Jim's Blog

Friday, 31 March 2017

On falling into ice cold puddles

Yesterday I was at the park with Isaac while Laura waited with Lucy for Alice to get off the park. He was "chasing" me, so I went up the tall slide and waited for him to climb up. Well, he had a stick, "squirt gun", and even after he wasn't holding it, had a little trouble climbing. I don't know if it was the mittens, the winter coat, boots or what, but he pivited off the hard ladder, stepped onto the platform and then fell flat on his back into the deep icy puddle at the bottom.

He wasn't happy. You wouldn't be either if your t-shirt was soaked 1/2 up your shirt at the back with near zero water.

I hugged him and worked to calm him down by doing things like hugging him and asking if he wanted to play on the swings. After about 4-5 minutes he took a couple of gasping breaths, stopped crying and informed me that he "calmed his body down". Then he asked to go on the swings, no wait, the tire swing!

He informed me that he would say "Weee!" every time that I pushed the tire, and he did. Then he said "I love you daddy. And I love Alice. And I love mommy. And I love baby Lucy. And I love everyone in the world because they are so nice to me. And I even love the bad guys because they are nice to me like Kylo Ren."

Our little guy is very much full of love.

Wednesday, 15 March 2017

Wash, Rise, Repeat

Things right now are in a repeating loop. Get up, get the kids food. Let them play, get them out of the house, or snack. Play. Lunch. Play. Think about dinner. Play. Make dinner. Play. Eat. Bath, bed, ba-story (sorry, I wanted another B word).

There is nothing wrong with it, but while being on leave there are no milestones. No weekends, no "Oh, I have a meeting on Wednesday" or anything. So when I can remember if something happens with the kids, I have a hard time remembering if it happened today, yesterday, or a couple of days ago.

Lack of sleep could be a contributing factor to my memory issues.

I feel so lucky at being able to be off. I can help get Alice to / from the bus. Help with activities for Isaac, and help do all the baby stuff with Lucy.

Another thing that it allows me to do is take my time planning on what I'm making for dinner and be able to do things like fresh bread and stew. These aren't things that I'll be able to make after picking kids up from daycare / aftercare and getting home at 6pm. Well, not for that day.

Things are good though. The kids are great. I think that we're all having fun.

Thursday, 23 February 2017

Warm weather brings out the bikes

It's been a while, but today the temp was around 11 C and sunny. What does this mean? It means the road is (mostly) clear and the kids bikes come out. Laura even got out the family scooter and was gliding around.

Isaac was out biking with Laura while Lucy and I got Alice from the bus (with a stopover at Faith's house for some playtime). When he saw us he shouted "Look I have my bike! HAHAHAHA!". Yes, he loves his bike. It was another one of Laura's brilliant ideas to get it.

It brings me great joy to see the kids enjoying being outside and biking. It makes me think that they'll develop healthy habits and have a good quality of life.

Friday, 10 February 2017

Less fratricide, more friendship

I have to admit, but it snuck up on me. Alice and Isaac are playing well together (most of the time). They love each other so much. They love sharing what they do (as long as no one is hungry, sleepy, sick, or [insert reason here]).

Today Isaac explained to me that Alice is his best friend.

Isaac listens to what Alice says, and then he (mostly) does what she'll ask him.

It's been a nice change. It gives me hope.

Friday, 20 January 2017

10 year anniversary

It's not quite 10 years, just a couple of months. We decided to go for a winter trip and we wanted "easy" so we choose Disney World. When booking they asked if it was a special occasion and I said no. Later Laura pointed out about the whole anniversary thing. Yes, sure, that's why we are here. How better to spoil yourselves as a couple than taking 3 kids 5 and under to Disney. Or as Laura pointed out, a good way to end a marriage.

If we make it through this, then I think we can make it through anything.

The kids don't sleep. Neither do we. They have total meltdowns. They have accidents. They become super over stimulated and tired. They refuse to meet someone they've been waiting 15+ minutes to meet.

They are having an awesome time. They are excited. The look of wonder on Isaac's face at meeting each character is awesome, as is his lipstick covered face afterwards. Alice's face totally lit up as she runs to my arms to tell me about the ride I missed due to sleeping kids (Epcot's Filament or Figment or somebody).

Short story: the kids are good, we're good, and there is coffee and beer. All important things.

Sunday, 15 January 2017

Backup anxiety

Currently I'm trying to back up some photos / videos off my phone before we go on our trip. I'm stressing that I don't have enough backups or in enough places.

Currently I've got most of the pictures on my laptop. Which is backed up automatically using timemachine. But then I copy the files to the NAS, which is mirrored nightly to another drive. I also have 2 drives in a fireproof (fire resistant?) box that I backup files to every once and a while. Then I also upload them to flickr / youtube. Oh, and some good ones are in an offline digital picture frame (low quality).

So, that's like 6 different drives and a cloud service. And I don't feel that it's in enough places.

This drives me nuts. I don't think that our parents ever felt this. They keep photos in a box in the basement.

Is it just because I know that it's "easy" to backup them up to multiple places that it stresses me out? Should I just be saying "screw it" and paying for a cloud service and trusting that the other service will take care of it?

Blarg.

Hopefully in a future version of the desktop software, it can de-dup the whole network and put all the media together in a nice way.