Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Picture tags

My beautiful wife tagged me in a photo tag so I'll oblige. The 5th picture in the 5th folder on my computer is.............
This is Joel on his first Halloween at 5 months old. Ever since he was very very small if you picked him up he would arch his back and put his arms out in front of him. Since it showed a decent amount of strength and looked like superman, it was a no brainer for his first costume. His baby pictures make me laugh because he was born with so much hair. I gave him a haircut at 3 weeks or so since he had chops halfway to his jawbone and it was over his ears! Than for the first year and a half of life it looked like some terrible hair-piece/comb-over, we just couldn't help but laugh at the poor kid. Even today if we go very long without a haircut he starts looking pretty 1970 real quick. That's me holding his hands at the ward trunk or treat party in Daytona Beach FL.

I wonder if the real Superman wore a pacifier leash to keep it clean?

Monday, October 13, 2008

Still learning at 29

Life observations....

It seems like this has been the week of 'phrases I never thought I'd ever have to say' and/or 'phrases that should never be used in their literal sense'.

My favorite of the week comes from Manda. Never before have I ever heard anyone use this phrase literally, and when it's cleaned up and taken seriously it's hilarious. I was sitting in our office on the computer and Manda was out and about in the house, I could hear the TV quietly in the background and I was studying some documentation that my work had sent me. All of the sudden I hear... "Joel, you need to poop or get off the pot!" Now, I've used this term several times in my life but I don't think I'll be able to use it any more since the image would have me rolling (if you haven't seen Manda's picture of Joel potty training, here it is)

Some other key phrases that I guess I assumed I would never have to use toward another human being:
"No, you can't be on the couch when you're naked."
"Stop eating your brother's shoe."
"That's daddies sweaty sock, please take it out of your mouth."

And another important lesson as I was typing this blog. Joel just yelled from his bedroom, "Daddy, I have poop". Being the determined potty trainer that I am I rushed in to get him even though he should be 'taking a nap'. As soon as I saw him I realized I had made a fatal error, I had assumed a preposition. You don't realized how important prepositions are until it is omitted from a sentence such as 'I have poop'. You see Joel, having removed his pull-up, was standing at the gate to his room with a poop in his hand apparently very proud of the fact that he had not gone poop in his pull-up (because this is a no-no). I wrongly assumed that he was trying to say "I have TO poop" and had dropped the word TO from the sentence when indeed he was speaking correctly saying "I have poop".
Lesson learned.

The Rosen family went to Naples this week and we found a place to live. It's nice little condo in a gated community with a few younger families with kids close by (which is important in Naples with a median age seemingly around 105 years old). The weather was warm and the skies were clear for the whole trip. For those of you that were 'enjoying' the snow back in Idaho and Utah over the weekend, I submit our enjoyment of some october weather in Naples.

85 degrees with a nice ocean breeze. One of the things we'll enjoy about the west coast of Florida is that the ocean is very calm and there were plenty of children playing in the water without fear of being rolled by a rogue wave. The water was also at 85 degrees which is a few degrees warmer than the Atlantic is right now.

The boys did very well on that trip seeing as how they were trapped in car seats for many hours. Since they did so well I decided to take them to the zoo today. I was a little nervous about being able to herd two runners around a public zoo by myself but it turned out great. I'm trying to figure out Joel's bird phobia. He will literally put his face right on the glass with a huge king cobra on the other side and he'll talk and smile the whole time but if a sparrow walks up to him and chirps he goes into total leg clamp mode and it takes 5 minutes to calm him down. I don't get it.

The best part of the trip came after we were done with the zoo. We had promissed the boys that the next time we came to the zoo we would ride the train that takes a lap around the park. I was reminded several times of that promise by 'Joel the promise memorizor' as we exited the zoo. It turned out to be very fun, the conductor really tried to put on the whole show by saying "All aboard" and blaring the horn several times along the way. Joel was Mr. Serious, he was acting like his concentration was somehow keeping us on that track. Even Vance was enthrawled, he barely moved for the whole ride.
I can't remember how many takes this took....

All Aboard!

We were the only ones on the train

Mr. Serious

I'm guessing he'll be into Thomas the Train here shortly too

To finish this entry off, I was 'tagged' by Kristina a few days ago so I will grudgingly participate in this as to not be ostracized by my new blogging community. Apparently I have to list 6 quirks that I have and than tell 6 others to list quirks about themselves. Since I don't even know that many people that have blogs I'm going to shorten the list of people that I 'tag' and hope this is judged acceptable in blogging etiquette.

Manda was more than happy to start listing off quirks that I have, but the ones that she came up with are more traits (good and bad) than quirks.

1. I don't have many quirks, even Manda says "You're really not a quirky person". I think that not being quirky is a quirk.

2. I feel I must be in the driver's seat of anything moving. Car, plane, boat, etc. If I have to be there, I'd rather be driving.

3. If I am watching a sporting event and my team is doing poorly and I change the channels only to return to find they have improved, I will assume that somehow my watching is negatively effecting their play and I will not watch (other than checking the score) to help my team out :)

4. I hate raisins. I like grapes and prunes but not raisins. Can't figure it out.

5. I'm a tech junky. If I could trade my cell phone in every month to get the newest stuff, I would. Blue tooth anything, cell phones, watches, computers, cars, anything that is always improving I love.

6. I've actually re-parked the car before to get it straighter and/or equi-distant from the painted lines. For some reason I can't walk away from the car if the parking job is bad.

There, I feel I've emasculated myself enough for one day and posted quirks, thanks Kristina. Those who I'm tagging will know shortly....