The things you hear at night

My goal isn't usually to embarrass the children, but I just have to say: One of our children makes nursing sounds when sleeping at night. This child hasn't nursed in a while. Heck, none of them have.

Just saying.

A good question

One of the benefits of working at home rather than 'nameless office park Verizon facility' is that my home office is a lot more like any other newsroom. I have more than one computer at my disposal and satellite television next to my desk.

While the marathon tennis match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut was in progress this morning for the third day, I invited Robert in to witness history and made sure he understood that what he was watching had never happened in the history of professional tennis. And I explained some of the rules of the game to him, which, he informed me, are different from the way tennis is played on the Wii.

The fifth set is tied somewhere in the mid-60s at this point, in the third day of competition after it had been suspended twice because of darkness.

Then, Amelia walked in, saw the television, and promptly asked Robert, "who win?"

Indeed, such was the 11-hour question. About 20 minutes later, it was Isner. And Robert had long since returned to the Wii.

Pasta on the patio with Pa

Going out to dinner

As the family got larger, going out to dinner gradually went by the wayside. It was about the time that Robert started needing his own meal, then Colleen came along and took up space and attention and made it a lot more expensive and less enjoyable to just sit around a table anywhere, let alone out to dinner.

But lately we've ventured out a little bit, and it's been downright pleasant. The kids can read the menu for themselves and decide what they want. We don't have to do the talking for all the kids when the waiter comes. There's no wrangling a highchair.

Tonight we went out to dinner courtesy Mom and a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory from about 2002. It's been in my wallet for the better part of a decade, unused. With a brand-new baby in the house, we weren't going out anywhere, and in those days finding babysitting wasn't a given. The Cheesecake Factory has been loud and difficult to get into -- who can wait 40 minutes for a table with kids in tow? Dinner out for a while was destined for pizza places or semi-fast food (Cate and the kids eat McDonalds while I walk over to grab takeout from Chipotle), or the occasional trip to Applebee's.

And not that The Cheesecake Factory is so darn fancy, either.

So it sat, unused. Mom would ask (bug) me about it on occasion, and you know how gift card issuers used to like to charge a fee for not using the card. So I thought perhaps it might have had its money run out. When cleaning out my wallet I would see it and wonder if it was still good, but always hang onto it, even while assuming the worst. I told Mom many years ago that we had used it, just to get her off my back about it. (Nagging me about something is a sure way to keep me from wanting to do it.)

But today I looked up the phone number of their gift-card balance check line, punched in the number and was somewhat surprised to find it was still good for the full value, so we packed up our somewhat larger and older family and went. We got there about 5:30, so seating was not an issue at the only Cheesecake Factory in Minnesota. We had a nice meal, everyone ate until they were full, and you can see above that there are plenty of leftovers for future meals.

The only downer: Elizabeth is too old for the kids menu. We knew that already and loyal readers of the blog have already seen her tastes run to the expensive end of the spectrum, but we have a no-steak policy. She had a Thai chicken pasta dish, Robert had pasta with marinara, etc., and all the dishes were gigantic.

And Robert had a good time afterward playing around the gigantic horse, which is actually part of the P.F. Chang's exterior next door, but so be it.

So, Mom, thanks. Finally we used it.

One year of one car life

We're about one year into living with just one car. Our Nissan Sentra bit the dust after it was totaled about a year ago. At that time, I thought it would be only a temporary situation, but we ended up having to take that insurance payment and rolling it into the down payment for our house.

So here we are. As a result, I work from home about 95 percent of the time. We can't always do the things we'd like to because we can't be two places at once. We've gotten by with occasional lending of vehicles by friends and relatives, but don't have the money to afford either the down payment or any kind of monthly payment.

Meanwhile, we keep looking at vehicles that can seat more than five -- not that we are going to have more children, but so our growing three can spread out a little bit. Or if we want to, say, go buy a snowblower, we can transport one. Or when we have guests in from out of town, all of us can go somewhere in one vehicle.

Cate and I have had two cars for a while, but it was deceiving. We've never had two car payments at once -- the second car was almost always one bought or gifted from a relative. I was sure we'd be able to save money in our new house but income is flat and my health insurance went from bad to awful last winter.

Reminds me, I should really be writing my freelance pieces for USA Today rather than writing on the blog. Whoops.

The day Robert turns 8

I don't particularly remember third grade with any fondness. I didn't know the term then, but I feel comfortable in retrospect in saying my teacher was a prick. Going into third grade, Robert will hopefully have a bit of a different year.

We celebrated Robert's last day of 7 last night with a quick trip to Dairy Queen (don't tell Elizabeth) and Robert was particularly wired all evening. Elizabeth stayed home and put Colleen to sleep, but that's OK -- she is particularly eager to earn money for a purchase she has in mind, so we'll see if she can make it.

Robert was greeted at school by his friends, who wished him a happy birthday en masse as he walked in. Presents will come tonight, but he also got to sign up for one of his first big-kid/grownup privileges last night: Robert now has a gmail address. I suppose we could give him access to write his own blog posts, too, but that will have to come later.

One of my first emails to Robert was to thank him in advance for not waking me up at 6:45 a.m. like he did eight years ago today. Thankfully, he complied.

And tonight, pancakes for dinner!