Weekend Recap + Football thoughts

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

What looked to be a promising weekend for productivity ended up being just that, although I sure didn't think that way Friday night. The kids got to enjoy themselves despite some A/V silence times. Emily experienced the normal ups & downs of potty training. We actually got almost everything done from a work perspective that we had wanted to. Toss in a nice walk/bike ride to take advantage of the weather and it all added up to a really nice weekend.

Health Issues

Back in July I had what the Dr. called a blockage in my intestine, and was able to treat it with diet. So Friday came and I was starting to feel a little bad, similar pains. But by Friday night I was feverish, and feeling chills, and was in terrible discomfort all night. The problem is that due to the timing (beginning of the year, change of provider so no insurance cards) I couldn't just go see the Dr. So I went with the same prescription that solved the problem last year: liquid diet (water & gatorade) for 1 day, then the same on Sunday with a couple of pieces of toast. And that more or less did the trick. The fever ended up being a 1 night thing so that may have been an unrelated 24 hour bug.

The problem was that I wasn't exactly what you would call energetic either day. It's a little hard to get real energized when you have no food in you. But I persevered, took care of myself and took breaks when I needed to, and was able to do what I wanted. And now I just need to get back on the eating real light habit. Probably do a semi-vegan approach (no meat or dairy except for butter on toast etc.) for a couple more days. This is not planned, and I don't know what caused it to happen, my habits and everything else had been really good for a while so it kind of caught me by surprise. But I do know that if I am good with my diet and eat lighter I don't get these problems so maybe it was a result of lax habits over the holidays.

Projects

We had allowed the bookcase in the Rec room area to get wildly out of control recently. Between the kids using it as a play area (using VHS movies to build forts for army guys, randomly pulling out books), adding new books and movies without shelving properly etc. it had gotten quite bad (here are some pictures of before and after). So we determined to get it cleaned up, and that was my plan for the weekend. However before we could do that I had to get the back room back under control, putting the Christmas decorations away properly etc. Which I did on Saturday during my sporadic burst of energy. So Sunday we went to work on the bookcase, cleared a lot of stuff out for Goodwill. It felt good to get things back under control.

Potty training

Emily did okay on Saturday, although I just didn't have the timing down real well, so there were a few accidents. But Spotty seems to really have the house breaking down for now. Sunday Emily did great: zero accidents, which I attribute to her handling it better, and our being more on the ball with getting her to go to the potty. I am feeling really good about the progress on this front, just another step in her growing up.

Football

So I held to my plan to watch as little football as possible over the weekend. I watched the first 3 quarters of the Bengals-Jets game, mostly because Emily passed out on my lap and I did not want to move or disturb her. I wasn't exactly impressed by either team. I think something is wrong withe Carson Palmer or they really need better receivers because that passing game was elementary at best. And I didn't watch any at all until I saw that the Cardinals-Packers game had been tied at 38-38, so I watched the end of that game. If there is anything that makes me more bitter towards Mike Martz and the Rams front office than the Super Bowl loss it is their discarding of Kurt Warner when he clearly had a lot of life still in him, sigh. Well the games this weekend look interesting, although I will still not plan my life around watching them.

Misc.

Sunday, after finishing with the bookcase, we went for a walk, taking advantage of the nice weather. James and Daniel rode their bikes, and Emily rode her push bike. And we took Spotty along for her first official walk. It was really nice, the kids got outside, got some exercise. It was Daniels first real chance riding his new bike, and he did quite well. I think if we do more of this he should be able to ditch the training wheels earlier than James did, I think it is just a matter of getting used to pedaling. To be honest James didn't ride his bike much until we took the training wheels off. But hopefully with Daniel we will get him doing it more and in better shape than James was. And Spotty did really well for her first walk. So it was a nice, pleasant time and hopefully something we can do more of this year.