Day 41-- Snow at the Beach

Sabrina wouldn't sleep last night, so... more midnight photography! It was cold and clear and beautiful. I staked out some epic cliffs above the ocean, and wasn't too sleepy, so I did some photography, tried some reading, and drove the car when Sabrina got fussy. I feel a little weird saying this, but I popped in the Kalaloch CD (you know, the one we haven't finished yet), and it was very appropriate. It's weird listening to your own music, but I got a strange satisfaction from it. It's perfect music for standing at a cliff over the ocean under the bright moonlight while not seeing a single other person for two hours. Now, we have to get some album art, master it, and release that baby.

That's Destruction Island in the distance.

Morning was tough, but made more especially tough because today was checkout day. Yes, all dreams come to an end, and our idyllic stay here at Kalaloch had come to its end.

Last night's hail was still on the ground with what-looked-like-snow mixed in with it. During breakfast, some verifiable snow came down, making this our first experience with snow at kalaloch.

Ed and Grandpa at breakfast.

Seagulls in the snow/hail.

Of course, Grandpa and Grandma made sure we had more leftovers (eggs, old bread pudding, etc) to feed the birds this morning. They were grateful and even more came than before. I watched a flock of birds following Edgar as he walked from my parents' cabin to our cabin.

Edgar had some time with his sister while I packed up our stuff. Here's a probably-too-long video of Edgar comforting Sabrina by singing to her.

The songs are "Rockabye, don't you cry, we will go to grandma's", and You Are My Sunshine.

Walking with Daddy to go check out of the cabins.

After checking out, we drove (through snow!) with my parents to Lake Quinault and drove around the lake. Calling the drive around the lake a pretty drive is an understatement, but I don't know how to do it justice in words.

Lake and snow-covered mountains.

Next, we made the long drive home from the Olympic Peninsula. The kids were so good on the road. Edgar mostly stayed awake, played and sang songs. Sabrina slept nearly the whole way. Edgar is so good in the car. I'm afraid of what would happen if someone let him know that other parents let their kids watch DVDs in the car and ignore all the scenery.

Edgar hamming it up in the car.

After hours of driving, we decided we needed a break, so we took what was going to be a quick potty stop at my sister's house in Woodland. Two hours later and two lungs full of cat dander, we were back on the road. I will probably be sick for the next few days in response to the dosage of cat exposure I got today, but Edgar got to play with his cousins, and that was fun.

Edgar and cousin Ole.

Oh-- a note about the mitten he's wearing on his left hand in most of the pictures. Those of you following the blog will remember that Edgar burned his hand on a hot stove last wednesday. Initially, we put gauze on his hand, then the mitten to keep him from taking the gauze off. Then, when we switched to band-aids, we found that Edgar liked to pick at the band-aids unless he had a mitten on. Over the last few days, he's grown more attached to the mitten.  His burns have healed to the point where he doesn't need it, but now he wants it. Last night he woke up in the middle of the night, repeating what I thought was "Mama turn on!", but what was in actuality "More mitten on!" Yes, his mitten fell off in his sleep, and he made me wake up to put it back on. Add to this the fact that he's fed the birds table scraps several times. Oh yeah, and he eats with his hands, so more-than-a-week's worth of meals are in there. It smells pretty bad now. Rebandaging his hand at my sister's house, we hid his mitten. He was kind of frustrated about it. Here's hoping he forgets about it.

Finally made it home to our little apartment. Unloaded the car, and I showered to get all the nasty cat stuff off me. This evening, it's been going through our pictures and catching up on computer stuff. Now that I think about it, I probably won't post this for a day or two, but as I'm writing it, we're just home.

Oh-- a note on the format of the blog. Yes, the blog is named forty-two days. I have six weeks of parental leave starting from when Sabrina was born. Since she was born on a friday night, after work, my six weeks includes the 3-day President's day weekend. So, it's going to be forty-five days in total. I plan to blog my last entry Monday evening, before I return to work next tuesday. So... three bonus days for your reading enjoyment.

Day 40--Hail to the Beach

Where are we? I realized that I have been waxing poetic (or dogmatic) about Kalaloch, but I haven't done a proper job of explaining it. So, what's the deal with this Kalaloch place, anyway? Kalaloch (pronounce it "clay-lock") is a place on the Olympic peninsula in Washington, within Olympic National Park. It's a place that my family have been going to since years and years before I was born.

Kalaloch is situated on a bluff over the Pacific Ocean. There are a lodge, cabins, a hotel-type building, and a campground to stay in. There's a small convenience store and a fancy restaurant. Other than that, the closest real civilization is Forks, Wa 40 miles away. Kalaloch is about 3 hours' drive from Seattle or 4 hours' drive from Portland, so it's far-removed from everywhere. Because of its remoteness, it's also pristine and beautiful. It's not the boardwalk-and-surf of California beaches, nor is it the crowds-and-beauty of Oregon's beaches. The ocean tosses up piles of driftwood on the shore, wildlife is abundant, we've seen whales, seals, and all sorts of wild critters. I think I've seen a bald eagle every visit for the last 10 years.

In the summer, when there's sunshine, you can play on the beach, make sandcastles, bodysurf or swim in the waves, paddle the driftwood around in the creek like makeshift canoes, make forts from the driftwood, or hike endless miles of sandy beach. You can almost plan on rain at Kalaloch, summer or winter, but it's spectacular in rain, too.

Kalaloch has been a formative part of my childhood. Many of my earliest and fondest memories are located there. I feel like I grew up at Kalaloch. In my younger years, my family camped more often, but as my parents aged, they drifted towards the cabins. I took Jen there for part of our honeymoon, and she fell in love with it. We've gone there, camping or in cabins, more than once each year that we've been married, and we return there as often as we can. I had a friend-of-a-friend from the east coast talk about how her family always summers in Cape Cod. I could tell she feels that kind of attachment to the place. While my family isn't quite in the socioeconomic class that "summers" anywhere, Kalaloch fills that place in my heart.

I mean... we named our band after it-- it's gotta be something special, right?

Okay, so now that you know all that there is to know about kalaloch...

Edgar, playing "baby" in Sabrina's makeshift bed on the nightstand. Photo taken moments before Edgar managed to knock the bed to the floor with himself in it.

We had a better, if interrupted, night last night. Edgar woke up several times, but went back to sleep. Sabrina woke up once or twice, too. I slept and tuned everything out, so it felt like Jen was using me as a snooze alarm. She’d hit me and tell me to fill Edgar’s bottle, or hit me and tell me to sing to Edgar, or hit me and tell me to change his diaper. I ought to file a spousal abuse complaint.

Anyway, Edgar woke up just before 8, which is reasonable, unless you got a poor night’s sleep, which we all did, so it felt way too early.

I got him up and dressed and headed to Grandma’s cabin. Edgar sang “I love Grandma, she loves me” really loudly outside, but the curtains were closed, so we went to take a walk on the beach.

...with lots of puddle-splashing along the way.

It was the beginning of high tide, and the waves were washing up into the considerable amounts of driftwood here on the beach at Kalaloch. Edgar got to the driftwood piles, and was curious: “What’s that?” “That’s a log, it used to be a tree.” “Okay. What’s that?” “Another log. It used to be a tree, too.” “What’s that?” “Another log.” “What’s that?” “Log.” So forth and so on.

"Log."

It hailed on us at the beach, the first of four or more hailstorms today. Edgar threw the little snowballs at me. We watched the waves for a bit and then headed back to Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin, where they were up and ready to do breakfast. 

Moss on a fence. Not a bit out of the ordinary.

Edgar and I ate breakfast while Jen and Sabrina slept in. We fed the birds again. This time, I held out the pan of leftover chips, oatmeal, etcetera, while Edgar took things one by one, and did his best toddler-throw towards the circle of birds that kept a respectful about 6 feet away from us. Problem is, when a not-yet-two year old attempts to throw, he’s as likely to throw stuff behind himself as in front, and most of the time, whatever he throws ends up at his feet. Oh well. It was fun to watch the seagulls and crows. The seagulls are larger and more numerous than the crows, so they get the most of the food. The crows sneak in when the seagulls are distracted or not paying attention. The crows stick together, so 3 or 4 crows can keep a bunch of seagulls away from their meal. I threw a bit of food to try to make sure that both team seagull and team crow got a crack at some food.

Later, once Jen had woken up, I convinced her to take a walk on the beach with me. She was a little concerned about imposing on my parents and making them watch the kids, but they had a standing offer to take the kids while we walked on the beach, and we hadn’t taken them up on it yet.

The tide was high. +11.0, if our tide chart is correct (it’s got some glaring errors, so it may not be). We watched the waves coming up the creek towards the lodge. At times, the creek appeared to be running backwards as the tide came in.

On the beach, it was hailing constantly. It was cold enough that it didn’t seem to want to melt off the sand.. I dared a few dashes on the open sand below the logs when the waves were out, but Jen stayed up in the safety of the higher driftwood. It took us a while to get back our “log-legs”. When we come here, we always start a bit apprehensive about walking across the piles and piles of driftwood, but after a while, we develop balance and a sense of how to get from one place to the next. It’s not unusual to see kids and grownups running across the logs after several days here. Today’s hail made the logs slippery, adding an extra hazard to log-walking.

  

That's hail on the logs and dark gray sand, making it look white.

Jen in the hail.

Me in my natural habitat.

Jen and I made our way out to the mouth of the creek, where the high tide was pounding loose logs against the shore. They would crash around us, making thunderous noise. In the creek mouth, a flotilla of hundreds of logs milled around in the surf, pushed out by the river currents, and in by the waves. We brought our camera with the express intent of taking pictures and video, and at the moment we got out to the end, the camera battery ran out. I’m glad Jen won the we-won’t-need-a-battery-charger-on-this-trip-oh-yes-we-will argument. Maybe we’ll get a chance to take some pictures tomorrow. Suffice it to say, the waves and tide were powerful and we felt awed standing so close to so much force. We saw logs that twenty people couldn’t lift, easily tossed and moved by the action of waves that we’d think nothing of splashing in, in summertime.

The power of nature.

A little salal plant growing in a drift log, sheltered from pelting hail.

We came back to the cabin to warm up and dry out, and it was lunchtime. After lunch, we all retired for a much-desired nap. As you may have noticed, reading this blog, I relish a good nap, but I don’t have much control over how long I sleep, so I must’ve had a 3-hour nap or more. It felt amazing. Apparently, before I woke up, Jen was having a serious discussion with Edgar about whining. He’s been quite the whiner, really since Sabrina was born, but especially in the last few days. I woke up having dreams about drinking wine. I was totally an alcoholic in my dream. Apparently, both my son and I have a problem with whining/wining.

After the nap, it was low tide, and Jen and I went out again, this time taking a lot of pictures. We’re in search of album art, so I hope that one of these fits the bill. In the meantime, enjoy some of our pictures (click on any picture to enlarge, I think).

We walked among the debris of this morning’s high tide, including logs strewn everywhere from the tide’s pounding.

With each wave line of the retreating tide, there was a rainbow of partially-degraded plastic bits washed up in the surf, a reminder of the awful things that we are all doing to our home.

Today’s low tide was supposedly -0.8, so that’s nearly a 12-foot swing between high and low tide, for those of you following along at home. 

We had dinner with my parents, and Edgar about drove us crazy with his whining. We were all close to wits’ end. At one point, I told him that I turned whiners upside down. He whined, I held him up by his ankles. That made him laugh. He laughed until I put him right side up, at which point he would whine again. I’d hold him upside down, swing him, tickle him, etc. He got to the point where he would whine just so I’d play with him, so I’m not sure if it fulfilled the original intentions, but it was fun while it lasted. For a change, my parents and Jen played some 3-handed pinochle while I watched Sabrina and tried to keep Edgar occupied.

I know I've posted about a million pictures today, but I want to post not one, but two videos of Edgar being cute (and whiny):

It's just like having a dog.

Here you get Edgar's "Power of Greyskull! Kssh!", plus you get to see him drop his sword on his sister. Pretty typical.

Finally, it got to be Edgar’s bedtime, and I took him to our cabin and put him to bed.

We played a few more games with my folks—some dominoes and yahtzee for a change as well as pinochle. Sabrina was cute and just laid on the table content to be near the action. Wow. Our first child would’ve never done that. This is what a baby’s supposed to be like.

Later, it all came crashing down. Sabrina blew out her diaper, but we were out of diapers, so I had to sneak back into our cabin to get the new package. By the time I came back, Sabrina was melting down, and Edgar joined in on the baby monitor. He woke up and wanted his mommy. So, night was over. We came back to the cabin, sang Edgar a bunch of songs, made sure Sabrina got fed, and prayed for a solid night’s sleep on our last night here in Kalaloch.

Day 38—Storm Watch

Sabrina's little makeshift bed on the nightstand

blogging.

Last night went okay. At about 4:30 AM, Sabrina woke up for a feeding, and since we’re in a one-room cabin, the light and noise woke Edgar up, too. So, we had some baby-juggling and comforting to do before everyone finally settled down. I was pretty tired, and was probably not the most patient dad to either of the two, who both wanted Mom at the same time, so I had to take the unlucky one at any given time.

We woke up this morning, got ready, and traipsed next door to my parents’ cabin. There, we had pancakes for breakfast. We attempted to heat the syrup in the in-room mini coffee maker, but that just resulted in lukewarm, strong-coffee-tasting sludge. Lesson learned.

The view from our cabin

It was pretty rainy, so we didn’t venture much outside, but with a view like this one, we didn’t need to do much. The morning’s high tide combined with spring rain and runoff had the creek brim-full. The tide wasn’t the highest or most violent that we’ve seen it, but the tide table says that we’re in for higher tides later this week.

Edgar got bored, so dad and I took him for a walk. We walked down to Kalaloch Campground and back—a much easier walk than a beach walk for my dad who doesn’t do so good climbing over driftwood anymore. It was pouring rain, as is usual for this time of year. Edgar was afraid of the rain at first, and flat out refused to walk on his own, so I carried him on my shoulders and soon he was dripping wet and singing a little happy song as we went along.

Dripping after the walk.

What a little man!

After lunch, we came back to our cabin. I put Edgar down for his nap, and went outside to watch the rain and waves and read a book. I don’t know how long I stayed out there, but eventually I got cold and came back inside to find Jen standing in the bathroom, bouncing Sabrina, and attempting to read her book off the bathroom counter. Apparently, Sabrina was only happy being held and Jen was afraid of waking Edgar up. I took Sabrina and let Jen nap (As I had no real intention of napping today). Shortly thereafter, Edgar woke up (too early) from his nap, so Jen and Edgar cuddled on the bed while I held Sabrina on the couch, watched the ocean, and read my book. I dozed a little, too. Sabrina started making noise, so I bundled her up and went next door to see what the folks were doing.

They had just woken up from their nap, and as we started talking, a loud, long peal of thunder shook the cabin. I peeked out the window to see flashes of lightning to the southwest over the ocean. Our cabin provides a great northwest view, but not so great towards the south. I convinced my parents to take a little walk to go look at the storm. I said “I think we have a little window of time when we can watch the storm roll in before it hits us.” So, we bundled up. I wrapped Sabrina up papoose-style, with her in the baby bjorn under my coat. We walked the 100 feet or so to the gazebo looking out over the ocean to the southwest. As we got to the edge of the cliff, a huge gust of wind came up, taking our breath away. At that moment, the storm broke. We were practically blown back to our cabin, with hail pelting our backs. Thankfully, Sabrina was well-protected and sleeping. With flashes of lightning and loud thunder, we made it back inside, rain-soaked on the back of our jeans, but not on the front. It was fun to see the power of nature up close, and I’m glad we had some pretty substantial shelter to retreat back into.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing cards with the parents, switching off Sabrina and Edgar duties. Jen and I exchanged valentines… sort of. Jen was going to buy me a book from the gift shop. They usually have fascinating books there. Today, apparently, their selection had dwindled, so I got a book-IOU. I got Jen some Will Oldham CDs and some chocolate.

The squall this afternoon did something else strange to the weather: It created a narrow strip along the coast of clear, blue sky. This gave us about 5 minutes of late-afternoon sunshine, which bathed the world in a beautiful, almost-too-bright prismatic quality before disappearing again behind the next bank of clouds.

At twilight, I took Edgar for a walk down to the beach. I took a bunch of pictures (looking for possible album art), but Edgar wasn’t too interested in playing in the sand or the logs. He just wanted to be carried home. Oh well. Sometimes it’s beautiful here, and we play in the sand and water, and sometimes it’s beautiful here and we stay indoors and look out at it. Either way, it’s fantastic. 

Dinner was steak, in the cabin.  After dinner, Edgar and I walked to the store (about 50 yards away) and picked up some ice cream for our bread pudding dessert. Then, after getting dad and grandma to read him books, Edgar went to bed. I cuddled Sabrina and kept a pacifier in her mouth. We played a few more rounds of pinochle, and now it’s time to retire.

Day 37-- Birthday on the road

Jen with a precariously sleeping Sabrina.

I rolled out of bed this morning at 6, and packed the last few things on our list. I dropped an icepack on the linoleum with a clatter and woke Edgar up at 6:45, so I woke him up and enlisted him in helping me pack, with the promise that we could surprise Mommy by singing Happy Birthday once breakfast was ready.

I got my gift ready, although I forgot our new tradition of allowing Edgar to give a gift (for Christmas, etc.), so I quickly opened what I had and let Edgar choose. He picked a bag of M&Ms to give mom for her birthday. Breakfast was an agreed-upon toast and pears, with a 3-0 candle precariously jammed into the toast.

We sang happy birthday to mommy (Edgar sang too), and Jen woke up and had her breakfast. Edgar got impatient and asked mom for some M&Ms. She hadn’t opened her present, and said “I don’t have any M&Ms.” Edgar grabbed her present and said “Yes huh, Mama.” I gave Jen some records. Both of them came with a free digital download, so I downloaded copies and burned them to CDs to play in the car.

We got out of dodge, and went to my folks’ house for the first stop; had a bowl of goatmeal for second breakfast, and Sabrina was hungry, so I caught a quick nap in my old bedroom.

We made the long drive north, and by the time we reached the agreed-upon lunch spot in Aberdeen, we were starving. We ate at the Breakwater Fish market. We have discovered that the best seafood restaurants are ones with a fish market attached. The fish is super-fresh, and they usually know how to cook it so that it complements the natural flavor of the fish (as opposed to drowning it in raspberry sauce or what-have-you.) Jen, Edgar, and I shared steamer clams, fried clams and scallops, and clam chowder.

I’ve always loved the town of Aberdeen (and Hoquiam, its twin). It’s where Nirvana is from, but that’s kind of irrelevant. It was, at one time, a major metropolis. It was a shipbuilding site and major harbor in World War II. It has been a regional center for the timber industry. Now, the docks are empty, empty pilings line the harbor and rivers, the logging industry has died down, and the town has been in a steady decline (each year harder than the last, with less jobs and fewer people) for 60 years or more. Hard times are old news. Being near the coast, the elements are harsh, and there’s so much urban decay. The houses need painting every 3 years or so to keep from looking derelict. I think it’s kind of pretty watching nature reclaim a city, and it’s fun to watch the locals trying their best to hang on, and to cheer them on. Aberdeen has also got the best thrift stores in the world, and that’s a verifiable fact.

Anyway, after late lunch in Aberdeen, it was a little more than one more hour (asleep in the passenger seat) to get to our favorite place on earth, Kalaloch (the place, not the band). We checked into our cabin, located on a bluff over the mouth of Kalaloch Creek, with a fantastic view of the ocean and Destruction Island (also, the place, not the band). When we arrived, both kids were in meltdown mode. It took quite a while to get each fed, changed, comforted, changed, and happy. Yes, there were several diapers for each involved.

Once things were a little more settled, we took the kids next door where Grandma and Grandpa are staying in the next cabin. Edgar played while Grandma cooed over Sabrina.

Edgar modeling Grandpa's hat

Mom made us wonderful homemade beef stew, although she had a senior moment earlier, and cut up the steak that dad bought and marinated for another night’s dinner as stew meat. In her defense, it was really good stew meat. For dessert: birthday cake! I don't know how my parents managed to procure a birthday cake out here, but it was a sweet gesture.

What a blaze!

Edgar didn't want to stop the birthday celebrations.

We managed a few hands of 3-handed pinochle while Dad read Edgar all the books that we brought with us.  

Sabrina, in her bundle, with playing cards

Hey! I'm sleeping here!

Then, it was bedtime for Edgar. He was excited to sleep in his playpen, hastily put up in the kitchenette of our cabin. He went down easily, and it didn’t seem to bother him (or he didn’t notice) that when we walked out the door, we were leaving the cabin and heading next door. Thank goodness for baby monitors. Sabrina had crashed on the bed, freeing us for our favorite activity with my folks: pinochle.

After several rounds of pinochle and way too much microwave popcorn, it was back to our cabin to feed Sabrina and hopefully go to bed. Since it’s Jen’s birthday, she’s mine if she decides to stay awake after her feeding. Wish me luck.

Day 12 -- Little Adventures

Our sweet little daughter curled up next to her mother and only woke up once during the night.

Our sweet little son stretched out in his crib and woke up four times.

Something's wrong here.

Edgar at night is mostly Daddy's job. I say mostly because Jen was sweet and handled one of the four incidents last night. I wish I knew what the matter was. Heaven knows, Edgar is communicative enough, but when I ask him why he's waking up at night, he can't or won't answer. Is he sick? no. Is he scared? maybe. Is he sad? Yeah. What does he want? Mommy.

Okay. After a night like that, I was in no mood to deal with the kids, but regardless, I really needed to get out of the house. Playgroup got cancelled at the last minute, so we improvised. Jen fed Edgar breakfast while I slept in the rocking chair with Sabrina on my chest. Then, Edgar and I went exploring.

We hit not one, but TWO guitar stores here in Salem. Edgar was fascinated. So was I, but I'm at the point where the next guitar that I want to buy is so expensive that I just have to dream and hope.

The guitar stores were on the way to the Salem Carousel. I had a couple of spare tokens from my last attempt to take Edgar to the carousel, which didn't go too well. This time, he had a blast. "Horsie! Up-and-down!" He rode a horse and a zebra (!), and after two rides, was still so blissful and surprised that he didn't begrudge us leaving while it was still magical. In typical Alex-fashion, I didn't bother taking the camera with us, so we have no photo-documentation of our adventures to share. We were too busy having fun.

From there, we went to Lancaster Mall, ostensibly to go to the "ski store". Edgar played on the little-kid playground while I got some reading in. Check these pictures out:

...Now, compare this picture to this one, taken of Edgar at about 5 or 6 months old in the same spot (he was just standing up on his own)  :

He's even got the same expression on his face!

We wandered down the mall aimlessly, terrorizing all the weird power-walkers that are typically there on a weekday. The random old people walking the mall loved him.

We got a Strawberry Julius (an indulgence for me), and picked up my skis from the shop. Next, we had a father-son lunch at Wendy's. Poor kid-- that's where his mom always takes him. He didn't mind. I bought him fries and chicken nuggets and he ate only ketchup and ranch dressing. He made friends with all the people in the restaurant. We also had two people stop us today and ask us how old my daughter was. He was wearing blue. It's the hair...

...speaking of which, Jen had a conversation with Edgar the other day. It went something like this:

J: "Edgar, it's getting about time to cut your hair. Would you like a haircut?"

E: "No."

J: "We'd cut your hair and you'd look like Dylan and Max and Sam" (all kids from church with short hair)

E: "No! Long like Daddy!"

Well... I can't say that I haven't influenced him. I wouldn't mind him cutting his hair, though. The Prince Adam / Page Boy cut is looking a little weird. If it were me, I'd cut the hair over his ears and turn it into a mullet. Yeah, Jen won't have any part of that.

Had a rad nap at home. (thanks, Jen!), then, I stole the baby.

I took Sabrina to work with me. I let all the ladies (with their strong perfume) pass her around. I had to retrieve an encrytped file from a secure server (sounds like something off of 24, right?), so I needed to spend about 5 minutes in the office. Sabrina was so good that I ended up showing her around the whole place. She was a sweetie and stared at everyone and wiggled, and was generally an angel.

I like taking my kids into work. I like to think that it buys me a bit of forgiveness if I'm flaky or blow a deadline occasionally... "It's okay-- you have the most adorable daughter in the world. I'm sure you were up all night with her instead of making sales projections..."

I came home this evening, and finally fixed the table that I put off from a few days ago. Edgar was fascinated with the electric drill. Jen's a bit disappointed that I fixed the table. She was hoping to replace it.

At dinner, Edgar managed to smear spaghetti all over himself and fill his diaper with (uneaten) noodles and sauce. Jen was gracious enough to shower with Edgar after dinner.

So, back on the potty-training thing, Edgar had 3 different potty-sessions today, including a marathon hour-long one this evening. Edgar couldn't coax any #2 to happen, but he peed multiple times. I'm sure this is wonderful stuff you all want to hear...

We still aren't sure where to go with this potty-training thing. I think we both appreciate the commitment it takes to potty-train a kid, especially a boy, and one so young as Edgar. So, on one hand, we're not really ready for it. On the other hand, Edgar's doing it all on his own. It'd be a shame to discourage him.

So, I guess we'll see where the next day or so takes us with this potty training thing. First order of business is to buy one of the rad toilet seats that we bought for our upstairs neighbors for christmas. They love it and gave a unilateral recommendation to anyone with a toddler.

Okay, well, I have stayed up way too late writing this. See you next time