Cherish the little ones

Colleen and I are sitting at the kitchen table. It's quiet.

I look over at her and watch her reading and I can't help but smile. She's so intent on her book.

I whisper to her: "Psst." She looks up. I go on, "I like having little girls around. Little girls are awesome."

Instead of complaining that I've called her little, which she is known to do, she looks back at me, unimpressed, and whispers softly, "Reading my book."

She won't be 8 forever, this I know, just like she wasn't 4 or 5 for long in the grand scheme of things. But I'll always think of her this way, just like I remember Elizabeth as a little girl.

A parental milestone

Kids hiding from the camera. Elizabeth is
on the left in the turquoise sweatshirt.

I am sure most parents go through this eventually. Tonight, it's my turn. Our house has been invaded by seven teenagers to hang out and generally celebrate Elizabeth's 14th birthday.

So it's just Dad and eight teens. Fun!

We started the night with the kids assembling pizzas, featuring all of Elizabeth's favorite toppings (pineapple, black olives, onions) and several others. Thankfully, I even had alfredo sauce and some leftover roasted chicken on hand for one pair of girls who requested it.

Yes, there are boys at this party, three of them, in fact. They're watching a movie (Super 8) with the lights mostly off at the moment but I'm around the corner in my office with the light on and there's a light on in the stairs, too.

Before we got around to dinner, the kids were huddled around a laptop, watching clips from Saturday Night Live. That includes one famous sketch that aired when these kids were literally still in diapers. For those who are wondering, it involves Alec Baldwin and a particular takeoff of an NPR cooking show, with a dish that has a slightly naughty name. Originally aired in December 1998.

These kids are a riot. Elizabeth had good friends. There's some interesting things being said around the corner, but part of being the cool dad is letting it roll off. Maybe Elizabeth and I will talk about it tomorrow.

As a parent, my patience level varies wildly, as I'm sure most parents' does. Thankfully, I'm in a good mood today and a house full of teens is not a problem.

In defense of editing

There was a point about seven or eight years ago when I realized that I would not end up working at a newspaper for my entire career. Within the past few years, I had a similar epiphany about being a journalist.

I've been a journalist, by anyone's definition, since January of 1993, when I started covering the men's basketball team for the student newspaper at Catholic University. I became the sports editor the next fall, then was No. 2 at the paper the next semester. Before graduation, I was hired as a part-time agate clerk for Baseball Weekly, and after a winter off, came back full time when the 1994 baseball work stoppage was settled.

I have always been an advocate for editing, even at a student newspaper, which was sometimes a tough sell. At Baseball Weekly I spent hours watching over Margaret McCahill's shoulder, learning even more about editing. I eventually became a copy editor, and grew to pick up a lot of other skills along the way, some related to journalism, others to project management, content strategy, social media and web analytics.

But even though journalism and editing are not as valued as they once were, I will always be an editor, deep down. And what has happened to editing over the past few years is troubling.

Proofreading is not a replacement for editing. And spell-check is not a replacement for proofreading.

Recently there was an insert into our church's weekly bulletin with a letter from the church school's principal. It contained an error, where a sentence read, "... with food, fellowship and games run by out 8th graders." I don't know how many eighth graders are out. Spell-check doesn't know the difference between out and our. We also received a newsletter from the Bloomington public schools with a typo in the very first sentence of the lead story, which was a letter from the superintendent of schools.

And these are our educators. It's difficult for me to accept this from people paid to educate our children, even though I know they are simple typos. It's the lack of attention and care paid to writing that's the issue. But it's not as bad as it could be. I see posts from some people who home-school their children which are also riddled with misspellings and I cringe.

There's a local online news outlet that consistently confuses its with it's. And said news outlet doesn't seem to read its Facebook feed's comments to see what people are saying about its coverage, which is a social media failure even if there weren't errors.

The irony hasn't escaped me that I am writing this defense of editing on a blog, which is one of the least-edited mediums there is. And I know that newspapers place less and less emphasis on editing with every round of layoffs. But editing is not a luxury. As Arthur Polotnik said, "You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke."

Everything can be edited: news copy, blog posts, emails, Facebook statuses, tweets, you name it. And if you're a company which interfaces with the public, you should hire me to do it.

Smells like autumn

All three kids are in school full day for the first time and I am still at home all day, but now with a little more time on my hands. With the youngest two out the door by 8:15, that's plenty of time to think about dinner.

Yesterday morning I took advantage of that time to put a pork roast in the slow cooker. But instead of the standard pulled pork recipe, I gave it a bit of a autumn flavor, subbing out the onions for two medium-small Honeycrisp apples and adding a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. I sliced the apples nice and thin so that they would basically fall apart. We don't like as much of a vinegar taste to our pulled pork, so I put in about half the normal amount and used water for the rest.

I just love how a roast fills the kitchen with the aroma of a meal to come. It cooked even more quickly than I anticipated, so it was ready to taste when the kids came home. Elizabeth loves just about everything, so she was easily pleased. Robert was intrigued, and ended up liking his sample as well. As for Colleen, well, you can't account for taste from a 6-year-old.

Next time I plan to add another half an apple, and I'm thinking about putting the onions back in for more of a savory flavor. It worked great on toasted buns, to keep the sandwich from falling apart, although Elizabeth campaigned for egg noodles. That will have to be some other time, however.

Keeping my word chops up to date

I was pleased that Cate came up with a pretty good use for an old comforter that otherwise we would have gotten rid of, so I tried to give her a high five. She looked at me, puzzled, and said something to the order of, "I don't do high fives very well, you know."

I know this. I responded, "Just trying to bring you into the fold. Would a fist bump be better?"

I demonstrated a fist bump. She didn't seem enthused. So I said, "How about a forearm bash, you know, like Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire?"

I showed her how they did the forearm bash. She suggested that it might be painful, and responded, "They actually did that?"

I said, "Well, it was the '80s, so they were all hopped up on steroids."

Cate responded, "In that case, why didn't they just hug each other?"

I told her I thought Canseco and McGwire must not have been that testosterone-depleted.

Then I thought better of it. "Or that estrogenal." (Accent on the second syllable.) I walked away to go back to what I was doing, then turned around. "No. The word should be estrogenous." (Think of it rhyming with erogenous, or more to the point, androgynous.)

Cate actually laughed. A genuine, not mocking laugh.

One last dash of summer

Something's coming!

The kids have been back in school for almost two weeks but this morning the weather reminded us for certain that summer was over. Before summer ended, however, Robert and I reached a goal we have been talking about for almost as long as we've lived in this house.

Our little boy loves trains, has loved trains for as long as he can remember. And while our fourth grader's days of watching Thomas the Tank Engine have been long left behind, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy trains around here.

There are train tracks about six blocks from our house, the perfect distance, in my estimation. They are close enough that you can hear trains blow their horns, but not very loudly. I wouldn't want to live much closer.

I don't remember whether Robert came up with the idea or I did, but at some point one of us heard a train whistle and thought it would be neat to go down to the tracks and watch it go by. And as we were riding bikes one day, it occurred to me that Robert was definitely capable of riding with me to go see one. And it's been our goal ever since, although for more than a year, we hadn't even attempted it.

Cate has started working an early morning shift, so I've been either with the kids all morning while working at home, or lately, making sure they get fed, dressed and out the door to school. In the last week before school started, Robert came downstairs to me in my office and said, "Dad, can we do something today?"

It was right around noon. Normally I would have to say that I couldn't, but the previous day Verizon had let me know that my contract was being cut by a little over two weeks. I'm a very loyal employee but was still reeling from that punch to the gut, so I was a little more open to, say, taking a long lunch. The train goal popped into my head, so we went out to the garage, made sure all of our bikes had enough air in the tires, and set them up, ready to go at a moment's notice near the garage door.

Satisfied we were ready to go, we went inside to wait. We were not waiting long, however. I hadn't even gotten my shoes off when I heard the first whistle of the train. That crossing point is almost two miles away, and the freight trains don't come through the neighborhoods very fast at all. I alerted Robert, who hadn't even heard it yet, and we sprang into action. Open the garage door, water bottle from the fridge, helmets, let Elizabeth know she was in charge of Colleen, and bolt.

Robert is one happy camper as the train goes by.

While we're riding, we get the ultimate reminders of our destination. The train horn sounds at three other crossings before it gets to ours, on Xerxes. Robert is saying, "it's getting closer!" and I'm certainly wishing he had a multi-speed bike so he could go faster, but he is pumping his little legs off. Three quarters of a mile, with a slow, gradual uphill grade and a busy intersection in between takes a 9-year-old a long time with one gear, but we end up making it in plenty of time. The train is still several blocks away when we get there.

We settled in a spot very close to the tracks, much closer than the cars' stop line. The train blew its horn as it approached our crossing and I acknowledged the drivers so they knew we weren't completely oblivious.

As the train went by, Robert marveled at how large it was. He hasn't been this close to a moving freight train in quite a while, and of course, it's bigger than the light rail train we've ridden to the ballgame. The train wasn't very long, and the show was over in a couple of minutes, but he loved it, so it was worth the trip. And the timing couldn't have been better.

Mission complete.

A long night at the ballpark

After the vacation, the kids and I have been getting reacquainted, sometimes more than others since Cate has been working a lot this past week. And when an opportunity to get four Twins tickets dropped into my lap pretty late in the week, I decided to take them out.

Colleen had never been to Target Field and we hadn't been to a baseball game all together since last year's incredible trip to Wrigley Field. We had the ability to get there really early, as well, as it was the start of a holiday weekend, and do some things none of us had been able to do at our new ballpark.

We've always had the opportunity to look at this wonderful glove sculpture just outside the ballpark but never had a chance to get pictures taken with it because the line is usually pretty long. But not when you show up at 5:15 for a 7:10 game.

Robert forgot to put on his Joe Mauer jersey, but in the end, it didn't matter -- Mauer went 3-for-4 and Robert had a great time. But that came much, much later.

Robert and Elizabeth filled Colleen in on one of their Target Field tips: the great chicken fingers. So they had chicken fingers and fries while the Brewers (boo!) were still taking batting practice. I have always looked longingly at the Kramarczuk's stand, selling locally made brats and sausages, but they are very popular and the line is also usually long. But not that early in the day, so I had the best ballpark bratwurst I've ever tasted. Also, somehow by the luck of the draw (how do we keep meeting people at Twins games?) I saw a former co-worker walking down the concourse while we were eating and recognized him, although neither of us could remember the other's name.

About 30 minutes before the game, they pulled the tarp out to cover the field, prompting groans and boos. But Robert had already pointed out the clouds approaching, so we were prepared. Our seats were under the overhang, lower deck, left field, but we decided to move back anyway and wait out the first wave of rain.

The second wave (like white-out, Elizabeth says) was stronger and we walked out into the concourse. Robert and Elizabeth both asked when we could go home (my response: when the game is over!) but Colleen just rolled with it, sitting on my lap. We had fun communicating with a little girl standing in front of us -- I asked Colleen if she thought the girl was four, Colleen thought five. We were both wrong. I caught her eye and held up four fingers to her with a quizzical look on my face, but the girl shook her head and held up three. So cute!

We'd been at the ballpark for about four hours before the game finally started at 9:11, two hours late. And Robert made a friend, too -- a man in his 20s next to us chatted with Robert all night, showing him stuff about the game, telling him about the Brewers, chatting about nerf guns, the Brewers' stadium roof and the like. I thanked him profusely for putting up with Robert, and he said he coaches high school cross country, so he's used to it. I'm pretty sure there's a big difference between a 14-year-old and a 9-year old, though!

Colleen the 6-year-old at a game was a bit different than Robert the 6-year-old was. But she was very into whatever everyone was cheering about. Admittedly, with three kids with me instead of one, I didn't give her as much individual attention as Robert got at our ballgame around that age, but she certainly screamed loud at appropriate times, sang every word of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and only once asked me when it would be over. But late in the game, she put her head on my lap and went to sleep for a while.

So it was a late night, but thankfully the Twins won. We got to see Jim Thome hit his 594th career homer. In fact, as Thome came up in the bottom of the first with Mauer and Michael Cuddyer on base and two out, I was thinking, "We better score here, or we might not score all night." As Thome's ball went over the fence, I saw the guy next to us, a Brewers fan, shaking his head. When I asked him about it later, he said it was because, "there are only three hitters in the lineup who can hurt us, and they just did."

Final: 6-2 Twins. We walked in the door about 12:15 a.m.

It's quiet

One of the worst things about working from home is summer, when the kids are off school and generally around the house a lot. The kids have done a good job respecting my office space and not coming in when I have the door closed. I don't usually have too many conference calls right now but who knows what they might interrupt by walking in, in addition to my concentration.

But this year we start the summer vacation off with Cate and the kids off for two weeks to visit her mom in Philadelphia. So it's definitely been quiet.

After a pretty depressing Monday I decided I wasn't going to work in my office downstairs for the rest of the time they're gone. It's functional but there are no windows, it's always a little cooler down there and I just couldn't stand the thought of being in a box for two weeks. So I'm sitting at the kitchen table, with easy access to the radio, a ceiling fan, windows and doors to open as the weather permits, that sort of thing. It's one thing to work in the box when Cate and the kids are around because I can always pop my head out, go upstairs and be social. But on Monday, of course, there was nobody to socialize with.

While they're gone, I've had thoughts about cleaning up the house (don't know how far I'll get, but I did start), doing the laundry, trying to get some yard work done, stuff like that. The winter coats can be cleaned and stowed for a couple months. I have easy access to the kitchen as well, which is a mixed blessing, but I'm cooking up jambalaya to eat tonight and freeze for future consideration. I've gotten to hang out with some friends and I still have Minnesota Chorale rehearsals. I'm also doing a singing workshop on Saturday, which I'm looking forward to, trying to extend the comfort zone.

It'll be strange not having the kids here for Fathers Day, but we knew that going in. It's more important for them to have time with their grandmother than with me right now and if we're flying four people halfway across the country, we need to get them their money's worth in terms of time.

So, yeah, look me up. I've got some free time!

Overheard

The older kids are playing a game online.

Elizabeth: "It's being glitchy. Even though I have all the blackberries I need, it's not letting me in."

Me: "How many iPhones do you need?"

Elizabeth: "Huh?"

Robert laughs. He gets it.

What the kids know

Friends of friends of ours just had a baby, 8 lbs., 9 oz., and as Cate noted, that's a pretty big baby.

Colleen overhears the conversation and says, "that's no big deal, it's just a little baby." I told her that was pretty big for a baby.

To try to drive home the point of what it must be like (since I don't know, obviously) to carry that big a baby inside you, I decide to teach Colleen a lesson. I ask her, "do you know where the baby comes from?"

Colleen answers, in a sing-song voice, "Uterus!"

I hope all of her children are at least eight and a half pounds.

Robert's singing debut

Robert has been in the children's choir at church for a year now, and Mary, the choir director, suggested when the summer started that he and I should cantor a Mass together.

I wasn't quite sure he was ready, and I couldn't really get Robert to practice music with me. But during the school year we also have a weekly prayer service before religious ed starts, and since those are geared toward the kids, it's all stuff the kids know, including Robert. So he stood up there with me, with his own microphone, and sang.

Once I knew he had it handled, I just tried to stay out of the way and let him do his thing. He did great!

I hear through the grapevine that Cate was beaming with pride. Robert also said he got plenty of compliments.

Colemans at Wrigley, and more

Phew, what a whirlwind! Day Two of our one and a half in Chicago ended sometime around 11 p.m. when we finally got out of Wrigleyville. Although we had to leave the ballpark in the top of the 11th, hey, we had three kids happy (despite the look on Robert's face, promise) up until that time. With the Cubs-Cardinals game tied and no end necessarily in sight, we walked. The go-ahead run came up as we left Wrigley and the noise of Cardinals fans was deafening.

Robert was very much into this ballgame, rooting hard for the Cubs because we had Cardinals fans behind us. They loved the kids, especially Robert wearing his Joe Mauer jersey. I had thought perhaps he would not be the only person in Wrigley Field last night in a Mauer jersey, although I don't know that for a fact. (We did see a bunch of Twins hats and shirts and one Denard Span jersey.)

Earlier in the day we attended Mass at Nanny and Pa's parish in Niles, Ill., where Nonna and Da were married. We visited Nanny's grave, the first time for any of the kids, none of whom were alive when she died in 1997. That was followed by a trip downtown to go to the top of the Sears Tower (Robert refused to call it by its new name, the Willis Tower, and they were still selling Sears Tower memorabilia). The kids were great with the hour-plus wait in line. Colleen was a little scared but not so scared she wouldn't go up to the windows and look out.

Plus we had found a free parking spot on the street just two blocks from the tower.

It took us a while to get to a spot on the beach -- where does one park to get to the lake? We drove around a lot and finally found another free spot on the street. We did well on parking early in the trip, which made the $20 we paid to park near Wrigley more bearable. So we had to walk three-quarters of a mile to get there, in flip-flops, not a problem. Unfortunately, because of high levels of bacteria, they were not allowing people in the water. Robert was bummed out about it but got over it by eating one of the best cheeseburgers he's ever tasted. (He got one fresh off the grill because the ones already cooked and wrapped all had tomato on them. The kid behind the counter wanted me to just pull the tomato off. I told him my son was allergic.)

They also built sand castles with the John Hancock tower in the background. Colleen was sad when we had to leave, but not for long. We also saw no fewer than five rabbits on the lawn of apartment buildings along Lake Shore Drive on the walk back to the car.

The ballgame was a great time, too. Everyone got free T-shirts (I saw another fan wearing theirs when I stopped to get the kids into the bathroom somewhere between Des Plaines and Rockford.) Colleen didn't ask "when is it done?" until the sixth inning or so, and didn't make life too miserable when she was trying to take a nap in the ninth and 10th. Robert got very upset when Colleen was rooting for the Cardinals, following the crowd behind us.

Other highlights.

• Colleen was a great walker, all weekend. I put the stroller in the trunk but never pulled it out.
• Colleen sang every word and every note of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Better than Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly did, if you ask me.
• Driving down Waveland about an hour before game time and just watching the crowd.
• Robert letting Elizabeth use his camera pretty much all weekend without a complaint. She made use of the panoramic feature, including the shot at the end of this post of Wrigley about a half-hour before game time. Click the image for a bigger version.
  
• The giardiniera at Wrigley, immediately made me wish I'd gotten the Italian beef sandwich instead of the sausage, but I put it on anyway. Nice and hot.
• We couldn't get down the Obamas' street on our visit to the Hyde Park neighborhood. Blocked off by Secret Service.
  
• Elizabeth was a trooper, a couple of times, especially taking Colleen to the ladies room in a couple of key circumstances while I either had to stay in a line or stay with the car.
• The trip home was pleasantly uneventful. A special shout-out goes to the nearly full moon, which was bright and helped keep fatigue away until the pre-dawn light took over in the final hour of the drive.
  
• The kids slept all the way. And then for five more hours after we got home and poured ourselves into bed.
  

Great day in Chicago

Thankful for the following:

Rain that happened before we got here.

Kids patient enough to wait for dad's deep dish pizza.

A museum that has membership reciprocity with the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Two little kids who think sleeping on the pullout couch in a hotel is a cool adventure.

A cool IMAX film everyone could enjoy.

Dessert for four for $2.50 at Target.

An oldest daughter who can get the youngest one bathed.

Hope for such good fortune tomorrow.

Photo: The kids outside the Museum of Science and Industry, posing with an R2D2 mailbox.

Midnight Mumblings

The latest installment of Midnight Mumblings, where one of the kids walks into the room three-quarters asleep and says something nonsensical. Tonight it was Elizabeth again.

"It was the floor. It wasn't the books. It was the juice, so it didn't get hurt."

She says this while showing me her water bottle.

Elizabeth also wandered into the bedroom a couple nights ago and said, "I was just checking where everyone was. Where did everyone go?" Everyone was in their proper bed. Except her. She didn't remember getting up when I asked her the next day.

So far, Colleen has always been coherent, at least when talking to me.

More about Dimensions Academy

We've raved a couple times about the school experience that Elizabeth has received here in Bloomington and ranted (more privately) about the poor experience we had in Minneapolis public schools.

Minnesota Monthly magazine caught on to all the fuss about what's going on here in education in Minnesota, and specifically in Bloomington, writing about Dimensions Academy, the gifted program Elizabeth spent her past year in in sixth grade, and Elements, which Robert will be joining next year as a third-grader. Many people commute their kids from our former Southwest Minneapolis neighborhood to take advantage of the program, and in fact, Robert has a friend with an older sibling who gets driven in from Prior Lake to attend Bloomington schools for the DA program. Even not in the Elements program this past year, Robert received just a fantastic education from his second-grade teacher, Mrs. Evans.

I shudder to think of where we might be living and where the kids would be attending school if the gifted and talented coordinator at our Minneapolis school hadn't told us, off the record, about Dimensions Academy.

I recommend reading the article.

Four days in ...

So we're four days into our grand Bloomington adventure. Cate is safely in Ireland with Patty and Jeannie. And so far the kids have gotten all their meals, have been to bed on time, the laundry and dishes are caught up and all that jazz.

Elizabeth is trying not to let the extra authority go to her head. I do definitely need her help, just because I'm still working at home during the day. But in the afternoons she has taken to crocheting upstairs in our bedroom while watching TV. She needs her alone time, after all, and basically neither of us is going to get much of it the next few weeks. She and I also have a touch-base meeting every night, where I encourage her to speak freely. She did ask one good question and I hope she will continue to be honest.

Robert shows most outwardly how much he misses his mom. Colleen will mention Cate in passing and Robert will instantly look a little sad. He mopes. He recovers. He doesn't like to talk about it. Tonight he didn't feel much like dinner but he was quick to remind me that he had a whole sandwich for lunch instead of his usual half, so I didn't make a big deal out of it. He asked if he could have cereal for dinner, but I told him cereal for breakfast, PB&J for lunch and cereal for dinner was not going to cut it.

Colleen is doing great so far. She doesn't have a whole lot of worries. Someone gets her breakfast in the morning. She plays on the computer, reads books, gets outside a little bit but has a hard time getting her siblings to go along with her outside. She and Robert each got a new Webkin in a care package from Patty, while Elizabeth got a Harry Potter game for the Wii. My goodness, they can kill a lot of time with those things!

Elizabeth has the night off, sleeping over at a friend's house. Much deserved. There she doesn't have to help get anyone ready for bed or clear dishes. Well, she might have to clear the dishes, not sure.

For a high-tech guy, I keep the calendar pretty low-tech. Any new appointments or items for the to-do list are on the one-a-day calendar on the desk in my home office. Tomorrow is pretty busy. Robert was invited to a classmate's birthday party, Elizabeth needs to be picked up from the sleepover, Colleen is spending the night with Neil and Alicia and Elizabeth and I are going to a family get-together. So, today we had to go out and buy a gift and drop Elizabeth off at her friend's. Also, Mom came over and picked up the kids and took them to the park for a few hours, helping them knock an item off the bingo card.

Sorry, no pictures. But I promise they are all still alive.

This summer's to-do list

Two down, 23 to go. The summer bingo card is Cate's concoction -- a way to keep the kids engaged, perhaps, or keep them from asking to do too many things? Not sure. But what we have is this:

So far only the free space and one other have been marked off in the few days since Elizabeth drew this up. And click on the image to see a larger version -- the details are worth it.

Some of these are things Elizabeth wants to do, some Robert wants, some Colleen wants. I have something on this list, too.

When the first bingo is achieved, we take a trip to Dairy Queen. If we get the cover-all, well, we'll figure something.

Meanwhile, we'll see you at the bandshell sometime soon, or maybe riding the trolley!

Safe travels

As we speak, Cate is on the trip of a lifetime, as she's heading to Ireland with her mom and sister.

There were more than a couple of tears shed by the youngest members of the family today as we dropped Cate off at the airport. She won't be back for more than two weeks.

I hope she thinks about us but doesn't worry. We'll be fine. She's left town for a week at a time a couple times before in the past couple of years, so we can take it. Meanwhile, I'll whip these kids into shape.

Ehh, who am I kidding!

Have fun, Cate!

Losing part of the family

Nikki was a much-traveled, well-loved cat, and had been part of the Coleman family off and on for as long as the kids can remember, until she died Tuesday night. We believe she was 21 years old.

Nikki was not actually our cat -- she was Jeannie's cat. But she's lived in our house off and on for probably 10 years. Cate's family rescued her when she was abandoned by downstairs neighbors in the Chesterfield Apartments in Levittown, Pa., sometime before Cate left for college in the fall of 1990. Nikki was not fully grown yet. She had been left on the balcony of the apartment when the renters moved out and they heard her meowing.

Nikki lived with us for most of a decade, starting in our Reston townhouse, where she joined us and Todd, before Todd died in November 2001. She came with us when we bought the house in Sterling and Patty took care of her there before Patty left for Ireland.

She loved the back of the chair, and as a baby Robert (this photo is April 2004) loved to play with her. She was very calm and peaceful, sitting almost like a statue of a cat. She would roll over and expose her tummy for you to pet. She had an insistent purr, probably like most cats, but really wanted you to continue petting her.

My brother, Ryan, has long been a cat lover and took Nikki home with him on a 20-some-hour drive after covering the Stagg Bowl in 2007, at a time when we had three kids and were still trying to manage two children who were under 5 along with two nearly full-time jobs. We visited her a couple times at Ryan's place while living with mom and dad. But she came to live with us when we bought the house here. And we've known she was on her last legs for a long time.

Nikki was diagnosed with breast cancer about six months ago, and it was clear the spring in her step was long gone. When she was younger, the kids used to love playing with her, using the flashlight to throw spots on the wall or the floor that she would attack. She and Todd co-existed well. Nikki only walked out onto the back deck of the house in Sterling a few times, and a quick rattle of the food container always brought her running back.

She never lost her love of eating, however, or her plaintive meow when she thought it was time to be fed. She couldn't jump up on the kitchen countertop anymore, but the table was still accessible (if she was able to use the chair as a launching point). To the last, she would be so insistent on eating that she would stick her head in the food bowl while you were pouring it, meaning you had to battle her to get the food in the bowl and not all over the floor.

When Nikki went to the vet Tuesday night, we knew she wasn't coming back. Elizabeth understood. Robert had been prepped many times but still didn't fully understand until I called him over, sat him on my lap and told him Nikki would not be coming home. He cried. Colleen perhaps still doesn't understand -- last night she talked again about "when Nikki comes home from the vet" and I decided to use the D word in response and tell her Nikki died. She had a sad look on her face, and I told her it was OK to be sad, so she cried. But she was on to the next train of thought in a couple of minutes.

Todd died the night before Thanksgiving in 2001 and we buried him at the edge of the backyard in Reston, eventually covered by a flagstone to keep scavengers away. We'll do a short memorial service and place a marker in our garden for Nikki.

Thanks for letting her be part of our lives, Jeannie.

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.