Facebook Archive - March 2020

March 11 - Ian apologized for having a bad day yesterday. I told him, “Don’t apologize for having a bad day. Everybody has those. It’s unavoidable. You can only control how you behave when you’re having a bad day. And hopefully, you have many more good days before you have to practice that skill again.”

March 17 - Today’s school lesson is how to clip his own fingernails and police the clippings into the trash. He was frustrated he couldn’t clip his thumb nail until I explained how levers work and he needs to press on the back of the clipper arm. Voila!

March 17 - Leftover chickpea chili for me, potstickers for the boys. I printed out their “Learning in Place” stuff last night and put it in binders for them and they’re looking through it and comparing assignments.

March 20 - All that school work you're stressing about for your kids doesn't really matter. Go get some sunshine.

March 24 - Ian’s laundry this week included 5 pair of pants, 4 pair of socks, 2 t-shirts, 1 pair of boxer briefs 

March 26 - Ian and I did the first Mo Willems doodling lunch over the weekend and after listening to Ian lament his lack of skills, I took his eraser away from him. He was so worried about getting it "right," he spent more time with the eraser than the pencil. The lunchbox notes I did last year were "hard" but so very satisfying for me. I think I'll start up some regular doodling time.

March 30 - This week: 4 pairs of pants, 6 t-shirts, 3 and a half pairs of socks, 5 pairs of boxer briefs. Not perfect, but trending positive

March 30 - Schools: “It’s Spirit Week! Dress as your favorite animal!” Me: “Put on pants and go in the back yard! In that order!”

March 31 - I washed both dogs before realizing there wasn't a dead animal in my crawl space but a bag of dog poop in the leash bin

March 31 - Tonight we made BLTs with the tomatoes from Seasonal Roots as well as glazed carrots from them. Ian was concerned a pound of bacon between the two of us might not be enough.

Facebook Archive - February 2020

Feb 16 - Sure, my kid can snowboard now, but can we talk about how I made this video on skis without losing my mittens or poles.

Feb 20 - This year’s Day of the Daddy has been chill. We watched the pilot episodes for Firefly, replaced Ian’s computer, set up the music for Kim’s dad’s memorial on Saturday, played Portal 2 in co-op mode, and got Mexican for dinner.

Feb 20 -Ian: “The second episode of Firefly [The Train Job] was way better than the first [Serenity pilot]. I mean, they’re both good. But the first one was like SSX and the second one was like SSX Tricky.”

Rich adored the SSX Tricky video game and played it for years, so he would appreciate this analysis.

Facebook Archive - January 2020

Jan 14 - Ian’s grade is having a field trip to the Chrysler Museum today and we got an email from school telling us to talk with our kids about nudity in art. As Ian walked out the door this morning, I yelled, “Have a good field trip! Watch out for naked people!”

Jan 15 - I'm replacing Ian's carpet. For the last 12 years, his room has been the only space where the animals have chosen to empty their stomachs, bladders, or bowels. Carpet cleaning isn't doing the job anymore and so I'm nuking the site from orbit. A dude is coming to measure the room tomorrow morning and we'll have new carpet in there by next week sometime. Ian and I are both very excited.

Jan 29 - We have new carpet in Ian's room that's glorious. Ian scored a goal and an assist in Saturday's hockey game. He also climbed to the top of the wall several times when he went to the rock gym with Shrop, which was a big boost for him.