Psychotomy

So the other day we were at the mall to let DK play in the play area there. It was either raining or threatening to rain (it’d been threatening since last saturday, and started raining wednesday evening i think). Either way, we went to the mall for him to play instead of the playground, so it wouldn’t be wet and dark.

After he ran around for a bit (and OMG, he is so much more confident and stable than he was when we first remembered it’s existence … LAST MONTH!!!) and played, kiir decided she needed something for dinner, so we hit the food court. She got fries, figuring DK would eat a few … and he did to her what she used to do to me. He ate more than half of them :o Kept sticking his hand out for another one ;)

While she was in line, though, I was letting him lead me around. He took me over to the escalator and we rode up, then he ran over and i put him on to ride down again. When we met up with Kiir , i told her “he went up and down the escalator all by himself!” She asked “Where were you?” “uh, i stood at hte bottom and waived?” And she got ready to be all hysterical that I was that incompetent and risked him and such … Apparently we don’t trust me to know that that would be dumb :o

(these events really happened, but the post is in jest)

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So, DK didn’t wake up at all last night. I heard my alarm go off, waited a bit to see if he was going to stir or if kiir was going to come to the bed, but at 7 I decided I really had to get up and get ready to go to work.

Kiir doesn’t sleep in the bed with us anymore since she found out she was pregnant. There was barely room for me, her, and her pillows the last time. With DK taking up half the bed or more, she’s moved to his bed. We’re getting him used to falling asleep and being OK with it, then in another couple months we’ll move him to his bed (and kiir will move back to our bed). We might do it a bit sooner, but two weeks in india is gonna blow it out anyway, then thanksgiving, we figured might as well wait until December to move him over that path.

I understand he woke up about 7:30, though. Interesting note — I left the house about 7:30. Oh well. He didn’t fall asleep on her lap this morning, like he does sometimes (although 7:30 wasn’t THAT early for him to get up that he’d need the mid-morning nap, per se). And then he didn’t fall asleep at noon. Or one. Or two.

After not going down for his 2pm nap, he did, apparently, accidentally topple himself backwards down the stairs (on his back, head first), oops. So Kiir gave up on naptime. I got home, we ordered pizza, he ignored it for the most part, then got fussy …

I took him up about 6:55. About 7:05 he was flat out. Naps are for babies. Sleeping, though, that’s something he can get behind ;)

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One of the shows we have on DVD for DK is PBS Kids’ Word World. It’s cute, not particularly insipid, and educational.

Earlier in the week we were at Target and remembered that disc 4 should be out now (came out last week actually). When Kiir managed to find it, she also found the halloween disc. Which is 2 12-minute episodes, but at least it only cost 5$ yaknow?

Except we have an issue. DK dislikes one of the episodes. And by dislikes I mean HATES. It scares the living bejeezus out of the boy. The first episode, about 5 minutes in or so? one of the characters is sleepwalking with a sheet over their head. A Ghost, if you will. He’s OK until the ghost starts wandering around. Then he just starts screaming.

He did it Tuesday night when we got the vid, but it was after bedtime (he wasn’t willing to go down yet) so we figured he was just tired. Wednesday morning he did it again when Kiir put the vid in. And we tried it again tonight, I figured maybe if he could sit on my lap he’d be OK. But he was up and wandering around when that part started and *blammo*. Poor babe.

He kinda digs the second episode. But changing discs for 15-minutes … Maybe in a month or three

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The last few evenings we’ve (DK and I) been going up to the playground after dinner. The current setup is K’s walk with DK in the stoller, home and dinner, then DK and I go for a walk. And all week he’s been choosing the playground.

Wednesday (Thursday?) he started going up the big kids playgym. They’ve got two of them. One that says it’s for ages 2-5 and one 5-12. So of COURSE he likes climbing up the 5-12! So he goes up and then had the bright idea that he could turn around and back onto the big slide, like it was a staircase. And then he’d slide down. Absolutely loved that idea! Kept getting to the bottom, running back to the stairs, climbing up an doing it again.

Unfortunately, then he forgot that plan the next day. So he’d go up, start trying to climb down it like stairs, realizing that that wasn’t working, turn around, come off the slide and then start looking to walk off the side of the structure. From ~6 maybe 7′ … And of COURSE the structure is open on BOTH sides there. Four sides — one is the slide, one is the stairs down a level, one is a slide pole, and one is a ladder. He seems to prefer trying to come off on the ladder side :/

Today he kept (thankfully) coming down a level and playing at hte top of the lower slide. Which I can actually reach up from the outside and take his hand and coax him out onto it. Not sure why he suddenly changed his mind about the big slide, but it’s not like I’m going to push him on it. I just wish he’d quit climbing to the top to turn around and come back down ;)

We also hit the big-kid swings today. Largely because I’m a very hands off kindof dad. I let him choose where he wants to play and what he wants to do, I’m just there to make sure he doesn’t crack his skull. Which causes trouble because all the other dads follow their 5 yr olds up the big structure, and then whenever I reach up to barrier him from coming over the side they think I’m reaching for him. I’m sure they all think I’m nuts, I let him climb up on his own, then I stand at the bottom trying to pick him off the side until they come to my rescue and hand him down, and then I turn and let him do the same thing again. Bah.

Anyway, big kid swings. I sat him down after he insisted on climbing onto them (he loves swings, so it wasn’t surprising, honestly). And i’m trying to hold his hands on the chains and push a little and suddenly FOOSH! he slips forward off the front, his hands pop out and he’s flat on his back in the dirt. With the biggest damned grin on his face. And he insists on climbing up to do that AGAIN! Only this time he falls before I even finish getting him settled, and he lands face down, getting his eyes and mouth full of dust most likely. And he did NOT like that. So we moved on back to the slide :o

Apparently he’s very unusual, in his exploration and his friendliness. One parent said her kid (older than DK) hadn’t been out amongst other kids very often so she kept fussing at her to wait her turn (while DK is trying to decide if he’s going down slide A, mom is telling the little girl to wait her turn to go past him to slide B. Oh well, sorry, DK isn’t really going to mind, he’s undecided). Obviously there’s the part where I let him choose his own activities. Just seems like if I want him to play, I should let him decide how. Otherwise it’s more like homework :o

Posted in: DK by attriel /
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Kiir and DK went to visit her family. Left Saturday morning. K and I have 10 days to ourselves.

Of course, the last two times they went, I was supposed to clean. The first time I did about 60-90 minutes of cleaning a night, then kindof got swept into Bioshock … Kiir was unimpressed with my complete lack of cleaning.

The second time we had started playing EQ2 again. And I spent the WHOLE time playing EQ2. I got like 5 levels or something. But I did ZERO cleaning. Oops. Kiir was less than unimpressed. She was downright pissed. Because I’d said I’d clean, and then I didn’t.

So the house has been kindof sitting in it’s own filth for months. And since DK started in with the blueberries, raspberries, blackberries … sure, he eats other things, but they don’t stain NEAR as bad. And those stains have been ground into the carpet for months. Because he kindof drops berries here and there, then someone steps on them, and then it just keeps setting. And the living room has been full of toys. And we still can’t use the basement because it’s still full of crappagio.

SO! The Great Purge ™ of 2008

(more…)

Posted in: DK, general, house by attriel /
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So, Sunday for Father’s day, we (Kiir, DK and me) went out to pick strawberries at Larriland again :)

Which is humourous, since I don’t actually much like strawberries, although I’m told that as a child I did. Certainly explains why I remember going strawberry picking with my mom. Had wondered why I did that when I didn’t like them

Anyway. Sunday morning, DK woke up at about 7AM. I was really planning to sleep another hour or two, personally, but up we got and played some Lost Odyssey and waited for mommy. At some point, I grabbed a random shirt from the living room for DK so that K could go for a walk (since it was just us three, we all went, or no one went). Afterwards, when Kiir got up, I grabbed two shirts and two shorts and let DK pick out his clothes. It wasn’t until we were out to pick that I realized that perhaps the white shirt wasn’t the best of all possible choices. (I just checked the pics from Kiir’s blog, and no. It’s not the same white shirt. Entirely different stupid idea :o)

Afterwards we went up to the farm to get some whole milk for DK on vacation next week, then home and bathtime (did I mention he had strawberries? hello?) before my parents came up.

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So ….

Yeah. Today, amongst various other tasks and errands, we stopped at Dream Wizards. Dream Wizards was where I used to buy Magic: The Gathering, Illuminati: New World Order, and Jyhad cards. Back in high school ;) We’d play in the back rooms on Friday evenings, and pick it all up and drive to the other end of the lot to the Roy Roger’s that was open until midnight.

Ten years ago, give or take, the place moved to a new location. I actually kindof preferred the old one, because it had the dark dungeon feel to it being in teh back corner of a somewhat unused area of stores. I think technically it’s old location is the basement of an REI now :o I understand the move, though. Better location, better business. Bigger location, so they can hold tournaments and play nights and such, which probably brings in mad cash when 50 kids come in to play Pokemon cards every week (kids … adults … whatever ;o)

ANYWAY! I decided to stop there and look for something in particular. Found it, too. DK now has his own, personal, private, set of DICE! It’s the full case, d4 through d20, everything you’d need for playing D&D now :) I’d put up a pic, but lets face it, they’re dice. And I’d have to get the camera, upload on kiir’s box, blah blah blah, and I am WAY too lazy.

But DK now has his own dice :)

Posted in: DK, games by attriel /
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So, after last night’s post …

This morning DK got up at 6:30 while I was in the shower. So instead of leaving early and taking a slightly earlier train to the office, I played Lego Indiana Jones with him for half an hour . At which point he was falling asleep and another ten or twenty minutes would have been a good idea … but I had to catch the train :o

XBox++!

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A week or so ago, maybe 10 days now?, Kiir sent the XBox back downstairs. I think I was pissing her off to a degree with the comments about it. Wasn’t my intention, as I was kvetching to kvetch. Yeah, I missed being able to play it, but I know she spends a lot of time upstairs with DK when he goes to bed. And he’s been going to bed ~9ish lately, which means that 9-12 she’s up on the bed while he sleeps, and now has nothing to do.

To be fair, we tried hooking her PC up to the TV on it’s VGA-in. It worked. Except she had to rack up the resolutions in everything so far that she was looking at a 800×600 resolution in 720p. With blind-people font sizes so she could READ the chat bubbles. Which meant she couldn’t actually PLAY the game. (Oh, we gave up on browsing as soon as it turned on :o That was RIGHT OUT).

So I felt bad that I harrassed her into giving back the X and being left with jack-all to do while he sleeps. Then this weekend hit.

I think it was Friday I woke up ~5ish. Decided to get up instead of tossing and turning, since every time I rolled over he fussed and roused. About 15 minutes later, he was crawling down the stairs to play with me. So instead of my initial plan of catching an earlier train, I played with him for a while. Like 2 hours. Actually, that might have been before we brought down the X, so that might have been two hours of Mario Kart (I like the game, but I’ve also come to hate it lately ; that’d be a different post I think)

Saturday evening after we went out then N&C (kiir’s brother and his girlfriend) visited, DK was tiiiired. Too tired. He couldn’t fall asleep. So he came down and sat on my lap and ran around the living room. We screamed, we cried. It was very emotional. Eventually I switched from Lego Indiana Jones to Lost Odyssey and we fell asleep after another half hour or so finally.

Sunday we went and visited my parents, his nap was short again, and then he took another short nap on the way home. When we got inside, he was rested enough to not go to bed right away, despite it being 9:30. By 10, he was overtired. And I played some Lego and some Lost Odyssey with him. I think we went to bed between 12 and 1. DK and I finished Lost Odyssey Disc 3 :o

Monday night, he went up around 9, we thought we had managed to slide back to schedule. Then he got up at 9:30. And came downstairs. And around 12 he finally fell asleep. I bought the Penny Arcade game on XBox. I went ahead and bought the Atari Warlords game, since I wanted something simple to play, and LO has some long periods between saves. And he doesn’t seem to sleep well to Legos.

I’m still sorry about possibly annoying Kiir and nagging or harrassing …. but I’m not sorry that I got the X back. Because ~12 more horus of Mario Kart or Pop, and I was going to start KILLING PEOPLE.

It’s been busy :o

Posted in: DK, games by attriel /
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Yeah not what you think

DK would’t go down for his nap this afternoon, so we went out to Best Buy to get the wireless usb dongle for kiir’s computer, since after moving it upstairs we came to the sudden realization that this left it a smidge short on network connection and thus limited her online access :o

First off, while there, he picked up lego indy for hte wii. I’d been planning to get it, and had been thinking about the wii version since the X is upstairs. But the controls sounded like i actually had to motion the whip and such and eff that, no way. i’m looking for something i can play sitting down with a baby across my lap, people! then he picked up the X and DS versions to take with him. I guess in case I wasn’t sure yet. I took those away too, and he grabbed two more copies of the X …

Fine I can take a hint, we’ll buy Lego Indy today :o

On the way home he fell asleep (OK, so we took a somewhat circuitous route, to make sure). So I’m sitting in the car with him. But after 2 hours of DS Crosswords sunday, I decided I wanted something different. So Kiir brought out my laptop for me :)

Posted in: DK, general by attriel /
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