Thursday, August 28, 2008

Long Night

Last night when we went to bed, this is who was in our bed:This dude (yours truly, Holdinator himself)
And this really cute girl

But when we woke up this morning (you know, to get up and start the day, not just to get up for a minute or two to change diapers and/or feed a baby), a few others had joined us, including:
Mini #3, who is still learning the value of sleeping without direct contact with his mommy
Mini #2, who likes to turn so his body is stretched between us with his head by my head and his feet by J's headMini #1, who crawled into the bed sometime between 4 and 6 this morning; I'm really not sureThis guy. He purrs so loud he could wake the deadAnd then this guy, who is only comfortable when he is laying on top of someone's chest, and he's a really fat cat

If you haven't been keeping score, that's two people in bed to begin the night, and seven in bed in the morning.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

A Square is Also a Parallelagram

So said Mini #1 when looking at shapes with J tonight.

And then the Amazing happened.

Have you ever tried to put the bottom sheet on a large bed (queen or bigger)? Does it happen that every time you do it, you get it wrong first? You start putting on one corner and when you get to the next one you figure out that you've got the top/bottom on the sides, and so you have to rotate the thing 45 degrees?

Now, you're disqualified from this contest if your sheets are patterned in a way that you can tell just by looking at them which way is up. You know, like if your sheets are Batman and you know that Alfred needs to be right-side-up at the top so you never have that problem. I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to those who have plain sheets, or sheets with an indistinguishable pattern on them. That dang bottom sheet is never, and I mean never, on right the first time.

That is until tonight.

Yes, I went to make the bed and fully expected the bottom sheet to pull the same trick it does every time, and was shocked and completely in awe when it fit on my first try.

I can hear you gasping. I know; I know! It's impossible, you say. But no, I'm telling the truth.

Oh, and the reason for changing the sheets. Mini #3 peed on the bed.

And about Mini #1. He started preschool today. We wanted to send him to the same preschool TJ sent her daughter, but the half hour drive for two and a half hours of school wasn't justifiable. So, we went with a place very near our place; and he blew up. The sweet people at the school said he was probably just dealing with the anxiety of this new experience, and whereas most kids just cry, he expressed his distaste for the situation with words, and they were all amazed at the vastness of his vocabulary and sentence structure, even if he was telling them that they had broken his heart and he would like to scratch them until they bleed.

Anyway, after a discussion with J and a very heartfelt prayer, he got the broken pieces of his heart back together and braved the school again, and absolutely loved it.

Here's to hoping he loves it again on Thursday.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Magic Number

You know how your parents would call you by your siblings' names. How sometimes they would go through all the names of their kids before they got to yours.

I wasn't that parent.

I never mixed up my Mini 1 with my Mini 2. I was pretty proud of that.

But then we had Mini 3 a week ago, and I've been all fouled up since.
So I've come up with a theory: The magic number for messing up your children's names is 3. With two it's pretty easy to differentiate, but with 3... it's hopeless. I will now forever be calling Mini 3 Mini 2 and Mini 2 Mini 1 and Mini 1 Mini 3 and ...
Now, I'm not completely sure about my theory, because I think it may be gender specific. If you have three children, but they're not all the same gender you may not mess up their names. But if you have three of all the same gender, that's when it starts for sure.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I Wonder if Bill Nye Knows

What happens if you put a refrigerator magnet in the microwave for two seconds?

It gets really hot.

What happens if you put a refrigerator magnet in the microwave for thirty seconds?

I have no idea, but if Mini#2 would have had his way earlier, instead of me stopping the microwave after two seconds, we would have found out.

If you're really curious about what would happen for thirty seconds, then why don't you try it in your microwave and let me know?

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Mini Holdinator #3

2:35 am (today, August 16), 6 pounds 14 ounces, 19 inches.

Cool, huh?

Friday, August 15, 2008

Essay in Photos

Mini #1 is a budding photographer. We'll begin with a few from his latest conceptual project, entitled "Feed Frenzy" (and I'm not joking. I just asked him what he wants to call his photo essay project and that's what he said. He's a brilliant artist already!).
"Thirsty Conversations"

"Diffused Identities"
"Dog"

This ends Mini #1's portion of the essay. Now for two from a collection I call, "Wha..?"
"Untitled" you'd think an audiology college wouldn't make the mistake of misspelling "ear"
"3Less Auto Sales?"

Now for a collection that J and I both contribute to called "From the Land of Liberty"
"Anticipation" how silly of us to believe the hours of operation listed online. We've seen this before with these places. "Oh, we don't open until 11:00." "But the website said 10:00." "Yeah, actually it's 11:00. But you guys can feel free to walk around the park for 15 minutes."

"#2's Popcicle"
"#1's Popcicle" wait a second, why isn't he wearing a shirt?
"Retribution" it's a big word for a four year-old to learn, but an important one nonetheless. When you get your Mom wet, be prepared for Daddy to meet out payback
"Half-nude Basking"
"Feet of Summer"

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Another One of These

J's sister took these.And we're having another one any day now. I don't know how we're going to be able to keep from squeezing the guts out of them.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Adam West, But Just a Little

Here is a part of the thing I was hoping to post later (now). It's not the whole portion of the episode, but it was as much as I could find.

Without any further nonsense, NONSENSE!

I Wonder Why the Arts and Entertainment Firewall Does Not Block It...

Hey, have you seen Adam West's website?

I really really hope there will be more on this later.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Needs a Better Title

A couple of years ago, when Mini#2 was born, I went to the mall to get J some things that would help her feel more comfortable in the coming months of post baby birthing.

It so happened that this one store in particular had the most comfortable of this one product, and so I went there and bought that product. They registered me in their system so we could get coupons and things in the mail.

Like the fool I sometimes am, I gave them my name instead of J's, so now two years later I occasionally get mailings addressed specifically to me with pictures of girls dressed in underwear and telling me that I can get free panties and/or a great deal on a bra.

This is probably the reason that whole Seminary teacher thing didn't work out...

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Class

I'm back in school.

Well, sort of. I'm taking a class to become certified as a CNA. I love school.

We have had three days of class so far, and for tonight's class each student (there are six in the class) was assigned a topic to teach the class about childhood development. My topic is toddlerhood. I'm going to use my blog as a means of visual presentation.

Toddlers:

Toddlerhood, defined as ages 1-3, finds children growing and developing in a lot of ways, but not so much as during the first year.

For example, when a baby is born there is a huge difference between the newborn and, say, a child two years old.

See
But once children enter toddlerhood, there's not so much difference anymore.

See, the same two children as in the above picture, but now the younger one is two and the older is four.Toddlers begin to develop lots of different skills and abilities. Their vocabularies increase significantly during toddlerhood, and many toddlers really love to talk.



Toddlers also learn to be more independent. They learn to get along without their primary care giver around, to interact with other people, and to feed themselves, even using utensils to eat.

This learning to be independent thing has its challenges. For example, learning to share with others can be really difficult. Expressing emotion poses a particular challenge for the toddler, so often times they will scream, kick their feet, and cry when they don't get their way.

Oh yeah, there's also that learning to control the bladder and bowels thing. Toddlers do that too, first learning to control those functions during waking hours and afterwards during the nighttime.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Duuuuude!!

Ha! Even better!

It was just as I suspected...


Chucks

What kind of shoe are you?

Dude!

She's the coolest of the lot of them.

And she has brown eyes, like J.

But what was up with the question about prince charming? I'm a dude! Oh well.


You Are Belle!
Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Intelligent and kind. Your beauty goes much further than your apperance. Also, you make judgements of people based on their personality and not their looks. Attaining all the knowledge that you can is one of your major goals in life, but you are also a person who can make things happen.


Which Disney Princess Are You?

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

More Passwords

So remember that post about the annoyance of resetting my password? I read this today and really liked it.

Sorry to those of you with firewalls against "arts and entertainment" links, you won't be able to see it with those firewalls (this includes me when I'm at work).

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Procrastinate and Brag

I had this grand idea when I started this blog nearly a year ago now. I was going to show off our book collection to the world.

J worked at book stores for a few years of her life and has been an avid reader and buyer of books for lots more years, and so we have a pretty decent sized collection of books.

Ever since we got married I've wanted to be able to display all these books so that visitors to our home could see how well read we (translated J) are.

When we lived in the condo we displayed our books in the dining room, and it looked like thisWe barely had any room to walk around our table, and a number of books came out of there with crusty food particles stuck to them thanks to mini#1's high chair position.

When we moved to our house I was so excited because there were enough rooms that I could create a library for our books. I had grand illusions of a very classy library lined floor to ceiling with beautiful bookshelves stocked and organized according to subject/genre/author etc. The reality of the library has been mostly something like this:By the way, this library accounts for about half of our entire collection. The rest were displayed in our living room and bedroom.It's not as overwhelming as, say, Stephen Rick's basement, but it's got it's own thing going.We just had some new carpet put in this last week, so our living room collection is still in this condition.All except for this one little bookcase that sits next to the couch in the living room now. And here's the thing, I'm feeling like I don't want anymore bookcases in here now. I like the way the room feels with just the one.
Hang on, I forgot to mention this one that is in our kitchen.The two bookcases in our bedroom aren't half bad, and these and the living room one will now serve as examples to us of what we could possibly accomplish with our books.This one is mostly (over three shelves) books by Louis La'more. J inherited this leather bound collection from her grandfather, and yes, I think she has read them all, plenty more than once.So now I've done it. You have seen our collection, I can finally say I did it. I hope I didn't bore you too much.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Books, Beards, and um ... B, uh, bbb

Another 'B' word? Can't think of one for the title.

Late last night after visiting J at work (thanks to the sleeping child-listening skills of J's younger sister) I decided I would surprise said younger sister with the newest installment in that one series written by an alum of BYU.

It was 12:30 and I thought for sure I could find a place that was still open from the midnight release parties and just run in, buy the thing, and be done.

I absolutely underestimated the, um, hysteria.

The American Idol tryouts earlier this week would be hard pressed to compete with the crowds I saw outside of Barnes and Noble.

Deseret Book even had a winding line that went out the door.

Walmart, though, had a pretty good system going one, and I was in and out shortly.

J's sister had a difficult time expressing her excitement at the gift. She said she had read the first chapter online four times during the couple hours I was gone.

As for the beard, I considered growing my beard until mini-Holdinator #3 arrives (sometime this month), but then I was informed that my company frowns on sales consultants wearing full beards.

So much for looking intelligent.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Murphy's Cell

Hey, that's so convenient! If I open my phone and push the up arrow I get an immediate list of all my most recent calls, whether incoming, outgoing, missed, ignored, etc...

Except that somehow the call I need to see is inevitably the only one missing on the list.

What is it with these programmers? Oh wonderful bless-ed technology

bleh