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I am off to find myself.

Be back to blogging around St. Patty's day.

Separated at Birth?

I might be dead

I went to the clinic yesterday for my annual physical, but because it's an Army-based facility, they had no idea what to do with me.
"Are you supposed to have labs done or something?" asked Dr. Melrose, a civilian at the clinic conveniently located five minutes from my house.
"...I really can't tell you what your requirements are for me, I'm sorry."
He basically sent me on my way, lamenting the fact that the different services have different forms, and when I said I could ask my AF reps at my unit what they were expecting me to get, he went ahead and signed me up for various bloodwork and hearing/sight appointments just for grins, and told me to come back after that to go over the results, and maybe that would suffice, oh, while you're here I may as well listen to your heart yep got one see ya.

Worth every penny, this military medicine system of ours.

I was back at that same clinic after work to watch Ryan's 15-month appt. to see his pediatrician. He's 31 inches, 24.7 lbs, in the 50th percentile for both. So there's our run-of-the-mill average amazing boy. I helped Ainsley out by being the one to hold him while he got his finger pricked to get some blood, and then later to get a flu shot and two others in his upper legs, which, all in all, based on his response, he would rather have done without. At least his band-aids had cool snoopy spaceships on them.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Finally.
After the tenth-warmest December in DC-area history, we were starting off January as the warmest ever EVER ever* until this week, when we finally got the tail end of the winter weather hitting the rest of the country. And today, for the first time all winter, it snowed. And stuck. To my dog.

*ever.

Freezing rain is supposed to follow, and then all will melt tomorrow, but for now it looks pretty. And like Christmas shoulda. A neighbor across the street turned her Christmas lights on in her front yard.

Ryan turned fifteen months old today. To celebrate, we taught him how to say "touchdown" while watching the playoffs. Though he just goes "ttcheeeee" and raises his hands up next to his face. Perhaps he's a bodybuilder in another life and can't get the biceps that high up.

Hard to believe Christmas was almost a month ago. I'm still just getting to some of my presents. And finding places for all of Ryan's. Next year, no presents for the boy: just a flat piece of wood with a bunch of different buttons on it that light up that he can stand next to and poke so he leaves the stereo alone.
I got a bunch of great books and clothes and my fourth teabag strainer from my mother-in-law, and Ainsley and I both got each other a new shower head. But my favorite gift of the season was the book I gave to a family friend who is constantly traveling into odd spots on the planet:

Adapt and Overcome

The boy needs sleep. Loads of it, apparently. Ainsley and I often wonder which side of the family he takes after, but during the end of last year, he seemed to take on traits of both of us -- being a morning person (a la honeypants) and a night person (a la meatpants).
His afternoon nap has rarely been a problem -- he adjusted from two to one fairly easily and goes down right after lunch in a matter of minutes, and usually stays asleep for 3 hours or so. But his evening bedtime, as much as we tried to keep it fairly routine, was all over the place. 7:30. 8:15. And, for a few nights in there in December, he wouldn't bother to fall asleep until after 10. Which is well past Mommy's bedtime and a few lightyears beyond her patience threshold.
The worst part was that when he got so overly tired, there was little to nothing I could do to get him to sleep, and he would cry and scream for forty minutes straight until Ainsley would rescue me. Which is just a dreadful concept -- my son was so uncomfortable with me, with the situation, that I needed to be relieved by the one person who needed a break already.
I tried to think like a 35-yr-old Gottrich and suggested he may be napping too long, that he's just not tired enough at night (if I were to ever take a nap during the day, I would never get to sleep before midnight). But rather than barging into his room with a tuba after two hours of naptime, Ainsley suggested that we may be riling him up too much after dinner with TV and baths and reading and toys and fan spinning and basket counting* and laundry chores. And since he falls asleep so well right after lunch, we thought we would move his dinner time a little later, do baths and reading before dinner, and then put him to bed right afterwards. This has worked fairly well for a week now; he's fallen asleep within ten or fifteen minutes, or if he hasn't, I've been able to take over and lull him down with my sultry swagger and Barry White shooshing.

*As fans of the show know, Ryan points, we identify. Sometimes we ask, he points. We taught him "baskets", which hang decoratively yet conveniently functional over the kitchen pantry, but the other day Grandad started counting them for him as he pointed. So now when ever we walk into the kitchen, he'll point at the fan, but he six-shoots at the baskets until we start counting them.
One of his bibs has a sports theme, with balls and bats and pucks and shuttlecocks (fun word to teach a kid! Not that the LeapFrog Uppity Speaking Caterpillar will let me!) and rackets. We were in the dining room this morning and he was pointing at the objects on his bib. "That's a football." "Boxing glove." "Basketball." Ryan stopped what he was doing and started waving his hand. I was confused until he twisted around in his chair and started counting baskets in the kitchen with his wrist and trusty pointer finger.

Avoiding First Blood

A few months ago I bought some fish.
Not real fish, we have enough pets for Ryan to mess with.
These were some sort of plastic, sticky on one side, rough on the other, for putting on the bottom of the tub as little individual strategically placed decorative two-inch bath mats.

Bathtime has been funtime for Ryan and me for as long as I can remember. He has tons of little toys that float, squirt, and swim when Daddy winds them. Just say "bath bath bath" on the ground floor, and DirtyBoy scoots over to the stairs, climbs 'em with vigor, and bounds down to his bathroom, ready to get the water started. But he recently started standing in the tub, smacking the tile on the side, occasionally bumping his head on the soap dish, and pulling on the shower curtain and pointing at the fish. (It's a theme. )

Ryan also used to just sit there and enjoy being rinsed off by the shower hose as the water drained, giggling as the water gurgled down his face or the spray tickled his belly. But when he started standing and facing the wall during hose-down, he started to look like Rambo in lock-up, getting cleaned like a prisoner. And I certainly do not want to fall out of a helicopter after chasing Ryan down into a gully. If you follow.

The issue is that twice Ryan has lost his grip and slipped. I have been there to catch him, or at least lessen his slide as he splashes back in order to keep his head above water, but I've been increasingly worried that I would miss him one of these times. Hence the fish.
Which have been a bust. Half of them didn't adhere to the tub surface, and Ryan's peeled a couple others off himself. So yesterday I put down our old ugly rubber dog mat we use for bathing the dogs, and will try to teach him that standing is verbotten until he can prove his balance in federal court.

Ear Drumstick

Ever notice how loud it is when you pluck an ear hair?

It's like a broken guitar string going off inside your head.


We in the Air Force use lighters to burn the loose threads off our camouflage uniforms; perhaps I'll try that with the grey wispy aural tufts that are becoming omnipresent in these my olden years.

El Neato

I don't care if it's global warming, depleted ozone, or nuclear winter, but hanging out in shorts and sandals on January 6th is the coolest* thing since sliced pizza.

*Har!

After twenty-six straight days of above-average high temperatures, trees are budding, flowers are blooming, bikini lines are being waxed, and it looks like Spring is upon us. It's even a balmy 22 degrees in Votkinsk.

We took advantage of the record-breaking 70-degree weather and wagoned our offspring up to the playground -- along with every other member of the Rollingwood Village Housing Association, it seems. There were close to fifty people there; it's usually odd to see more than two or three other folks at our small park. The dogs were beside themselves with things to bark at.

Hello, Colorado friends!

Teaching my son the "F" word

Ryan is starting to mimic sounds and mouth shapes, which was fun during Christmas when I'd shake my tummers like a bowl full o' smuckers and go "Ho! Ho! Ho!" slow and low and James Earl Jones-like and he'd try to copy me. (Ryan, not James Earl Jones.) My dad is trying to teach him to say his favorite object since he was a few days old, "fan" (as in ceiling), but the more difficult consonants are a few more weeks away, we feel. In the meantime, he makes cool helicopter sound effects that sound like a gun going off (pkew!), so his other Grandpa is happy.

But besides watching us babble on around him, Ryan also has alphabet refrigerator magnets with a voicebox that explains all the sounds, and every other toy he has can sing him the alphabet. For his birthday, his "Aunt" Sara got him a caterpillar with a different letter on each leg that, when you press down on one, plays songs beginning with that letter, says whatever color it is, says the letter itself, or demonstrates how the letter is pronounced. The other night STRICTLY AS A SERIOUS CONCERNED PARENT WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST LITIGIOUS FORETHOUGHT MIND YOU I tried to see what cuss words I could pronounce on the thing.
So far, only "shit." And it takes 1.8 seconds to say phonetically. If you try some other pattern of letters, like "wop" (?) or other rudimentary bad words that end in uck, unt, or inton, the thing just giggles and says "that tickles!" So someone out there was using their heads to protect the one-year-olds from the 35-and-a-halfies.

Thank goodness it still lets you spell out O I C U P. Ainsley gets a kick out of that one.
In an eye-rolling tsking sighing glaring sort of way.

Flu, Missed

On 4 Dec 06, I received my annual militarily mandated influenza shot, though this winter, like the last in Ohio, I received it nasorally. An experiment last season, they are recommending it for more and more troops who qualify (based on age, health, and ability to snort), since apparently squeezing two frozen mists into your nostrils is apparently more affective and less painful than your typical needle.


I have now had the flu twice in 20 days.

Perhaps my XXL schnozz requires a double dosage.