You should see the other guy

Or maybe the other dog.

When wrestling one's own dog, one must prepare for the claw to the face move. Clearly, I am not a master at Canine MMA.

Del Lago

This past weekend my wife's family and I took a trip to the lake. Yeah, we took the baby with us too. The in-laws decided to rent a 5 bedroom lake house for a few days and they asked us to join them, so off we went! Funnily enough, my family had done the exact same thing a month before and ended up renting the exact same house completely on accident. So the wife and I already knew how to get there, as well as all the little quirks that the house seemed to have. Or rather, not have. The house was very large and very nice, but the owners just seemed to be leaving some things out that you'd think a normal house would have. Such as curtains or blinds on the bedroom windows- we didn't want to be woken up at 7am while on vacation! (This was solved by stacking pillows in the windows, and hanging comforters over them as well)

My father-in-law is a huge fan of Bass Pro Shop, and a fan of manly outdoorsy stuff in general. So he decided to rent a pontoon boat for the second day of our stay on the lake. He and I picked it up at 9am and spent the next 2 hours exploring a few coves and trying to catch some fish- we failed. However, I did manage to catch the bottom of the lake. As well as a random dock. And a tree branch, which decided to keep the lure. Farewell crank-bait.. you served me... not very well. But you served me, nonetheless.

Roundabout 11am, we piloted the boat back to our lake house to pick up all the womenfolk so we could enjoy a nice picnic lunch. However, this is where our story takes an unfortunate turn, my friends. You see, the weather this last half of July has been incredibly hot. I believe that day the heat index was around 110 degrees. So naturally, we looked for a shady spot on the water. As it was now just about noon, we had to get our boat directly next to the bank underneath some branches. Everyone busts out some sandwiches and we begin eating. However, the pontoon boat has continued drifting along the bank... directly toward a branch overhanging the water. I called to my wife, who was sitting at the bow, to let me know if she was about to hit the branch, so I could back the boat up.

A couple minutes later I hear "Uh... back up please. Branch is about a foot away."

I move to back the boat up, but find that I seem to bring the prop online- it had gotten stuck in the mud. As I began to raise the prop up out of the mud, the bow of the boat struck the branch.

Unknown to us, the tree branch was the home to a large colony of mayflies.


Chaos erupted from the front of the boat where my wife was sitting, accompanied by her mother, sister, aunt, and our 18 month old child. Every single one of them let out a blood curdling scream as hundreds of mayflies boiled out of the tree branch and descended upon them with murder in their hearts. Just kidding, mayflies are harmless, but they didn't know that.

"BACK UP! BACK UP!" they all scream as they desperately attempt to cover their food. It was like one of the plagues visited upon Egypt in the Old Testament.

Finally the prop came free of the mud and I was able to reverse us out of the roiling mass of mayflies. Everyone calmed down quickly, aside from the baby (who had never seen 4 adults scream in terror, so naturally she was terrified). We spent the next 10-15 minutes killing random mayflies as we encountered them all over the boat.

Cool story, eh bro?

I swear I'll update this thing with more than just a list of my child's words. According to our baby book, Bean should be able to say 3 words. May possibly be able to say 50 words. Well, we've got 55.

1) Hi
2) Bye
3) Kitty
4) Dog
5) Meow
6) Woof
7) Mama
8) Dada
9) Pop
10) Gamma (grandma)
11) Kell
12) Up
13) Down
14) Uh-oh
15) Yay
16) Bowl
17) Here
18) This
19) Ball
20) Owl
21) Bear
22) Elmo
23) Bird
24) Ear
25) Eye
26) Hair
27) Yes
28) No
29) Yum Yum
30) Moo
31) Duck
32) Quack
33) Roar
34) Go
35) Keys
36) Beep Beep
37) Six
38) Eight
39) Bubble
40) Nipple (hehe)
41) I love you
42) Frog
43) Ribbit
44) What’s That
45) Hat
46) See You
47) Cookie
48) Juice
49) Fish
50) Ah Ah (Monkey Sounds)
51) Sit
52) Get
53) Baby
54) Bauer
55) Thank You

Words

Words are important things. And my daughter can use them! According to our baby book, a kiddo her age might be able to use 2 or 3 words. Here's a list of everything she can say, as of approximately 15 months:

Bauer (our dog)
Bowl
Dog
Kitty
Mama
Dada
Pop
Bye
Hi
Here
Ear
Thank You
Yum Yum!
Woof!
Meow!
Elmo
Uh oh

This child is a beast.

She also knows a great deal more words than she can actually say. For example, last time she visited my in-laws, she was playing with some of the toys that live at their house. On one end of the living room was a small stroller, and on the other end was a bear. I said "Hey Bean, can you put your bear in the stroller?" And she did just that! Walked over, grabbed the bear, ,plopped it in the stroller, and then proceeded to take it for a walk around the house.

Probably her favorite game is to play hide and seek. She will scream "BYE!!" and go run behind a chair to hide; after a few moments, she'll pop back out and yell "HI!" I think she could play it for hours.

Also, she goes insane for ice cream. She's only had it twice, but both times she has absolutely lost her mind. She wants MORE MORE MORE NOW NOW NOW. So yeah.. we're gonna lay off the ice cream for a bit.

Itchy eyebrow

I just finished mowing about 45 minutes ago, and apparently a mosquito got my eyebrow. AND IT ITCHES.

Itchy itchy... hungry... itchy.

Lots of stuff's been going down lately.

The good: Football season has started, the beard is looking quite nice, the Bean is doing awesome- she'll be 8 months old tomorrow.

The bad: The South's been invaded by an aggressor and Atlanta is besieged again... this time not by Yankees, but by water! I think it is safe to say that the multi-year drought we have endured in GA for the past few years is over. It started raining last Tuesday and continued pretty much non-stop for 6 days. A lot of Atlanta and its surrounding areas are flooded hardcore. We're fine over here to the east, but a great many folks are in a baaaad way.

Also bad news that I just got while typing this post up- my grandpa is in the hospital. No real details yet, but I'm kind of freaked out. My Pop has never really had any serious health issues- in fact, none of my grandparents have. I don't really know what to do here!

Summer time...

... is a strange time to try growing a beard, but I'm doing it anyway.  It all started with a move, of all things.  The wife and baby and I have moved out of our townhouse in the city (where we had been for over 3 years) to a rental house located in a small town about 30 minutes away.  I'm still adjusting to the longer commute, but other than that things are going pretty smoothly.  We wanted a place that was all one story, as we did not want to have the baby dealing with stairs once she learns to crawl and walk.  The house also comes with a great fenced in backyard that Bauer absolutely l-o-v-e-s.  He will bolt out of the backdoor and sprint after the squirrels. 

It's funny because the squirrel ends up dead.

Anyway, I was talking about my beard.  It all started when my electric razor and its cord were packed and I could not find them.  After a week, they were finally located, but by that time I had grown more facial hair than I ever had before.  So I decided to just go with it.  We'll see how it looks after 3 weeks or so, at which point I will make the judgment call as to whether Sir Beard will live or meet his fate via the blade.

Evidence of said beard.  And also evidence that my offspring is ridiculously cute.

I also realized (yet again) last night that I'm all grown up.  As I mentioned, we now are in a house.  With a yard.  That needs to be maintained.  Which means I bought a lawn mower a couple weeks ago, and last night I used it for the first time.  And I'm pleased to say that it was the easiest lawn mower I've ever used.  Started up easily with one crank, and everything was smooth sailing from there.  It's an assisted push Craftsman with variable speed control.  Took about an hour to mow the front, side, and back yards.  Next time, I'm going to crack out the iPod so I'll have something to listen to.

Which brings me to the topic of Podcasts.  I've never really owned an iPod- I have one that technically belongs to my office, and I haven't used it much.  But that is about to change.  Between mowing the lawn and commuting 30 minutes to work (and back), I've decided I'm going to begin listening to music and Podcasts.  Problem is, I don't really know where to start as far as podcasts go.  I'm going to being checking out the Bombcast from Giantbomb.com, and the Joystiq podcast.  We'll see if I like them.  Do you have any you would suggest?  I'm open for trying just about anything.

Shoop da woop!

So I've decided I need to update this thing a little more often, especially when it comes to baby updates.  Yes, this blog is now a baby blog.  You are allowed this one opportunity to point-and-laugh.  I've turned into a woman.

Ok no more laughing.

Seriously, cut it out.

Need another reason I've turned into a woman?  I very nearly just spelled "cut" as "cute."  Is Desperate Housewives on?  I can't wait to see what Bree bakes next!

Baby Update
Bean (as I will be referring to the baby from here on out) has recently figured out what bedtime really is.  Her bedtime is usually between 8-8:30pm, and whenever I start carrying her upstairs to a darkened room, I can feel her start to tense up a little bit.  We'll make it into the bedroom just fine... but once I sit down in the rocking chair she starts crying.  It's even worse if I try to lay her down on the bed.  It usually takes about 10 minutes to finally get her to calm down enough to think about falling asleep, and another 5-10 to actually make it to Sleepsville.  Thankfully, putting her down in the crib has gotten to be relatively easy.  For about a month, I had to be extremely careful in lying her down.  She would wake up at the smallest shift in her weight or positioning of limbs.  This was made even more difficult due to her refusal to sleep on her back.  For the first 4 months of her life, she slept in her car seat, which has about a 20-degree incline.  She'd be all bunched up in there, her legs and arms squished together like she was back in the womb.  Because of how she looked when she slept like this, we started calling her "Bean".  I like it as a nickname.  Whenever I get home from work, I call out "Hi Bean!" or "Howdy Beanie!" and I get huge smiles.  Smiling 5 month olds are awesome.

Game Update
Got Resident Evil 5 from Gamefly.  Pretty good action game.  It's not scary or suspenseful, which is a bit of a bummer considering how big of a part those two emotions were in the original Resident Evil games.  But this game isn't trying to be those, so it is okay.  I've almost completed the story mode, and so far I'd give it a solid B.  A quick note to the makers of RE: enough with the leeches.  I'm tired of them.  They're not scary- just annoying.  Leechmen do nothing for me.