Clever title, eh? Well, Laurel and Oscar are cute. So there!
Oscar’s drawing skills are coming together all of a sudden. He is for the first time thinking about what he wants to create, vs just scribbling. Here’s something he created at school last week.
He had his teacher copy down the following description of his piece: “This is a sea animal that lives in the sea. If you touch the brown things you will get poisoned and sick. And if you touch the black or red ones they will make more of the sea creatures.”
Oscar also enjoys creating books. Leave a comment with this post and I’ll send a random commenter a copy of his latest book “Super Flower and Attack of the Talking Apples” on Friday, March 27th.
Laurel is loving her weekly music class. I cut together some fun moments to share with you here:
Our bag is packed and the babysitters are lined up and I’m just here waiting for the magic hour to arrive. Brian and I are making a break for it and leaving the kids for the night. We have tickets to see our favorite guilty pleasure from The Soup, Joel McHale, tonight in exotic Long Beach. We are devoted to The Soup and have a habit of watching the recorded show as soon as our kids take nap on Saturday afternoons. Even if the show sucks tonight, we’re going to have a blast! I actually have an Adam Carolla podcast featuring Joel McHale all lined up for our drive this afternoon. Fun fun fun fun fun. What a dork I am!
This is actually our second getaway in recent weeks. I’ve been meaning to write about our trip to the desert for a while now. I haven’t got to it partly because Brian hasn’t had a chance to edit his photos from the trip, which would be nice to share here (No pressure though, Shug…you’ve got a lot of projects right now). So anyway, I knocked numbers 1 & 50 off the list when I surprised Brian with a weekend in the Anza-Borrego desert to enjoy the wildflowers. On the day of our trip, a babysitter showed up and I told Brian to grab his camera and get in the car. After a stop in Escondido to experience Peterson’s Donut Corner, we drove into Borrego Springs. There we found an awesome 6 mile hike to an oasis and waterfall and then settled into the quirky and fun Palms Hotel at Indian Head. This was my first trip to the desert, but not my last.
We’re getting quite used to regular vacations from parenting responsibilities. A big thanks must go out to Brian’s mom, Vicki, for being our generous overnight babysitter. We owe you a nice dinner, Vicki.
Considering the lofty goals Anna has on her “100 Things” list, I feel a bit silly admitting this, but one of the things I’ve always wanted to learn was how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. I’m not sure exactly where this comes from, but I suspect it is some sort of repressed childhood frustration (I have a distinct memory of disassembling the cube I had as a kid in order to “solve” it).
I don’t think that I had ever voiced this desire to anyone, but by pure coincidence a Rubik’s Cube is precisely the birthday gift that Oscar picked out for me. This had to be some sort of sign, right? The universe was clearly telling me it was time to fulfill this goal.
So, for the past few weeks I’ve been studying the various cube solving strategies and practicing whenever I had time. Just yesterday I managed to complete the cube for the first time and am now at the point where I can consistently solve it! Lest anyone get too impressed, there’s not much too it beyond recognizing a handful of patterns and memorizing a series of associated algorithms (pretty much the same thing I do for my day job). Nonetheless, I’m proud to have finally mastered the cube and would be crossing this off my list if I had one.
In order to preserve a record of my achievement, I shot a video which you can find below. Note that I’m not particularly fast yet so I’ve sped up the video to 1.5x so that you don’t have to suffer through 4 minutes of me spinning plastic cubes around.
My mom asked for some video of Laurel’s new language skills. Grammy always gets what Grammy wants. Am I right, Dad?
I am working hard to meet my goal of running a seven minute mile. So far I am running my usual distance with a half-mile at a seven minute mile pace. My plan is to keep adding distance at the fast pace until I reach my goal. It is so hard. I feel like I would give up on this crazy idea if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve advertised it on the blog. Therefore, in order to save face, I am sticking with it.
One last random note is on a silly thing that Oscar says every once in a while. We have no idea where this came from.
Oscar says “Dad, do you know what I am going to give you for your next birthday?”
Brian says “What, kiddo?”
Oscar replies “A sad, backwards glance.”
Say what!? Is this from a movie or something? Crazy kid.
It has been a while since I’ve spent some time on The Full Catastrophe, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening around here. We are just coming back to the real world after the Brian’s birthday-Valentine’s Day-President’s Day weekend trifecta celebration. Brian is 35 now. Poor guy is just as old as me. We also got to share some time with friends from the Great White North (wait, is that what people call Canada? They’re not Canadian). Here’s a photo of our kids together at the zoo, where they spent more time on the footsie wootsie machines than watching any animal!
Hana & Cora are delightful girls and we’re scheming with their parents to see them again in the summer in their neck of the woods.
I continue to chip away at my 100 things list. My friend, Benita, says it is ok for me to cross off #100…I think she’s right. After talking to some people about it, I have decided that I am a fairly comfortable snorkeler (#22). Last but not least, I saw a bad driver get pulled over last week. Sweet sweet satisfaction and goodbye to #99! I have just decided that I’m going to see about running that seven minute mile (#7). Stay tuned.
So, here’s what happens when you leave Oscar and I alone with too much free time on a Saturday afternoon.
After I’d finished editing the video and showed it to Oscar, I asked him how he was able to jump from room-to-room so quickly. He responded simply “magic”.
We were setting ‘em up and knocking them down last night during the kids’ first trip to the bowling alley. Oscar had the second highest score with the aid of gutter bumpers. Yeah, he beat me, but I shared my frames with Laurel. For those of you around San Diego, we recommend that you check out the SDSU bowling alley. It was especially fun for Brian, I think. He spent a lot of time when he was a kid skateboarding around the campus and hanging out with his friends (probably watching the coeds in their convertible Cabriolets!). Naturally, we brought the flip along and put this together:
On our way home, “Add It Up” by The Violent Femmes was on the radio and Brian commented that the song was a perfect soundtrack to his high school days and all of the time he spent at State. We stayed in the car till the song was done and decided that portions of that song were going to have to go into our kids bowling video. After many minutes of careful editing and loading onto You Tube, we found for the second time this week that the song and all of the audio is muted out by Warner Brothers (the kids love this cheesy Pink song, “Rock Star”, it is on par cheesy-wise with “Welcome to the Jungle”). I guess Warner thinks it is losing money somehow, but honestly it isn’t. No one makes money from their You Tube videos and if anything, Warner is getting free promotion of their products. We acquired the music legally and are bummed that we aren’t able to use it to its fullest potential. Apparently, we aren’t the only ones that are a bit p.o.’ed.
Back in 1989 kids used to have to go down to Melones to do stuff like this. Since I’m letting them do it at home, I’m a lenient parent. I bet that all of the Calaveras County n’er-do-wells who used to tear it up now sit in cubes and think of this scene when they get stressed. Anyway, our latest video demonstrates the DeHamer monsters in action:
I’ve been saying lots of spontaneous Yes We Can’s and Barack Obama’s as the inauguration gets closer. I’ll be watching all the action tomorrow and am very excited…but not as excited as Lydia must be. Check out her new blog from Washington: http://www.threegoodnerves.blogspot.com/
Don’t ask Laurel about Yes We Can, though. She learned how to say no yesterday. It is horrible and adorable at the same time. I’ll try to get some video for you guys.
Oscar and Brian have been in creative modes. Brian has just completed a couple of photography classes and Oscar has written a poem. I’ll leave you with their work.
Silliness and happiness
Fun stuff to do
Underline two-hundred and two
Welcome to the zoo fair
So much to have fun
Did you see the full moon last night? photo by Pete Baer
Apparently it was the largest full moon of the year. We had the good fortune of seeing it peaking up and rising over the eastern mountains last night and setting through the palms to our west this morning. Adding to the magic of it all was the warm & clear air that we’re enjoying with the Santa Ana’s in town.
It is so deliciously warm outside and with the Chargers in a playoff game right now, we’ve had the town to ourselves. By the noises coming from our neighbors houses, it doesn’t seem to be going so well for the Chargers. That’s ok, San Diego is kicking Pittsburgh’s ass when it comes to the weather.
P.S. Just so you know that it isn’t all sunshine & moonbeams around here, Laurel had some tummy trouble last night & threw up in her crib. We’re especially lucky to have this warm day so that we can comfortably air out this stinky house!
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