Colleen's own Word World

Colleen's vocabulary has made leaps and bounds in the past year but some of it still only makes sense in her own head. Some of her word combinations make me smile. When someone is holding her and she wants to be put down... "put you down me!" We know exactly what she's saying although we don't put those words together quite that way.

She received a birthday gift from her godmother, Jennifer Jensen, a game featuring the very popular (at least in our house) PBS show, Word World. The characters are animated using their letters for their bodies - it's hard to explain so go to www.pbskids.org if you haven't seen it yet. In fact between Word World and Super Why! (also, PBS) she learned her letters long ago.

Colleen's initial reaction was "Awesome! Word World!" and then demanding that I open the box so she could play. She was so excited she was all clenched and shaking like a leaf. She and Robert were playing nicely with her chanting the letters "E E E E E E E E" while Robert fetched them for her "Sheesh Colleen here's an E." After few minutes of playing she got distracted and went away, leaving Robert to continue playing.

Well, now she wants to play again but Robert doesn't want her to mess with the work he's done. She's complaining to me and says "Mooooom! Robert do mine!" In her mind that means Robert's playing with my toy.

That was a pretty long story just to show that my little girl is Tarzan.

No. 3 for No. 3

Colleen never quite got the hang of "how old are you" while she was 2, sad to say, and it's for lack of us trying. She'll have a whole new number to work on now, as she turned the ripe old age of 3 today.

Her third birthday began with a trip to the doctor with Robert, as a result of his debilitating earache overnight. Thankfully, Robert is fine. I'm sure he stopped screaming for more than a half-hour at some point during the night.

Cate and I were talking on the phone this afternoon, trying to determine what would be best for dinner, and we couldn't come up with anything we knew for sure Colleen liked. She waffles on most foods, like almost anyone under 5, so we instead settled on a venue we knew she would like: Chick Fil A.

We're probably not the first to bring canned baby mandarin oranges and pineapple rings to a Chick Fil A. Uhh, well, maybe we are. But she likes the play area and she eats the chicken. And while the younger two were running around and climbing and sliding, Cate and I and Elizabeth had a nice, normal conversation.

We are cognizant that the days of those are numbered.

Colleen requested things on her cake which Cate was able to provide -- a strawberry cake with blueberries and strawberries on top. Yum. Thankfully she didn't ask for some of her other favorite foods, namely, say, pickles, bread and french fries.

We got her gardening equipment -- anticipating that it might stop raining sometime soon and we can be outside again -- and Dora the Explorer pajamas. She's wearing those now. Nonna and Da got her a nice Dora the Explorer outfit, which she'll be wearing when you read this. Assuming you're a daily reader of the blog, that is.

The magnifying glass, however, was a big hit, with all three kids, in fact.

You might recognize the dress as the one Nonna and Da brought home from Africa for Elizabeth to wear. Never mind that Elizabeth was 7. It is a little big on her, but not much. Should fit for several years.

	Colleen got some help -- a lot of it, in fact -- trying on the gloves but needed none in getting the visor on her head.
	Colleen loves ketchup. And as we may have mentioned, fries.
	OK, sorry, this is just freaky!
	Colleen admires the fire before blowing it out. Remind us not to take her to California.

The future is now

Robert and Colleen are asleep and Cate's off to work, but I'm still up, obviously, and so is Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has a project due on Wednesday and she's staying up late to work on it tonight. She's using Word on my laptop.

I foresee many more nights like this.

Colleen, full of ... surprises

I took a calculated risk with our nearly 3-year-old girl this afternoon and left her in plain underwear, no diaper and no training pants.

In the past I've been burned, fairly often. Colleen has managed to hit the potty in time once per session or so, but not long term. So I always hesitate, figuring I'll have some laundry to deal with if I don't remind her constantly. And Sunday is the day Cate leaves for work at noon, so I feel like I'm playing goalie all day.

But I'm a glutton for punishment.

We got through the first bathroom trip alright -- I kept reminding her until she went. Then, shortly before we were going to leave for the grocery store, she waddled up to me with her pants and underwear at her knees. I figured I'd missed my shot and we'd be changing pants, but in fact, she was dry and announcing she needed to go.

So she went. And I thought, shoot, let's take this one step further. She's just gone to the bathroom and we're going out -- so I didn't change her into a diaper. And she passed that test with flying colors as well, using her potty as soon as we got home.

I'm feeling pretty darn good at this point. But the coup de grace (coup de brennan?) came perhaps a half-hour later when she calls me into the bathroom, shouting that she had pooped.I get there and she's sitting on her little Dora the Explorer potty and the first thing I do is inspect her pants, which are sitting around her ankles.

To my surprise -- perfectly clean!

She got to the potty in time for everything. Turns out to be a great gamble.

Happy Birthday

It's birthday time around the Coleman household, with Mom's birthday today and Colleen and Uncle Ryan's birthday tomorrow.

It's been a busy weekend here, with a flurry of activity yesterday morning for Cate leading to nap time in the afternoon and daddy time for the kids. So, not much fancy going on in this post, except for this special greeting from us to the birthday folks.

"I never knew an Uncle Neil."

Today Mom was talking to Colleen in the car.

Mom:"Colleen, you know Uncle Neil?"
Colleen: "I never knew an Uncle Neil."
Mom: "Well, how about Uncle Ryan?"
Colleen: "I never saw an Uncle Ryan."
Me: "Well, how about Baby Amelia?"
Colleen: "Who's Baby Amelia?"
Me:"Oh, never mind."

Today Colleen also got brand new underwear. She got regular underwear and special training underwear. The special pair is lined with plastic on the outside. It looks very uncomfortable. I think Colleen thinks so, too. She tried them on today. "Noooooooooo!" she screams, "I don't want it!" as Mom tried to put the special pair on. Who wouldn't blame her? It makes crunching noises (sort of) when she walks in it.

My little girl *sniff sniff*

Elizabeth went on a field trip today to the Waterford One Room Schoolhouse. The whole class, including her teacher, Miss Jones, dressed in 19th century costumes. We cooked up a costume from an old dress of mine, black tights, braids with ribbons on the ends, a homemade mop cap (courtesy of her friend, Nicole) and brown shoes. She also carried a basket for her lunch wrapped in parchment paper - no ziploc bags allowed in the 19th century. The only modern invention she brought was her umbrella but thankfully she didn't need to use it.

Anyway, this post is not about the field trip per se. It's about the shoes. She got new shoes for the occasion (could only find one shoe of her previous pair). And, drum roll please, the new pair was a ladies size 7. And they aren't too big on her. She probably needs a 7.5 but she was asleep last night when I made the shoe-emergency run to The Circle Store, a.k.a. Target.

My little girl is growing up so quickly. I see photos of her new cousin, Amelia, and it's like seeing Elizabeth (but with lots more hair). It feels like just yesterday that I was holding her in my arms. Now I'm trying not to cry. I should listen to my mother more. She told me then that this would happen.

I felt just as blown away when I saw that little bit of tooth showing in her baby gums. I basically had a panic attack. My thoughts went from "how cute - her first tooth" to "Oh No! She's going to use that tooth to chew food! And she'll ride a bike and she'll ride a school bus without me and she'll graduate from high school and college and she'll be grown up before I get a chance to blink!!" Size 7 shoe and growing... we're well on our way.

What Cate's cooking

My wife seems to not be interested in blogging about herself, which leaves it to me. I mentioned in the last post that I was turning on the AC because Cate was cooking in the kitchen and that may have led you to wonder what she's cooking.

A little background -- when I met Cate, she basically had about five things she would cook on a regular basis, only one of which ever sees the light of day anymore.

In her defense, I didn't exactly come to the relationship armed with a bunch of recipes or a particular sense of urgency about changing the paradigm. We reminisced the other night -- not overly fondly -- about how we could turn a packet of frozen chicken patties, a couple slices of cheese and a little pasta sauce into two meals. Those weren't exactly fun days.

Even well into this millennium the repertoire hadn't changed a whole lot. We went through periods where we'd try out some new thoughts in the kitchen, but it wasn't until the past year or so that we both really branched out. As I was working on taking some weight off, it required that we re-evaluate everything we do in the kitchen. And thankfully, I've had her support in this process. I can't imagine being able to lose more than 50 pounds without my spouse's support.

But to the point -- it's been an interesting week. Last night Cate made jambalaya, including shrimp (I peeled them and Cate veined them). Using turkey sausage instead of pork made this a nice, low-fat meal. Earlier in the week she made chicken breasts with a cooking sauce and sauted vegetables. Today she threw together a chili that's in the crock pot. And somewhere online she read that you could make a cake from cake mix by using Diet Coke instead of the milk and egg the standard cake box calls for, saving nearly a third of the calories. The kids had a great time putting that together this morning and it's sitting on the counter awaiting dessert tonight.

I have some beef marinating in lemon juice, oregano and the like for the kids to eat tonight.

Many of these are things she won't eat. Some are things the kids won't eat. But it fosters Elizabeth's interest in new tastes and means I have plenty of leftovers to take to work for lunch.

Elizabeth's latest taste adventures include green, red and orange peppers, both raw and cooked, as well as sauteed onions. But never a hamburger. And not jambalaya.

Turning on the air conditioning

Yesterday I made an executive decision to turn on the air conditioning. The high was only 82 in our neck of the 'burbs, but Cate was cooking dinner on the stove and it just seemed like the right move so that we weren't all sweltering long into the evening.

It turned out to be the right decision. And not a difficult one.

This was not the case last year, however. Turning on the AC for the first time in 2007 involved a fair amount of finger-crossing and some tense decision-making.

As you may remember, we had operated for most of the previous nine months under the premise that we were moving. Cate and I -- mostly Cate, since I was in Connecticut, were preparing the house to put on the market and get out of Northern Virginia.

Neither of us is particularly handy. I don't think this is a surprise to anyone reading. But we had managed to get a few projects done in the interim, taking down the outdated drapes in a couple of our bedrooms and installing blinds among them.

The house also had the original 1973 thermostat, one with all the precision of a Dick Cheney hunting trip. The best we could do was hope for the temperature to be in the range of a few degrees for a short time until it needed adjusting again. So I did a little reading on the subject and determined we could manage this project ourselves.

It was relatively easy to pick out a new unit at Home Depot at the seemingly reasonable price of $80. We had the tools we needed to install it and all was set to go when, on a January afternoon, we removed the old thermostat.

The instructions were fairly comprehensive, thankfully, and referred to two possible configurations for our old, single-zone heat pump setup -- four wires or five wires. Like seemingly everything else in this house, however, it was not standard.

It had six.

Almost all of our wires were properly labeled. Almost all of the labels matched what was described in the manual. We just had an extra wire to deal with.

We spent about a half-hour agonizing over it and just decided to guess, make sure the heat worked, and let it go. Our rationale was that we weren't planning to be in the house when we needed the air conditioning anyway.

Well, of course, the NBC job went south and so did I at the end of April. And while we held off through the first heat wave of the spring, by mid-June it was clear that we needed to bite the bullet. So we threw the switch, and voila, it worked.

And the house didn't burn down or anything.

Just don't ask us to repeat it. Thanks.

Poor Colleen

On the way to Elizabeth's taekwondo class today I heard a shout from the backseat... "Ick. Colleen threw up!"

Poor Colleen looked down at the mess and said "Oh nooo! I'm ruined. And I'm sticky! I need a wipe!"

She's now feeling better, singing songs on the sofa at the moment. Now I'm off to hose down the car seat. Ick.

Adventures in spelling

Robert is learning to spell and sound words out both in reading and writing them, and sometimes, as you know, the English language doesn't always make much sense. Robert recently came back with a homework sentence that even he couldn't translate for us, something like, "can yous a bot." (It was "use a boat.")

Today, however, he seemed to have no problem remembering or reading what he wrote, while Cate needed help. As she related it to me tonight:

Cate: "I think he was insulted that I didn't understand one of his words the first time. G-r-i-a-backwards p-s-s"

Patrick thinks for a second, then says, "grapes?"

Cate: "Fine!" And she mock storms out of the house. (No, not really angry.)

Sometimes when he asks if he's spelled a word correctly and he hasn't, he'll say, "Did I forget a silent e? I never know where it goes. It's silent!" He throws up his hands and everything.

But all this talk of sounding out makes me think I should come clean on this infamous pair of mispronunciations from when we lived on Long Island. (Because if I don't, Mom will. Or Neil might backstab me like he did in the comments this morning.)

Undoubtedly, Mom told me to sound the word out, but it didn't quite work -- not when the word is "rough." So for me, it was the "ROO-guh-huh and windy sea."

I tried to google this phrase and find the book it was from, but came up empty. I must not be remembering it right.

The other one, of course, is "stomach," which I pronounced "stow-MOTCH."

Well, how would you pronounce these words?

Something weird happened

"You know what, Dad? Something weird happened. Cate said she was going to marry me. But I decided I am going to find another wife."

That was Robert's take tonight on this weekend, with Cate Jensen, newly turned 5 ... oh yeah, and her parents and younger brother ... in town.

That's Cate in the middle, Robert on the left and Max on the right. And liberal use of Photoshop's red eye filter.

It wasn't an outstanding weekend if you're a Robert fan. He certainly had his moments -- he did great on our trip to the ballgame on Sunday, for example. But he was bossy, something which I think most kids are when they have the chance, and unbelievably rigid at times.

Robert often needs to be reminded that someone else's parents are there, and they are in charge.

Our family knows the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by heart. It's Colleen's favorite book. She reads it out loud to us because she knows the words by heart and can cue off the pictures. Robert knows the order of the story pretty much without the pictures. Cate is familiar with the book, but not fluent, and couldn't hang with Robert in that context.

So Robert, ahem, corrected her, and forcefully -- leaving Cate in tears.

Tonight they were over at our place playing in the backyard and Cate wasn't getting to ride a particular bike she wanted. Robert hurt her feelings by using a phrase I'm sure he doesn't understand -- that she was having a bad day, or a bad hair day. Well, naturally, Cate was insulted by that, and her mom, in good spirits, said, "I put those ponytails in myself this morning and they're just fine."

I had to take Robert aside, and used a phrase for the first time that I guess I'll probably be using many times in the coming years: "Let me give you some man advice."

In this instance, it was, "Never say anything bad about a girl's hair, or how they look."

He nodded the solemn nod of a kindergartener who doesn't quite understand.

Later that evening I was trying to revisit the subject of the weekend, and the bossiness, when he dropped the marriage line on me. I went on to tell him, "You never know, Robert, she could turn out to be pretty cute."

Robert just stared at me.

New ballpark, new experience

Today was Colleen's first baseball game, and our first ballgame at the Washington Nationals' new ballpark.

It's been a fun weekend -- our friends, the Jensens, are in from out of town and we've been spending the weekend getting reacquainted with the sights and sites of Washington, D.C. It's been a while since we really did the touristy stuff in D.C. as an entire family and we got a fair amount of it in this weekend with them.

Saturday morning we saw the Cherry Blossom Festival parade -- I've lived in Washington for 19 Aprils now and Cate for 18 and this is the first time we've been. We sat on the steps of the National Archives and watched it for as long as possible before the kids expired. This weekend was also my first trip to the National Zoo since 2001. (Inauguration Day, in fact ... don't ask.) The kids had a great time and in particular, Elizabeth and I had a good time walking around and really looking closely at the animals and the supporting materials. She took lots of pictures and we all visited a lot of the park, which has gotten significantly better since I visited in 1989.

But the ballpark was the centerpiece, for me anyway. And I think for Elizabeth as well, who said, "This is so, so SO, awesome!"

Giving a 10-year-old that experience in and of itself is worth it.

Kind of hard to put it into words. For me, it was the first time I got a real charge out of a ballpark since the first time I went to Camden Yards, the week it opened in 1992. Since then, it's seemed like every new park I'd been in or seen was a knock-off.

But Nationals Park, which somehow has yet to get a sponsor's name on it, isn't like Camden Yards or any of the umpteen Sponsor's Name Here Stadiums that have followed it. I'm not an architect and I can't write like one, but even on a cold, wet day it was a breath of fresh air.

I'll leave the architecture criticism to Edward Gunts of The Sun, in Baltimore. They know a little bit about groundbreaking ballparks there, anyway.

Colleen appeared to enjoy the game more than Elizabeth, which belies how the day began. When we were standing on the Metro platform waiting for our train, one rumbled by in the opposite direction and Colleen was none too pleased with how loud it was.

"Dad, can we go home?"

Uhh, no, we're just getting started here. And she was less than thrilled with waiting for the Jensens to join us at the ballpark. But unlike any almost-3-year-old I've ever met, she was content to sit in a ballpark seat and actually watch a ballgame. She was not the reason we left early -- the cold weather and occasional spritz of rain was.

The keen-eyed baseball fan will notice that the scoreboard behind me in the picture above (click to enlarge) not only lists the batting average, but the slugging percentage and on-base percentage of the batter as well. Nice touch. The main scoreboard is gigantic as well.

The kids have their amenities as well. There's a cool play area and moon bounce. Even though the play area is restricted to kids from ages 3-8 ... and only one of our kids currently falls into that range ... Elizabeth, Robert and Colleen all had a good time playing on it.

Colleen has no trouble passing for 3. After the person in charge asked me how old Elizabeth was (I said 8), I told her to act more girly. Worked well enough.

As far as the game, well, I can't say much for Robert's first major league game. (A former major leaguer pitched in his first minor league game for the Camden Riversharks in July 2002.) In Elizabeth's first major league game, Hall of Famer Cal Ripken homered, as did future Hall of Famers Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. (twice). In Colleen's first game, well, future Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine had the shortest outing of his career, not getting a batter before leaving with an injury. And Chipper Jones homered.

So what if Robert left his hat in the car, Elizabeth forgot her glasses and everyone was about five degrees too cold. It was a great day.