Day 30-- Big Plans

I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop, watching the sheer joy on my son’s face as he, plastic sword in hand, copies the moves of his hero on the television. It’s pretty ironic that Edgar’s favorite cartoon is the same as mine when I was a kid. I think I was a little older—maybe five or six.

Saturday night, we took a look at the calendar and realized that, unsurprisingly, my six weeks at home are nearly at an end. With a trip to the coast planned for week-after-next, this is shaping up to be my last week at home. Jen and I both came to the realization that we should be treating this like a vacation—that we should be taking full advantage of every weekday that I get at home. We’re working on tentative ideas for what to do each day, but it looks like all action, all of the time. Just how I like it. Well, I guess that since Jen is recovered, and Sabrina is nearly a month old, it’s now time to play.

We talked about ideas for our album art and why it’s taking us so long. For those of you following along at home, Jen and I are in a band together. We are vinyl fans, and released our first two songs on a 45 RPM record two years ago. We’ve had our first full-length album finished and ready for almost a year now. All that needs to be done is to get the record mastered. Once the record is mastered, we need to immediately press it and put it in sleeves. So, our next step is to do the dual step of creating and readying album art and sending our ¼” reel-to-reel mixed recordings to a mastering house.

Why have we taken so long? Part of it is the inevitable changing of priorities that comes with having two kids. Part of it is the relative difficulty of recording/mixing/mastering a record 100% analog in a digital world. Part of it is the lack of record label support, but many bands release records without a label. Another large part of it is the fact that nobody actually listens to our band. That’s a hard thing to admit, but there are very, very few people who listen to our music who aren’t in some way friends or family who are obligated to say they like it. We pressed 500 copies of our 7” (a common minimum), and we probably gave away 40 and sold 10. The rest are living in our apartment and my old closet at my parents’ house. It’s not too appealing to spend a bunch of money to press our album knowing we’ll never come close to recouping it, and that we’ll have boxes and boxes of records in our attic for the rest of our lives. Regardless, we want to do it. It’s a work of art and a labor of love. We’re really proud of the music, and proud that we did it the right way, and didn’t take many shortcuts in making this record. If nobody else likes our music, at least we like it. Hopefully, it will be something that we’ll be proud of for the rest of our lives.

So—we had a discussion on art direction for the album. I came to the conclusion that I like the art from our 7”, and if we like the art, we should keep the same artist/photographer/art director. [Jen painted the watercolor and I took the picture and did layout]. I’m leaning toward some large-scale nature/landscape photographs as an album cover, in keeping with the coastal/wilderness look we did on the back of our 7”. Here are some albums I am thinking of making it look like here and here. I’d like to scour our personal photo collection for potential album covers, but I’m not sure I won’t run into pixellization/DPI issues blowing a snapshot up to 12x12. I may consider leaning on Danita and seeing what she has available, too. Katie next door has done some art for us, too, which I haven’t seen yet, but I’m not sure it lines up with that theme (but I’m not sure it doesn’t, yet, either). It might work well as side A/side B record labels, too. Why am I putting all this on my blog? I want to keep myself honest and maybe remind myself to actually do what we planned.

Later last night, I decided that if I wasn’t sleepy, I should plan for my Primary lesson tomorrow. I’m glad I did, as it was pretty involved. Sunday morning was a bit crazy. Edgar was watching He-man. We’ve watched so much He-man over the last week or so that the incidental background music for the show is constantly stuck in our heads. It’s more than a little funny. I regret getting Edgar so hooked on television, but the feedback I’ve heard from lots of parents is that this is just what happens when a new baby is born, and it goes away eventually (probably with the advent of good weather).

We (again) attempted to get Edgar to take a nap before our 12:30 church, and (again) couldn’t get him to go to sleep until it was too late to leave. We (again) missed the first hour. Maybe one of these weeks, we’ll learn. There were a lot of very cute moments singing with the kids. One of which was that one of our little 3-year old Sunbeams was asked what her favorite primary song was. Her response was the new song we’ve been working on this month. That made me melt just a little. It’s nice to know I’ve had an influence, no matter how small.

After church, we trucked up to my parents’ house, without stopping at home. We managed to catch the second half of the super bowl, and hang out with family. Edgar sure loves being around lots of family. He’s really comfortable with the chaos that comes from having a sizable extended family around.

We got home from my parents’, put Edgar to bed, and did some more planning for the next week.  We’ve got some great ideas lined up now.

Last night was interesting. Here’s how it went down: We brought Sabrina in from the car, asleep in her carseat. By 11 PM, Jen convinced me that Sabrina had already slept for 2 and a half hours and she would be fussing and waking up momentarily, but if she didn’t wake right up, we could get a level of Super Mario in. She didn’t wake up. We played some more. She didn’t wake up. We played some more. She didn’t wake up. We got stuck on a really hard level and kept trying and trying and trying and trying and before we knew it, it was 1:45 AM and Sabrina was still asleep in the carseat. At that point, we gave up and went to sleep.

Day 23-- Sunday and Swimming

As was the story with last sunday (and every sunday), today was taken up almost entirely by my church calling as Primary Chorister.

...not that I mind. I love it.

It took us hours to get the kids dressed and ready for church. Still showed up 15 minutes late. We sat with the grandparents and they fussed and doted over Sabrina while Edgar spread out all his toys in front of him and resolutely ignored the rest of the world.

Singing in Primary was fun, although we are working on a tough song-- it doesn't rhyme, it's 3 wordy verses that don't seem to work really good with actions or pictures, so we're down to the old standby- repetition, repetition, repetition. So-- we sang the same song overandoverandoverandover until everyone, including me, was hoarse. Not that we didn't have fun while doing it-- the trick is to distract the kids so that they don't notice they're singing. We played hide and seek with a robot, and everybody really got into it.

We came home, exhausted, and I fell into bed. At once, Jen woke me up, and notified me that I had been asleep for 2 hours, her parents had been over for 1 and a half, and that dinner was ready and this was her third time calling me.

After dinner, Edgar and his grandpa and I went swimming in the hotel pool. This time, Edgar started to get brave ... too brave. After Grandpa showed Edgar how to jump into the pool, Edgar wanted to do it, too. Also, Edgar thought it was fun to run right next to the edge of the pool and circle the pool. I'm not much of an overprotective parent, but that scared me a little. Oh well, no harm came of it. Edgar got a nice amount of energy out, and when his mom came to observe, Edgar ran to the towel rack and dried off, thinking she was there to pick him up.

We hurried home to some home teachers, and then put Edgar to bed.

Edgar's catchphrase today has been "Power of Greyskull!" (followed by a sound-effect "Ksssssshhhh!")

At 10, just as I was sitting down to blog, Jen handed me a fussing Sabrina and said she couldn't take any more.

(Jen's been having trouble nursing Sabrina-- nothing major, it's just painful. Brings tears to her eyes most times she nurses, [and yes, we've seen a lactation consultant, yes, we think her latch is okay, no, she doesn't have any sort of infections-- it just hurts])

So, Sabrina and I hung out. I had a whole list of things I wanted to accomplish (like dishes and packing for skiing), but Sabrina was only happy cuddled up on my chest. I couldn't put her down to save my life (reminded me of Edgar at that age). I even attempted to jury-rig a moby wrap one-handed, to try to free my hands, but that failed miserably. So, I got some good reading in while cuddling a pretty agitated baby. Finally, she fell asleep on me, and I fell asleep on the couch.

Day 16-- Primary only

It seems as if I spent all day preparing for and recovering from my hour-and-a-half spent as Primary singing leader.

Ed was up, 7:15 like clockwork. After coddling him for a bit, took a long shower. Showers are where I normally get inspiration, and since I'm pretty terrible at preparation and planning ahead, most of my Singing Time lessons are planned out in the shower, the morning of.

I came up with some rudimentary ideas of what to sing today, and spent most of the morning juggling two kids, helping Jen through a shower, trimming my newly-shaggy face into some semblance of a beard, and throwing breakfast at Edgar, etcetera.

Really, Jen did most of the heavy lifting this morning. We again skipped the first hour of our 3-hour service so that Edgar could get a little nap in beforehand. At 1:30, we trundled a just-woke-up Edgar and an sleeping Sabrina in the car to take Sabrina to church for her first time.

I spent the next hour-and-a-half (usually it's two hours, but it was shortened today) jumping up and down, making a fool of myself, blowing out my vocal cords, and having a blast singing with ... (how many? maybe) 60 kids over the course of a Sunday. We got to show Sabrina off, and she was suitably impressive.

Home from church, we all kind of sat on the bed while Edgar and Sabrina vied for mom's attention, and mom and dad played a halfhearted round of video games. Expending that much energy on Primary sure wipes me out.

I took Sabrina and was off to a baptism. I'm not sure who was giving whom a break by me taking Sabrina to the baptism, but it was nice not to have to wrestle Edgar through an hour service. Sabrina was fussy, but at least she's cute while she's fussy.

Home, and sending out emails for my primary calling, as well as trying to get Edgar to bed.

Getting Edgar to bed was a challenge. He was throwing a fit, sweetly asking us to sing a song for him. The problem was, he wanted a specific song, but was unintelligible in the song title. It was something like the "Ki Ka Go Song" or "Ki Ko Song".. I don't know. Usually, Edgar's pretty good at pronouncing, and we're pretty good at interpreting, but both Jen and I were stumped. When we asked him to sing it for us, he was sad and insisted that WE should sing it. We guessed nearly every song we know, but we still don't know what he wanted us to sing, but it broke his heart that we wouldn't sing it for him. How sad.

Boy, that was it. That was all we did today. How sad, indeed. We're going to be up and out early tomorrow (hopefully).