Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Biggest Week of the Year...

Tomorrow begins the week of state mandated testing. Much tension and silliness will abound. I have already made my thoughts clear about testing before in these pages, and will not repeat my screed. The test as an instrument of measure is more akin to a butter knife than a surgeon's scalpel. These are, however, the times in which we live, and we can only hope for better ones in the future.

Our little one has just finished her bedtime snack, and daddy here is going to down a little NyQuil, in the hopes that he can sleep off the cold that has been bugging him for the past several days. A quiet, peaceful Sunday night at the end of a quiet, peaceful weekend. A quiet, peaceful week would be nice...

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Life With Baby...

Hectic, but good. We are fortunate that our benefits package plus my wife's accumulated sick time allows her twelve weeks at home with our little angel (at least until she hits the Terrible Twos). Alice eats about every three hours, or sooner if she is hungry. She is a pretty good napper, having had only one day that I can remember where she was fussy for most of the day. I try to take over, except for feeding, in the evening when I get home. After Alice gets fed, my wife will usually head to bed to try to get two or three hours of early sleep. That is my alone time with my little girl, and it is my favorite time of the day. By sometime between 10:30-11:30, I am just too sleepy to keep it going and I swaddle her up and go to bed myself.

Alice is strong. We have a little swaddling device that uses velcro to secure the wrap. I put her in it last night. When she wakened my wife, she had worked herself out of the thing entirely. She spent nine months batting around uterine fibroids that were pretty big. I think that she had a workout of some significance...

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

God Forgive Me, I Am Lazy and Unworthy...

I have been remiss, which is what I always say when I look at my neglect of this site. Much has happened, so let's catch up.

Power Outages-the failure that I referred to back in February lasted for five days. By that time, many of us had lost the food that was stored in our refrigerators. The district had sent several portable generators that were to be used for refrigeration support to our site at the time that the power was finally restored. Since then, we have had a couple of day-long outages, and one that just ended over the weekend that lasted three days. We now have a portable generator for each building, and we have some limited electrical outlet availability in the hallway outside our apartment. We have taken to plugging in a surge strip into that outlet, and running our refrigerator and freezer off from it. Even though the power is back on today, we still have extension cords running through the apartment. I suspect that we may keep it this way for the rest of the school year.

Baby! My little princess, Alice, was born on March 7. Of course, I believe in some level of my heart that she is the most unique human being ever born. I am silly that way. Everything went even more smoothly than we could have hoped, especially with some of the complications that we faced. Of course, I have not begun to deal with medical bills in earnest as yet. Our insurance is pretty comprehensive, so I am hopeful. Daddyhood for the second time is fun. Even when it is inconvenient. Remind me of this when I am 74 years old with a 15-year-old to deal with. I will certainly have it coming for my arrogance.

That is the big stuff. We are about 7 1/2 weeks from being done, and we have the big, bad test days next week to enjoy and plan around. It is light until ten o' clock or so, and spring is clearly coming, even if it is -20 in the mornings when I walk the dogs. Summer is coming, it cannot be stopped...