July 2009 Archives

Tonight was a not-so-normal night, in that Will (and I) went to the pool. But there was a reason — he was invited to a birthday party in a nearby neighborhood. We got lucky with the weather — it rained on the group a couple of times, but there was never a peal of thunder. (The forecast had 60% probability of thunderstorms.) That meant Will could stay for over 2 hours of pool time with his friends. And yes, with me. I did get in.

The one cool thing this pool had was a diving board. And Will saw a few of his friends jumping off it into the deep part. Oh, he so wanted to jump there, but he understood that he didn’t have the skills to do it. I only started to teach him how to tread water last Sunday.

Well, he overcame his fears and now has opened new possibilities for himself (whether he realizes it or not). I made him understand that he needed to start jumping on his own (instead of me catching him) in the 5 foot area before he’d be close to ready for jumping in the deep end. That didn’t happen for a while, and the first couple times, he tried jumping further out (toward me), meaning he was nearly belly-flopping in. Ouch.

But eventually, we worked through it (I moved closer to the edge and closer to the 4 foot area, where he can stand, catching him but allowing him to go under water), and soon he was jumping in, getting back above the water, and swimming a couple of lane distance to me. Hooray!

Later on, after I had gotten out, he got really adventurous. He swam half the length of the pool, chasing a couple of friends, through the deeper area (where he couldn’t put his feet down). Nothing like that added incentive to keep yourself going. He also went over to the 5 foot area and started jumping in, then turning around and stroking back to the edge.

He saved the best for last, as we were getting ready to leave. He jumped in at one corner (before the rope to the diving area) and surfaced. And then, instead of coming to the closer wall, which he had been doing previously, he started swimming to the other side, even stopping briefly to tread water while I asked him if he really wanted to swim all the way across the opening to the diving area to the other wall. (Distance-wise, this is similar to the sizing at my parents’ pool.) And he did it.

So now, he has no excuse. He’s shown me he can pretty much handle all aspects of at least our neighborhood pool (which is much smaller than this one, with a truly deep area). Endurance on swimming is still a little issue, but going half of a 25-yard pool shows he can do it when he puts his mind to it. And when he visits Nana and Grampa in August, he can show them all of his new swimming skills and abilities.

The only regret is that there are no pictures of him doing any of this. I was in the pool too much to take pictures/video, and just forgot the last few times he was doing anything.

Anyway — congrats, Will! That’s some awesome swimming you did today.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get out for concerts, much less other forms of entertainment, that much. I guess the kids keep us a bit busy. It’s probably been 2 years since I had seen a concert at all. But twice in one week, I actually got a chance to go out and watch three of my favorite bands.

The first concert was for a band most of you have probably never heard of — Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. And that’s a shame, because they are really good. You might actually have heard of Roger Clyne from his previous band (the Refreshments)), who had a couple of hits in the 1990s. And he also wrote and performed the theme song for the Fox cartoon King of the Hill. This is good guitar-driven rock. With the added bonus that Roger (IMO) is a great songwriter.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find out that he would be headlining at the Canal Club here in Richmond on a Sunday night. I got the pass from Kellie to go out and see them, and they were really good. 90 minutes of rock-and-roll, hitting their past and present, taking requests (including for one song they hadn’t played on tour yet and had only played once live before) while “breaking in” a new guitarist (as of February). I never would have guessed the guitarist was relatively new, and he pretty much had the whole catalog down.

I’d definitely see them live again. The only disappointing thing was that they didn’t come out for an encore, but they definitely performed a rocking show. Definite thumbs up, particularly if you like guitar-driven rock-and-roll. (And the acoustics in the Canal Club were perfect. It made for an enjoyable experience.) If you want to start with one of their albums, check out Americano.

Wednesday night gave me another chance to catch 2 more bands from my youth (although one had actually formed before I was born). Asia and Yes were touring together and performed in the outdoor pavilion here in Richmond. Asia had all 4 key members, and they performed both songs from Asia as well as songs from their own bands before they formed Asia. I showed up late, so only caught about two-thirds of their show. But they definitely sounded good.

Yes was the headliner, and it was clear that most of the crowd (not quite sold out, but very little room left in the grass for people to set up) was there for them. As might be expected, given their progressive rock tradition, but they only played about 12 songs in 90 minutes. Chris Squire, Steve Howe, and Alan White returned, and they had a new keyboardist and vocalist. (I was wrong when telling people earlier that Jon Anderson was with them. He was not, but the vocalist sure sounded like him. I couldn’t see very well at the back of the audience.)

The most disturbing thing of the evening? Having a 50+ year old women dancing spastically (think awkward high school boy, flicking head, hips, and arms about) during the guitar solo in Owner of a Lonely Heart and later during Roundabout. Not the parts of those songs I would expect someone to dance to.

Great stuff all around. And kind of interesting to think that I hadn’t seen any concerts in so long. (I think the last one may have been, believe it or not, Weird Al Yankovic. That was a fun one, too.) Will I see another one this year? I don’t know. Kellie has her own concert experience coming up this weekend. Yes, if you know her, you could guess who — Sir Paul McCartney.

Let me apologize for the quality of the video. This was taken with my cellphone, so frame rates were a bit slow and the mic wasn’t positioned well. Also, Sean was sitting in my lap. But I got an impromptu concert from the boys this evening that I didn’t think you’d want to miss.

Enjoy.

We present — footbowl…

Kellie broke out the plastic bowling set this morning for Sean and Daniel. And they were excited about it. And proceeded to show us that we haven’t been doing it right all these years.

I don’t think we’ll take them to a real set of lanes any time soon, as kicking those balls would probably hurt just a tiny bit.

Swimming at the pool.

Or something like that. (Wiggles are sticking in my brain.)

Last Sunday, we took the boys to the pool for a bit of swimming. We remembered to take the camera with us, so we got some shots of the boys jumping in the deep end (of course, Daddy is catching, as it’s too deep for Mommy) and Will swimming back to the edge.

A couple of interesting side notes on this. For 2 or 3 pool visits before this past Sunday, Sean would not get in the pool beyond the first step in the shallow end. He just didn’t want to get wet, for whatever reason. And now, suddenly, he’s jumping in like a pro. You can see a little hesitation at times, but he has too much fun jumping in and kicking around.

Daniel, on the other hand, loves to jump in. He even was doing it earlier in the afternoon. So it was strange to get him on camera doing essentially a belly flop. And shortly after that shot, he was jumping in normally. But I guess it adds a bit of humor to the jumping. All 3 boys took turns nicely jumping in.

I don’t know why things got a bit blurrier on the second shot, but it isn’t permanently on the camera. Oh well.

Two quick notes for today. First, I want to note that I haven’t forgotten about posting here. Things have been a bit busy for the amount of time it takes to put in a decent multimedia post, which is where most of my backlog is. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to post some stuff. It’s interesting — not a whole lot has happened since the 4th of July, but this past weekend has several items of note (pool, Build-A-Bear, Uncle Tim in town, playing in a fountain, I went to a concert last night) that I need to catch everyone up on. Stay tuned.

Obviously, the other thing (which I think everyone is hearing about in the news) was about the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing. And yes, I actually did witness it as it happened. So what if I was only 2 months old? I was awake and “watching” the TV. So that counts, I think.

At least NASA is getting in the spirit by offering a piece of a giant Moon Pie to visitors today. That would be of the dessert variety, measuring 40 inches in diameter, 55 total pounds with 6 pounds of chocolate and 14 pounds of marshmallow.

Here’s to wishing everyone a happy 4th of July). Stay safe, but have some fun. And here’s a quick musical interlude on how they decided who should write the Declaration of Independence. I’m pretty sure this is historically accurate, although I would have expected Jefferson to be more of a baritone.

NOTE: There are a couple of PG-13 curse words in the song, if you have a young one in the room with you.

Two quick notes in the same day. After the earlier incident during naptime, we got to the pool around dinner time. We were in the pool for a bit, then ate dinner (PBJ sandwiches and chips) during adult swim time. (There were no adults swimming; just a break for the lifeguard.)

The big change is actually in Daniel. I think Daniel had been watching Will jump in the pool, and when I asked Daniel if he wanted to jump in, he nodded his head and said yes. So, to the side of the pool we go, and in he jumps (with me holding on). A little kicking and pretend swimming, then it’s out of the pool. And he wants to jump again. And again. And sometimes when I’m not quite ready, or when he’s not quite close to the edge. I guide him in each time, but he clearly enjoys it. He’s got this big grin. He won’t attempt it when I’m not near him, but a couple of times, he started to jump before I had both hands under his armpits.

Hopefully, we can remember the camera to take some quick video of it next time.

As for Will and his swimming, he’s doing more and more of it independently, without being coaxed. And he enjoys jumping in the deep end (where I catch him) and then swimming back to the side. That’s really helping his confidence, because he cannot just put his feet down to rest.

We wish we had thought to take a picture, but we (me in particular) were too mad to think of it at the time. Another adventure of the twins during their naptime. They emptied three drawers from the dresser and found something they shouldn’t have — a double-ended Sharpie pen.

We went in when the whining got too bad, and discovered a hurricane had hit. Pants were off. They had written all over each others’ legs, as well as some face and other body parts, plus on their sheets and one of the bed railings. As far as we could see, after picking up, there was nothing on the carpet, the stuffed animals, and just traces on a couple of blankets.

I’m still too mad about this one, even though I should be laughing at it.

We got hit with another shock today. We cooked up a pizza for dinner tonight — one of those 18” pizzas you can get from a club warehouse. Everybody got their slices — 1 each for the twins, 2 each for us older ones. The pie had been cut into 12 slices total.

Daniel plowed through his first one, then snagged Kellie’s partially eaten second slice. (He pretty much helped himself to it.) After Will had walked away from his second slice (he had just eaten the crust so far), Daniel went over and took that and finished it off. So now he’s had almost one-quarter of an extra large pizza.

But Daniel wasn’t done. I had gotten Sean a second one, which he had barely started. While Sean was away from his place, Daniel went and grabbed that one and finished it off. We figure Daniel ate the equivalent of about 3-1/2 slices for dinner tonight. That’s just a stunning gustatory accomplishment for a 2-year old.

I’m not sure I want to let that happen again. But he was rather sneaky in grabbing each of the last 2 slices, before we even knew it had happened. We’re not looking forward to the resulting diaper, though.