Ty’s Weblog

Xander made us dinner tonight.

Kate bought us some small pizza crusts. We sat Xander down with a jar of pizza sauce, pepperoni, chopped black olives and cheese. We showed him how to spread the sauce out on the crust and then let him do that and then put the other toppings on. He’d ask us before each topping, “Would you care for any cheese?” for example. It was very cute. He did a great job and had a lot of fun doing it. Then Mommy got things put into the oven to cook. Then when it was done, I helped him cut them with the pizza cutter.

So Xander made us dinner.

Xander read his first word tonight. We were writing words on the shower wall as we often do in the evenings. I decided to put up a word he’d not asked for, so I wrote “HUG” on the wall. Then I pointed at each of the letters and he made the sound for them. Then he cried out, “Hug!” I just looked at him stunned for a moment or two, and then said, “Yes!”

Then I put up a bunch of other three letter words for him to try, and he got almost all of them right. So Xander is now reading. We’re all very proud. Xander is proud of himself also, and well he should be.

Haven’t talked about my gaming in a while.

ToEE was very disapointing. I gave up on it after a while. It was just too cumbersome to really be any fun for me. So yet another D&D video game bites the dust. Neverwinter Nights is still fun. I’m slowly working my way through Shadows when I have the time.

Final Fantasy X-2 is a lot of fun. I’m enjoying taking the leisurely, try to do as much of it as I can route through it.

I’ve also been playing Max Payne 2. It’s fun, but it’s not as much fun as I remember the first one being. Maybe the concept just isn’t as novel now as it was then.

I’ve also been playing a little EverQuest now and then as well.

So Xander wakes up this morning and is coming into our room to have morning snuggle time, which we do from time to time. While he’s laying in the bed talking with me, he hears Mira fussing. We decide to go get her up. Xander and I walk into the room and find Mira standing in her crib holding onto the railing.

We were both shocked! Xander was very proud of his little sister, “Look Daddy, she’s standing! Good Mira!” I was proud too, but also a little freaked out since the railing only came to just below her neck. Right where she could slip and get hurt. So while Xander, Mommy and Mira were downstairs working on breakfast, I lowered her crib mattress to the last level.

Another Mira progress report. She’s getting to the point now where Kate and I can be out of the room for a little while and she doesn’t start fussing. We left her in her saucer this morning in the kitchen for a bit while we were talking with Xander during breakfast, and she just played happily. It’s another pretty big step for her, since she’s been very clingy the last couple of months.

Pictures from Xander’s birthday weekend are up.

Xander had a wonderful 4th birthday today. We started out the morning with a nice breakfast of waffles and blueberries, two of his favorite things.

He got his first present, a race track with some wind up cars that zoom around it, which he loved.

We spent the morning cleaning for the party and watching qualifying. Then all four of us went out to pick up his cake and the balloons we’d orderd for the party. The cake was a Jeff Gordon cake. Not his favorite driver, but he likes him well enough and there weren’t a whole lot of choices. Xander loved it the moment he saw it. Then it was off to McDonald’s to pick up lunch.

When we got home, we put a couple of the balloons on the mailbox, but it was a very windy day and they popped pretty quickly. Xander was ok with it, because at least we’d tried.

After lunch, Xander went upstairs to have quiet time, and Kate and I did some more cleaning.

After quiet time, Xander and I went out to pick up the party tray we’d ordered from Chick-Fil-A. We also got a gallon of lemonade and some carrot raisin salad. To their credit, the order was ready right on time and everything was perfect. Xander and I had a wonderful time in the car just talking with each other.

We ran a little late picking things up. When we got home, Xander’s friends had arrived. Kate also had a big sign up on the door saying “Happy Birthday Xander”, which made him very happy. He got the idea for the sign from a Mister Rogers where they had a party for King Friday and Queen Sarah coming home and a “guest artist” made a big sign to celebrate the occasion.

We’d only invited 3 of his friends, and one couldn’t make it because of sickness in the family. He and the 2 that could make it had a great time! They tore around the house playing with one thing and another. We broke for dinner, and then there was more playing. Then we opened the presents and had cake and ice cream.

Soon after that it was time for everyone to go home. Xander handed out the goodie bags and told everyone thanks for coming. Everyone seemed to have had a good time including, most importantly, Xander.

Mira was even happy and pleasent for the evening. That must have been her present to her big brother.

After everyone had left, Xander and Mommy sat down and he made footprints and handprints for us to save. Then he had to have a bath to get the ink off.

We finished the evening off by reading three of Xander’s current favorite books.
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
Yertle the Turtle
and
The Cat in the Hat.

Then it was time for bed. We asked him, and he said his favorite part of the day was the ice cream.

I’m glad we had him 4 years ago.

No new Angel next year. No good thing goes on forever, I guess. At least they have a little bit of warning, so they might be able to tie things up in a way they like.

So we were watching the start of the Daytona 500 just now. The National Anthem was being sung and George W. Bush was in attendence to give the command to start engines.

I was shocked to see that the President of the United States of America didn’t feel he needed to stand quietly with his hand over his heart during the singing of The Star Spangled Banner. Even Xander, who is just under 4 years old, can stand quietly with his hand over his heart for that amount of time. Not only that, but he loves doing it. I’m sorry to see that GW doesn’t feel as much pride and respect for his country as a small child does. Maybe that explains a lot.

For the past six days (from Saturday morning through Thursday morning), Xander made it through the night dry. We’re very proud of him. He woke up wet this morning, but I think that’s a pretty good record for an almost 4 year old who is still working on the whole process here.

So Xander spent most of the last 28 hours asleep in his room. If that won’t help you feel better, nothing will!

He’s up not and hungry, so that’s a great sign. He does have a sinus infection (the test came back from the doctor’s office), so he went on antibiotics today. But that seems to be a minor thing compared with what he was going through the last few days.

He’s in a much better mood now. He wants to play games and be downstairs.

All of this, of course, makes me feel much better as well.

We’ve got a sick kid again. Xander has a nasty little “vomiting virus” as the doctor called it. They actually have several nurses out with it, so it is going around. The up side it that is usually clears up in about a day, so here is hoping.

Poor Xander is miserable. He can’t even keep his medicine down to try to keep his fever down. It’s only between 100° and 101° today, luckly. Yesterday afternoon it spiked to just under 104°, and he refused to take anything for it, because of how his stomach felt. He ended up in the bathtub in 92° water to try to being it down. We finally got him to take some liquid Tylenol and that and the bath got him back down to the low 100s for the night.

I really hope he’s better tomorrow. I know how miserable it is to feel this way.

I think this is one of the hardest parts of being a parent. The fact that we’ve done all we can for him and he is still miserable. It’s not a good feeling to not be able to make things better for your child.

So I helped judge a science fair at a local high school today. It was quite an interesting experience. The first place prize was pretty easy to pick out. Second and third could have really gone either way, but I think we did the right thing on them.

It was kinda fun to go through the fair from the other side. I guess this means I really am an adult now, huh.

Today was the day that the dads get to join the kids at school for an hour or so at Xander’s school. So I got to hang around with him till around 10am while he showed me the work he does.

I was amazed watching him putting the state puzzle together. He knows where the states are much better than I do. He also did a great job with the 100 board. That’s a board with 100 squares on it and you take little numbers printed on squares and put them down in order from 1 to 100. He was very good at it, and I was very proud. We also did a couple of the other counting works.

Before I left Xander servered me a muffin and poured me some apple juice. Yep, that’s what I said, he poured the juice for me. I had no idea he could even do that! I was very proud of him.

It was hard for me to make myself leave. I think Xander handled me leaving better than I did. He understood that I was only there for a little while and that I had to get off to work. He didn’t offer a single complaint when it was time for me to go. The boy just amazes me.

UbiSoft announced today that it is working on a sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Woo hoo!