Ultranormal

  • Max counted to one hundred

    Max counted to one hundred last night. He’s two and a half and counted to a hundred. He needed some help after thirty. He got to thirty-nine and then looked at me. I said “forty” and then he promptly moved on to forty-nine, at which point I said, “fifty” and so on until we got to one hundred. At that point, we clapped and he shouted, “The end!”, like one hundred is the biggest number he’ll ever need to count to.

    Jen’s started leaving Max’s door open a crack at night, and then leaving our door open a crack as well so Max can come in after he wakes up in the morning. I think the shower woke him up this morning because when I got out, there was Max, laying on his lamb on the bed in his Batman pajamas. He smiled his sleepy smile and said quietly, “Hi, daddy” and then layed back down. He is so cute, it makes me want to cry.

  • I should have called in

    I should have called in sick. I really should have. I’m tired and well, just not in the mood for working. On top of that, two unrelated-but-related emergencies are in progress, on top of future uncertainty. It’s the perfect day to stay home and sleep.

  • On the road again… I’m so happy I’m not on the road again

    I’m back! We had a good time at the wedding, a decent time on the drive there and back, and a great time seeing Jen’s parents. Max was an angel almost the whole time. He started getting upset about twenty minutes from home, which is completely understandable since over the course of three days, he’d spent almost fifteen hours in a carseat (or as he would say, fiveteen). All in all, a good time.

    Random Observations:

    • Pennsylvania likes to add adventure to their highway experience. Not only is the Pennsylvania Turnpike hilly and curvy, they’re also doing construction on most of it, which narrows it to two lanes with about six inches to either side. Sixty-five down a mountain, through S-curve after S-curve sandwiched between concrete walls and an eighteen-wheeler in forty mile-an-hour winds is not the way I’d suggest spending a Sunday afternoon. I felt like I was in a video game.

    • I don’t feel the need to go back to Ohio. I know it was a little town, and it’s a crappy time of year to go pretty much anywhere north of Florida, but it didn’t strike me as a place I need to go back to.

    • Every wedding reception, big or small, needs an Elvis impersonator. The less he looks and/or sounds like Elvis, the better.

    • Everyone’s first wedding should be special.

    • I really like my in-laws. I wish we lived closer so Max could go over and play with Grandpop, Grandma and Buddy more often.

    • Max saying “daredevil” as he climbs on his Grandpa Brian is about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

    • If you teach a two-year old the definition of a word, it becomes the definition of every word. Jen’s mom taught Max the meaning of “Exit” (“It’s the way out”). Then, Jen started quizzing him about the meaning of “Entrance” (“It’s the way out!”, says Max), Purple (ditto), Car (uh-huh, you guessed it), etc. Every time we stopped to eat or get gas, Max would point up to the Exit sign and say, “Exit, it’s the way OUT”.

    • When I’m tired, I need a Toddler Translator. It takes a lot of concentration to figure out what he’s saying sometimes.

    • Max is just about the most adorable two-year old on the planet. He was extremely well-behaved, kept all his clothes on when he was supposed to, kept quiet and still during the ceremony and played well with the other kids, who weren’t always well-behaved, completely dressed or quiet and still when they needed to be. He’s my favorite.

    • I now know the script of Toy Story 2 by heart, even though I’ve only watched the movie twice. I’ve listened to it about six times now.

    • Every family roadtrip needs a dvd player (thank you, AOL… I get a world of use out of that Powerbook you gave me!)

    • In this little town, we couldn’t find one non-chain restaurant to eat at that wasn’t a biker bar. Hopefully, it’s not like that everywhere. When I go somewhere new, I like to try the local places to get a feel for the place. It could have been one town over from Sterling for all the local flavor we found in the town. The family was a different story. They’re all Ohio State freaks, and the first night at the “Hey y’all come over” party, it was incredibly difficult to tell everyone apart. They all wore Ohio State t-shirts and sweatshirts and well, they’re a family so they all kind of looked alike anyway. Local flavor galore in the family. Good people, and very welcoming to all us new folks.

    There are stories I’m supposed to write about that I can’t think of at the moment, because I’m actually working. I’ll update later, once Jen reads this and reminds me.

  • Preparation

    We’re leaving for Ohio tomorrow morning. Jen keeps moving our departure time up by thirty minutes every time she thinks of some other reason for us to stop (changing diapers, Max decompression time, lunch, etc). Now, I think we’re leaving at 4:30am yesterday.

    What do I do before a big trip? Why, I wipe the Powerbook clean and start over. I’m going to go to Best Buy and get a cigarette lighter adapter so Max can watch movies the whole way there, and then to the sto’ to buy soda and last-minute munchies. I have my directions and my big driving map. I’m going to get the oil changed at lunch, and debating about buying a cell phone. The one thing I don’t know is whether Ohio is Eastern or Central time. If it’s Central, that means we can leave an hour later (please, oh please).

    I’ll have the Powerbook with me, so will hopefully be able to blog from the road. But, don’t look for anything insightful (do you ever get anything insightful here anyway?). See ya on Monday!

  • Killer Apps

    There are things I have today that I don’t remember living without. I remember the days before e-mail, but do I think I could live without it now? Nope, not for a single day. I’d go crazy. My favorite application, that I don’t think I could live with if it disappeared has got to be Mapquest. Every time I drive somewhere new, I go right there. Every time we take a roadtrip – it’s the first place I go. Like this morning, after I got out of my meeting, I went to Mapquest to plan our trip to Ohio. Mapquest told me it will take six hours and forty-three minute to drive from Sterling, VA to Elyria, OH. I know it’s 376.37 miles between my front door and the hotel where we’re staying, and I even have a nice little map of the route. Thank you, internet!

  • Going to Ooooooooooo-hio

    We’re going on a roadtrip this weekend. My wife’s brother is getting married in a little town in Ohio. So, we’re gonna pack up the truck, throw Max in the back with the luggage and his lamb and drive on out. It’ll be fun. We haven’t done a real roadtrip since the Virginia Beach trip last year. The best part is her parents will be there. I can smell the Pinochle and trash talk already.

    There’s something wonderfully American about roadtrips. Jen and I decided last night to plan the Great American Vacation. We may never take it, but we’re going to plan it. We assume we’ll take a big honkin’ RV, spew pollutants across this great country of ours. I call it “spreading the love”. We want to finely balance great natural and historic wonders like Monticello and Yellowstone with the macabre and campy American classics like The Corn Palace and World’s Largest Ball of Twine. We’ll stay in campgrounds, I’ll wear a fisherman’s hat, shorts with black socks and chew on an empty pipe. She’ll look at the map quizzically while I go on and on about the price of gas and how many miles we need to cover before we get to Carhenge. Max will sit in the back playing video games and looking at us like we’re crazy. Yeah, it’ll be the perfect vacation, just like the home movies we watched at Grandma’s. Uncle Bud shooting 16mm film out of the back of a beat-to-hell station wagon as mom, Aunt Linda and Aunt Judy played in the seat in front of him. Stretches of concrete in a disappearing line behind him, filled with gas-guzzling behemoths of steel passing on all sides. Who wants to go?

  • I have a new favorite

    I have a new favorite last name: Krauthammer. How completely insensative and wrong can you be? It’s PERFECT!! Charles Krauthammer was on Meet the Press yesterday, and didn’t look very hammering to me. I wish Krauthammer was my last name. Maybe Chuck Gerbilhammer would be better… or Kevin Nailhammer would be better. Either way, Krauthammer’s a great name. Second child’s middle name, I think. Augustus Krauthammer Lawver – nice ring to it, eh sweetie?

  • They’re back! They’re back! I

    I made it to BWI in record time (75 minutes), waited around in a terminal chock full of people waiting to go somewhere exotic. They were all wearing clothes too big or too small, and there were several large women in their Sunday best. Everyone spoke different languages and it was kind of fun waiting around for 45 minutes listening to all the conversations.

    They finally appeared and… it was great. We rushed down baggage claim and waited for the bags to show up. Max now knows “big” and “little” and pointed out all the “little o’s” and “big o’s” on our SmartCarte. We piled into the car and headed home, which we made in about an hour (amazing, ain’t it, when you consider our first trip to the airport).

    Max was so happy to be home. He jumped his big jumps, made “Max’s House” with the couch cushions and was his normal happy, adorable little self. The best part is that he learned new words like rascal, hiyakka, patui, etc. Grandma Lang also taught him some songs! We sang Twinkle, Twinkle on the way home and he knows all the words. For Max, a song is more like a Spalding Gray monologue, but it’s still really funny.

    I wanted to take today off… but here I am.

  • Missing

    With less than twenty-four hours before Jen and Max get back, I am starting to go a little crazy. I’m sitting here on the couch at eleven pm without my pants (because there are only so many hours in a day – where are my Playtex 18-Hour Pants?). I’m watching SportsCenter and surfing after putting a filing cabinet together, changing all the burned out lightbulbs on the second floor, and cleaning up so the house is ready for them to come home tomorrow.

    It’s been weird, being alone for two weeks. I’ve been too sick to actually do anything fun. I was going to hang out with the guys from work and go to Happy Hour. Instead, I slept, watched a lot of movies, coughed up many-colored lucky charms, and worked my butt off. Not as hard as some, as there are a couple people who worked on that huge project who were at work for three days straight, which I am in awe of. I just pulled six 12 hours days in two weeks with a raging sinus infection and some weird stomach flu.

    Yesterday, this lady I work with was at my desk talking about search reporting stuff (an extremely intoxicating topic… OH MY the fun involved in reporting). We were testing something out, so I searched for “Lawver” and voila, Max’s page came up. We went and looked at pictures, because she wanted to see what he looked like. It was hard not to cry when looking at him. I don’t think she caught on or even noticed. He is beautiful in those pictures: happy and excited looking at all the animals. I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anything.

    And then there’s Jen. Once you’ve learned to sleep in the bed with someone else, sleeping in an empty bed is tough. Sleeping in an empty house is even harder. The novelty of going to the bathroom with the door open and walking around the house late at night with the lights on and TV on loud gets old after a couple days. I’d much rather have a munchkin running around pulling on hands pleading for the pullee to follow him on whatever adventure comes next. I’d rather have a wife who holds my hand on the couch and laughs at my jokes.

    Come on home guys, I cleaned up and everything. I even promise I’ll wear pants at the airport.

  • Ok, Britney, you’re at the

    Ok, Britney, you’re at the top of your game. You’ve got endorsements, rabid pre-teen fans, and hit songs. There’s one thing you’re missing though, in your rise to the top of the media heap. You need a restaurant. Not a Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock over-priced event place, but a real down-home, like your mama used to make restaurant. You could invent a new cuisine, “Nouvelle Cracker” and serve fried balogna in new and fascinating ways. You could call it Britney Spears’ Oops I Fried It Again. It would be a huge hit with those little girls and homosexual men who want to be just like you. Pickled pigs feet on the counter, grilled peanut butter and jelly sam’miches, cheez whiz on crackers, Pepsi products in mason jars. Think of it as a cross between Cracker Barrel and Kenny Rogers’ Roasters (only without the whole bankrupcy thing). It could be huge, baby, huge!