog bolted out of the room and hid out in the bathroom all night trying to catch some Z's. It's quite disturbing but I actually find myself jealous of the dog sometimes in that he sleeps all day and can find R & R corners in our house when I, well I just can't. You really shouldnt' be envious of your dog.

We had a few left over Christmas presents so we gave Quinny one the other night - a basketball hoop. Here he is for the first time learning to shoot.

The Florida State Fair is Number 1!

Let me start by saying the blog has had some trouble viewing the videos. There is a solution. Click on the title of the post and the video will reload and play. I'm not sure what the problem is but this will work. So, if you click on the title, "My Dog is a Metro" the video will reload and then play.

I am way behind with my blog postings so I am hoping I can get caught up this weekend on some recent events. Last weekend we attended the Florida State Fair. We are in the midst of the 6th coldest winter on record since 1890 so we weren't sure if we could brave it with Quinny but decided to forge ahead on a cold, windy overcast day with temperatures in the mid to high 40s. Brrrrrr. We didn't know what to expect, which is one of the reasons we wanted to attend. For example in Wisco there would be lots of barns and things you could do inside to get out of the cold, so we were hoping for a similar environment.

Let's start with the food. Our state, it turns out, is far from healthy. We had delicious treats at the fair such as fried butter, cheese burgers with donuts in place of buns, fried brats, fried candy bars and fried dough. Where to begin. The fried butter took 3-4 patties of butter, breaded them and then deep fried them. You could get a basket of 4 (16 patties of butter) for $4. We passed. My doctor applauds. (Notice the people in line, though). The cheese burger was the most ingenious replacing the bun with two full sized (top & bottom) Krispy Kreme donuts. Yumm! We passed on that as well. I actually have had deep fried brats before so I didn't go that route either. Keep in mind a single brat alone is sporting 28 grams of fat and I'm a two fister. We did bump into a Wisconsin cheese stand so we indulged there and had some curds. We settled for some Gyros, candy including jaw breakers that were bigger than you could fit in your mouth even trying to cram it in there, chocolate covered peanuts and the aforementioned cheese.

Quinny was a dream and we remarked how few and far between we will be at a giant amusement park with no tears and an entire family of happy campers. We did view a couple of petting zoos where Quinny got up and personal with some goats, chickens, a monster turkey, cows and crazy creatures from around the world. We visited the craft barns, the FAA kids with their show animals, the bunnies and made our way through the games. Would you believe they had a freak show? I know right!?! What era is it? We didn't pay to go in but the advertisements were like going back in time. "See the bearded lady for $.50! or the world's smallest horse for a quarter." Just weird!

We had a family picture taken but they deleted it by the time we went to view it. Umm, fair people you may wish to work on your marketing. We were there for a chilly 4 hours but we were glad we went. They had some crazy rides that we just stood and watched and couldn't believe that people would pay to go on, especially after spending an hour or two "admiring" the carnies. They are some crazy looking carnies. Picture super deep gravely voice from the 4 packs of Marb reds getting smoked daily..."Come on dude show your male prowess and win a lice infested, china made, lead filled bear for your wife and kid!" That gets em' every time! Ahh, the fair. You can't take the country out of the fair, but you can take a little of the country home from the fair.

Here is a picture of Q checking out the shark tank. (This is the Florida fair). To the left of that they had live alligator wrestling shows. The best was visiting "Cracker Town" where you could see how real life Crackers live. Or I could just visit with my neighbors.

My Dog is a Metro

I have to tell you about how my dog turned into a metrosexual yesterday. We have a golden retriever and a big one at that. He has long hair and loves spending time outside. We have a wetland behind our house, which means thickets, burrs and thorny bushes. The dog picks these thorns and burrs up while frolicking about and they get embedded in his hair and over time form doggie dreads. We pick the debris out on a daily basis but inevitably miss some here and there and after a few weeks he's a mess and needs them cut out before getting a bath. I'm all for brushing him, cutting his nails, bathing him and generally getting him pretty but was simply too lazy this weekend. Stinky was earning his nickname and we couldn't hold out any longer. He was a mess and I knew it was going to be a job and just didn't feel like biting the bullet and doing it so I opted for the American way. I paid someone else to do it. (It's stimulating the economy you know).

For the first time we took him to the groomer. It was going to be a 3.5 hour affair they told us. Okay, then. Geez, you would think I'm the worst dog owner ever. A half a day? Really? It's that bad? Well, get to work then and stop judging. They named him Max for the day because obviously that's really close to Lucky and clearly one can see how they could get the two names confused. Why they called him Max we don't know. Maybe that's how you become a dog groomer in the first place. Up to this point your coworkers, or more importantly your boss was getting annoyed you kept calling him Martha when his name was Jim. You don't work there any more. Anyway, we pick him up 3.5 hours later and they are just finishing with him. "Excuse me I am here for Lucky." Confused look by groomer. "Umm, we don't have a dog here by that name." Well, you do, you just renamed him Max for the day, but that doesn't mean you don't have a Lucky because that beast of a pooch over there is him. Do you see the love in his eyes? That's for me. Groomer, "Oh, why was I calling him Max all day?" I don't know why did you call your last boss Martha when he was a Jim? It must be a groomer thing. He remarks, "Max, ahem, I mean Lucky didn't like being in a kennel." I suspect not. He's a free range dog. Did I just board him for a half day? I thought he was getting groomed. "Oh, we put him in there to dry a bit. He has long hair you know." Hmm, now that you mention it, I guess he does. Alright, let me pony up here and get my pooch back to the safety of his home. "Hey hang on, we haven't perfumed him down." Umm, you see Max over there? Ya, he's all man, so no perfume." Too late.

So I get my sort of good smelling dog back and he looks totally different. He's a metro. He's shaved. His booty got shaved. (He usually has "pants" back there that hang down a good 12 inches). His belly is shaved. The hair on his paws has been trimmed back so it looks like he has dainty feet instead of his defining size 12's. They trimmed behind his ears. Do you see the metro theme emerging? He is way too pretty. Although the price for all this work was fair, I feel they took the manliness out of my dog. When I walked him this morning people said he was soooo cute! I usually get, "Look at the size of that guy!" I prefer the people moving across the street to avoid him as opposed to the cutesy dog comments and them running to pet the cute doggie. So tonight I'll have to run him into the woods to rub some dirt on the old boy so he can get his street cred back. If we ever enter him in a pageant the groomer is the way to go. If not, we'll probably go back to making him pretty on our own.

On the Quentin front, he had his first time out yesterday. Yup, I was told you can put them in the penalty box for age X 1 minute. So, if your kid is 2 he can do a penalty box for two minutes. Quinny is big on hitting, which would be great if he was going into boxing but since we want his brain to function beyond his 25th birthday we're thinking not so much so we are trying to cut down on the hitting. He smacked me, the wife and our metro dog last night. So off to the penalty box he went. For full effect we blew a whistle and called high sticking. Before resorting to the time out I tried showing him he could high five but slapping was not allowed, I'm so sorry. He didn't pick up on it. I think the time out worked, though, as he wasn't throwing any jabs or 1-2 combinations after being released early for good behavior. He didn't like the time out (that is the point isn't it?) and he stopped hitting so success. I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard about the hitting at daycare. Maybe they are afraid if they tell he'll really wallop them. I hope the hitting doesn't become an epidemic.

T-Ball

We finally had a calm weekend with no housing woes. Everything works! We spent Friday cleaning up the house before heading out to the BB King/Buddy Guy show in Clearwater. We had a great time. It was great little venue with excellent seats regardless if you were in the front row or back row. Buddy Guy started the show and lived up to his reputation of being one of the best blues entertainers ever. He gets the crowd involved and even had an usher "play" his guitar. BB King was definitely moving slower than the last time I saw him now that he is 84 years young. He was a great storyteller and after the show was over we went down towards the stage and got to about the 4th row to get a better look. You can tell they both love what they do so much they pour their heart and soul into the show. It was great to get out but we didn't get home until after midnight, which was really late for us so used to getting up at 5 am. Our babysitter was equally tired and was found asleep on the couch when we got home. Once again Q was sleeping fine and there were no problems.

On Saturday we cleaned out our Florida room and turned it into Q's new playroom. It was quite successful and gives him a nice carpeted play area and relieves our living room of all the clutter. I had no idea what a hit it would as this morning as soon as he woke up he went running out to this new playroom. I think we may have discovered that he can entertain himself out there giving us a few minutes here and there of quiet time. While in the new playroom I busted out his T-ball set that he received for Christmas and was showing him how to hit. Much to my surprise he picked it up and is totally swinging the much to large for his size bat. I think we may be on to something. He is constantly getting compliments on his "arm" for velocity and accuracy. If we can get him started on the hand-eye coordination we might be in business here. Baseball is where the money is at. I was awful so I hope he has more natural talent than his old man did growing up. This morning he was right back at it with no help. I came out there and he was teeing the ball up and swinging for the fences. He cranked one right off the window so we may need to move this to an outdoor activity soon. He was so into it. He would get all excited upon hitting it that he would drop the bat and go looking for some high fives giggling and clapping. He's a ton of fun at this age. When you aren't chasing Mr. Disaster Making around he's tons of fun to play with.

We tried to get it on video but as soon as we took out the video camera Mr. Curiosity wants to play with the camera instead of being the talent. I will get some video of it this week and post it. Our camera hit full on the memory card and we are anxious about downloading it because in November we had Q's whole life, literally, on a shared networked hard drive that died. We lost everything. All the videos and all the pictures. Our wedding was on there. Q's birth, coming home, his first year; all of it was lost. Fortunately I have a computer guru friend, Sloppy Joe, that I sent the hard drive to and he was able to get quite a bit off. We lost the video, but he salvaged probably 85% of the pictures. It's hard to tell because you don't really know what you lost but he sent me a file with nearly 4,000 pictures on it. So here we are with a new hard drive and wondering if we really do want to hit the delete button on the camera. We will bite the bullet today at some point and just hope it works.

We had some old college friends from Madison stop by last night, that are also parents, so it was great fun to reconnect with them and trade parenting nightmare stories. Finally, another couple that isn't quite so rosy. It's good to know we share the same kinds of issues. Kids - it seems like a good idea at the time. "Oh, I can't wait to have a baby!" Then you realize it's not just adding a baby, but it means you are second or third or more realistically last - where ever that lands you on the priority list. I haven't even had a chance to get to my man room yet! They have a 5 year old and a 3.5 year old and said last night was their first over night trip away from the kids, so they were having a good time. One of their parents is now wintering down here in Florida. That gave them a babysitter for the night. What a great idea. If we could just get our parents (both please) to winter or year round it in Florida we'll be in business. (Note: We do not need to limit this arrangement to just parents. We are willing to drop our kid off for nights at a time with good friends and distant relatives if you want to move here).

We're fairly excited for the Super Bowl, at least all the food. With no Packers and no Steelers (Carrie's team) and no Favre it's going to be a "root-free" night. I guess I hope the Saints win - keep it in the NFC fellas, but I think they will likely get killed. We'll see. A shootout would be fun to watch. Here is a video of the dog being abused. All day long this is what Q does to Lucky.

R&B is where it's at

This past weekend was the weekend to put the football winnings towards some good old fashioned instant gratification. After Obama's rousing speech we decided that a little stimulating of the economy was in order and got a new TV. We did some rearranging and put the TV in the bedroom and then moved that TV up to the man room. To date we have had the alarm clock on top of the TV because it was flat enough on top to hold the clock and now, not so much. That means the clock has been moved to Quentin level and of course Mr. Curiosity makes a beeline for whatever is within reach. He immediately figures out how to turn on the radio. Incidentally this has led to a "check" every night before the wife and I hit the sack to make sure he didn't set the alarm for some ungodly hour. Well, he learned how to turn on the radio, tune it and turn up/down the volume. When he first did it he had it blaring static so I went over and tuned it to a classic rock station that I like. Not so much for the Qster. He takes another crack at it and tunes in the slow jams on the R&B station. Not to be outdone by this feat he listens for a moment, finds his groove and hits the dance floor with a zeal that only a one year old possesses. He's officially busting a move in the bedroom. He pauses looks around, and we're loving it, and then turns it up. It kept him busy for about an hour, which is off the charts for straight focus for him. We got quite the kick out of it. For the record the new car has XM and he is impartial to the Grateful Dead station. That works for both me and him. Anytime he gets a little excited we throw on the Dead and he relaxes a bit. He is also digging having the back window open but loves to throw everything like his shoes so it's a bit dangerous on whether you'll ever see his shoes again.

With Q getting down with the new found love for music I'm sure our babysitter, Brittany, will be in for a real treat on Friday. A true Casanova at work. Everything worked out great on Friday. He cried just a bit as we left. Carrie forgot something and had to run back in and he was already over it. I thought I would be anxious about it but by the time the car hit the end of the road I had a sense of freedom that enveloped me like a warm embrace from a friend I hadn't seen in years. We went straight to the closest bar to begin drinking our sanity back. I'm just kidding. We went to our favorite Mexican restaurant and bumped into an old friend that we had met two years ago to the day so it was fun to catch up. We had a nice evening, back by a respectable 9pm and found Q sleeping soundly. In the world of text messages we were getting the updates as he went down for the night, so that was good.

One of the pros or cons depending on how you want to look at it is hiring the teacher. We now have the inside scoop at daycare. It's kind of like getting a tour of your favorite Mexican restaurant. It seems like a good idea at the time but then again you may never forget what you see. You might be really happy with the current arrangement. You get food. You like food. You hope it's being prepared the way you would at home. You take the tour. Well, you may never eat Mexican food again. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Let's just say if we ever run short on a daycare payment we have plenty of knowledge now to extort whoever we need to in order to get through the next week. There is always a silver lining. She worked out really well. Q likes her and was comfortable. We are getting to know her better. I think she dropped that she goes to church about five different times. Raise maybe? Going for the honesty thing? I reminded her that God is watching even if we aren't and judging. Don't forget about the judging. (It's a two way street sweetie)! Good experience and we are looking forward to a longer evening out this Friday. Hopefully it goes as smooth.

Here is a pic of Q gearing up for baseball season. Spring training is about to kick off and Opening Day is not far behind. 2010 is nearly over already!