Prego - not just a tomato sauce.

Sarah's pregnant. We're having another child. Going by our current brood, I'd say we're likely to have another boy. Maybe we're about due to have a girl. Who knows? God knows. The sex has already been decided, of course, but God usually lets us find out when we find out. A lady at church told us her sister (which means that me telling you makes it 3rd hand) had several ultrasounds saying she was having a girl, but she wanted a boy and prayed that it would be a boy. She felt that God answered her, so she went back to doctor and somehow convinced them to do another ultrasound, and then they saw she was having a boy. Does that mean she asked God to do a sex change and he did? If so, is the boy the same child or did God replace the whole baby? I feel really weird about the whole story.

I'm detracting from the real news here. We're having number 4. We will have 4 children under 4 years old. I suppose that's better than the 3 under 2 we had with Dawson's arrival. Maybe. Sarah is feeling rather tired from the whole thing. Her blog describes her feelings best. I laughed when I heard. I think of how much I love my little guys, and I'm excited about having another. I also feel tired.

School and Halloween

Caleb and Noah just started school. They even ride the bus now in cute little car-seats. They wave from the window, and Noah blows kisses. I'm glad all the silly paperwork is done. The school has to have all the intake paperwork completed before anyone can start. Since they are in the pre-school program to catch up their communication skills and such, part of this paperwork involved the teacher writing a monstrous document with all of the goals and plans for the year.

Two days before Caleb started was Halloween, so they told us we could bring Caleb up for the party they were doing. I thought it would be good for Caleb to go and get used to everyone, so we bought costumes for Caleb and Noah, who has been in school for a few weeks already. They both picked out SpongeBob outfits. SpongeBob also happens to be one of the few costumes at Target that they would recognize. Either way, they love SpongeBob, or "Bob Bob" as Noah says.

At school, they did a little "Trick or Treat" journey around the school to a few participating classrooms. The Bob's both cried almost the entire time. Too many people around, too much commotion. At one point, a little girl whose mother had dressed her as the devil offered Caleb her pitchfork to try to calm him down. Oddly, that helped. SpongeBob took the devil's pitchfork. Oh well. They had a great time at the little class party afterward. They colored cookies with icing, ate chips and popcorn, made footprints on paper with paint-covered feet, and socialized a bit.

I know a fair number of people who would prevent their children from participating in the Halloween activities at school. My parents never did that. They just taught me about the meanings and what to avoid. I can see some merit and reasoning in both courses of thinking. No one at school is teaching that we should worship devils, they aren't scaring my children, and they said not to let the children dress as anything scary (devil girl's mom probably didn't read the memo, although she probably thought the outfit was more cute than scary). Aside from the some vague mentions of ghosts and witches, which they would have heard whether they participated or not, everything else was just a party with costumes. The children who came to our door that evening were another story, but, oh well. Easter and Christmas traditions come from equally dodgy cult festivals, and Halloween was just as "redeemed" as Easter and Christmas were. That is, the church replaced pagan festivals with a Christian one that had oddly similar traditions. Halloweens original meanings are just still up in all our faces. All things being even, I would just ignore Halloween, and when I had no children, I did. But now I see it as a bit opportunity to meet people in the neighborhood, parent and teachers at the school, and have fun with the children at the same time. The Bible says the days are evil anyway, so we should make the most of every opportunity.

We did take some cute pictures. Dawson especially looks cute in the dinosaur costume we got for him to wear in the evening while we passed out candy and walk around to talk to the neighbors and such. The boys even got a little candy in the process. I'll post some once I get around to pulling them off the camera.

I was so productive...

But there's still always so much that needs to be done. Today I cut the grass, weeded flowerbeds (while watching all three boys), made breakfast and lunch, thawed meat for dinner, and cooked it. I also fixed a light fixture that I didn't hang right, replaced two doorknobs, put some clean clothes away, and found the missing usb cable for the camera. I still managed to play with the boys quite a bit and make sure they got naps and drinks, but the house is a wreck despite our efforts.

My to-do list is still 10 miles long, and we never got around to tidying up the playroom.

Sarah was sick all morning with horrible migraine. We just found out that she's quite allergic to dust and dust mites, so we need to take some measures to reduce the dust in the house to try to help with her migraines. We're looking into air filters and replacing carpet right now. At least it's something we can solve fairly simply - unlike Fibromyalgia.

She was a real trooper this afternoon, though. She got things ready for going to church tomorrow, fed dinner to Dawson and Noah, and did a lot of the moment to moment care of the boys.

Tomorrow, I'm going to post a few recent pictures of the boys, so stay tuned.

Anniversary

Sarah and I have an anniversary coming up on the 14th on September. Our fourth. Very exciting. We're going to have get away without going anywhere. That is, Caleb is going to stay at my Mom's, Noah with one of Sarah's friends, and Dawson with Sarah's parents.

Caleb is going to help my mom bake bread. He doesn't know that yet, but I'm sure he'll have fun. I'm glad he's going to stay with her because he's nervous around her most of the time. People have to be around a whole lot before he's comfortable around them. I have high hopes that they'll be best buds by the time he comes home.

Back to our get away. We're just going to hang around the empty house Friday night through Sunday morning. Woot! I like my wife, darn it, and we're going to have a nice relaxing time together. We might go out to Williamsburg on Saturday, or we might not. I'm sure I'll miss the boys because I'm attached like that, but I'll get over it.

The Dog

So, I'm allergic to dogs. Sarah has always wanted a dog. So we got a very cute little miniature poodle, since they are supposed to be good for people with allergies. On the bright side, she doesn't bother me nearly as bad other dogs. Usually when I visit a dog-owner's house, I just walk in the door and the air feels thick. One day, my Brother-in-law and his wife Dezi were over with their chihuahua. The dog was there for only a few minutes, and the air started to thicken. So, poodles really are good for allergy sufferers.

The problems is that, while I don't feel like I'm having an allergic reaction, I've been wheezing a lot more. It's gotten to the point that I have to use my athsma inhaler twice or thrice a day. It was better when Molly didn't sleep in our room, but we can't leave the door shut, or we can't hear the boys if they wake up. Molly loves to sleep in our bed, and she gets in bed with us if we don't lock her somewhere else. She also behaves better when she gets lots of attention. Sleeping with us seems to go a long way with her.

The doctor told me using the inhaler that much is really bad. He also didn't want to put me on expensive allegy medication. Claritin and Singulair did nothing. I'm trying Zyrtec now, but so far, nothing. My ears are also starting to clog up.

Okay, so I took a break writing this, so it's been a few days. The Zyrtec didn't work. I'm now using a steroid inhaler that seems to help. If life wasn't so crazy, we could really clean out the room, vacuum, and dust it.

We've decided to keep her, though. We could sell her for a fair amount of money to a breeder, but we're not in it for the money, and I'm sure we can make it work.

Knobs, Macs, Heath, and Arlo

I'm hanging out with the baby at the moment. He was getting bored with helping me install door knobs and playing with a screwdriver, so I gave him the rest of his bottle. He's lying down watching Baby Galileo as I type this.

We bought new door knobs for the house last week, that is, we bought knobs for the second floor plus replacements for all the cabinets. We mainly did this because we think shiny brass is cheapo looking. I also have a mild addiction to brushed metal, so we got satin nickel schlage ones. Our old door knobs are the same style but bright brass. I've done all but two up here, so we'll have to go shopping again soon for the downstairs. I'll have to get all new external locks to match, which means they'll have to be keyed and such. If you have a copy of the current key to my house and have been planning on robbing me, you'd better do it before it's too late.

Caleb helped me put up the knobs in his room last night after Noah and Dawson went to bed. He was big help for a two-year-old. I gave him a screwdriver of his own, and he tried to turn a few screws with it, but he wasn't very successful. He mainly helped by handing me things. Once we finished, he tried to take down a few of the knobs in the other rooms. Since he can't turn screws, he wasn't very successful. I told him he did a great job, and I meant it.

Our Nanny, Charlotte, likes my wife's MacBook so much, she wanted to get one too. She had me order her one. It just came in. I forgot that some people still have dialup at home, so I neglected to mention that the new ones don't come with modem's built in. She was like, "Oh, well, just order me one." I was about to do it when I realized that Apple is charging $50 for them. Charlotte didn't seem to mind, but I thought it was a bit steep, so I looked around. That seems to be the going price for a USB modem these days. It's probably the case that modems are hitting legacy status where the sales aren't that high, but the people who need them have to buy them. I guess that means they can charge more.

I talked to my old friend/former co-worker Heath the other day. He had a linux question, but decided to take the opportunity to catch up. We're supposed to have lunch next week. I've known him since junior high school and happened to end up working at the same company for a few years. After he left there, I tried to get him to come work at BMH or Alion, who recently bought BMH, because I like my job, and I think he would be a good fit, but he ended up going to work here for our old CEO, Carl Hewitt. BMH/Alion just didn't call him back fast enough for an interview.

=/rnr[]\/


Dawson wrote the above text. He wanted to say something too.

Heath likes to remind me that he once accidently saw my brother Arlo's butt. I won't tell the story, but I thought it was a nice segway into the fact that Arlo just got engaged. I'm very happy for him. He found a nice lady named Leslie (note that the "s" is pronouned like an "s," not a "z"). He had my Granddaddy Mike Winesett, who is a jeweler, made the engagement ring. He made my Sarah's as well. Only my brother Ross needs to get married and all of my Granddaddy's grandchildren will be married. Not that any of that is really interesting to anyone but myself, but most of the topics I discuss have those qualities. Sarah still pretends to be interested. She actually might be genuinely interested since she's known me for 10 years now.

SBemail

This weeks Strong Bad E-mail was very funny. Best one in a long time. The Cheat apparently got a new iMac.

I was really tired today. Caleb woke up at his normal 6:30AM, but this morning he went into the other bedroom and woke up the Noah and Dawson. I barely managed to change diapers and make some drinks. I'm usually pretty lucid in the morning. Sarah had a migraine, but I had to get her up because I was just not together.

Since we were all up anyway, we loaded everyone up and went to Farm Fresh. They have carts with a plastic car cab in the front. They boys always pick one out and stay pretty happy the whole time. It has two steering wheels and places to sit, so Caleb and Noah can "drive" at the same time. They also like swapping seats without getting out. They all had breakfast at the store while we were shopping. Bananas, pretzels, grapes, and goldfish are always great in the morning. Dawson was shocked by the salt on the pretzel, but in the end he was covered in brown slop.

I tried a POM tea. It's pomegranate juice and black tea mixed. I thought it was okay. I usually get a pomegranate/cherry juice at Farm Fresh, but I thought I'd try something else. I don't really care much for the other POM juice mixes. Blueberry and mango with pomegranate just don't work for me. I do like the pure pomegranate juice is pretty tasty. It's expensive stuff though -- $4 for a 16oz bottle.

My mom gave us a blender, so Sarah bought tons of fruit to make smoothies. Noah will eat them, so she's going to try getting him to eat some fruit by sneaking it into one. Either way, I'm sure Caleb and Dawson will eat all of it.

We tried to go to IHOP for pancakes afterward, but we ended at Lone Star. They are supposed to have a kids eat free thing on Saturday morning, but apparently you have to order them an actual meal on the kids menu. We just got them milk and some french fries. That's cheaper, but we would have had to get a more expensive kid's meal for it to be free. Good stuff.

We just hung out for the rest of the day. We had a little nap, watched some TV, played in the pool a bit, etc. I had to add some water to the pool because the other day Noah and Caleb tried to climb out of the pool at the same time on the same side. They weigh just enough together to make the side squish down and dump out the water. They had a blast playing with the hose. I wish I'd taken pictures. The baby and I sat in the swing some. He was pretty tired all day.

The nanny was supposed to watch the boys tonight while we went over to some people's house for a worship and prayer get-together. The nanny's mother showed up in town today, so she called and canceled. Tomorrow we're going to the evening service at church because Georgian Banov is going to be there. He's a great guy. If you don't know him, I couldn't describe him fittingly. He's nuts in a good kind of way, and he really knows how to worship.

On to the rambling...

The tire blew out on my car last Friday, so it just sat in the work parking lot until today. It didn't have a spare because it hit a pot-hole, or more correctly a large section of road that had collapsed, and dented on of the steel rims. A brand new, un-dented steel rim was sitting the trunk, but it had no tire on it. This is partly because I'm a very busy guy and partly because the car dealership that supplied the rim wanted way too much for a new tire.

I had a new tire put on the rim and was amply prepared to put it on the car today, but after my wife dropped me off at work with the tire, I realized that I was wearing light khaki pants and a light yellow shirt. So I'll put it on tomorrow.

Sarah's new computer was finally delivered today. We kept missing the Fed-Ex chic for one reason or another. I'm getting all of her data moved over tonight. She's excited. She's been using my older 15" PowerBook since I got my new computer. She prefers having a smaller one she can tote around the house easily.

We took a few cute pictures of the kids tonight, so I thought I post a couple.

The Date.

My wife and I are out on a date at Panera bread. We chose the venue because they have WiFi. We're blogging and stuff. Very romantic, eh. It's pouring rain outside, and some light jazz is playing in the background, so the atmosphere is nice and relaxing. Our new Nanny is watching the boys for a few hours. That sounds rich and snobby :-D.

I'm enjoying myself. I always miss my children, but I'm glad to be out alone with my wife. I love the way she looks tonight.

Nothing is quite like certified organic, low sodium, non-bioengineered microwave dinners.

Since I have higher-than-desirable blood-pressure, I try to avoid eating too much Sodium. It's actually fairly difficult to eat low sodium unless I cook absolutely everything myself. Fast food is right out. For example, a Wendy's grilled chicken sandwhich and a side salad with honey mustard dressing adds up to 1450 milligrams of sodium. One is supposed to eat less that 2300 a day, and apparently the American Medical Association was a bit liberal with that number. They actually wanted to lower it to 1500 fairly recently. That particular fast food selection is actually fairly low compared to some other places. So if I ate that one day, I would have to eat nothing but no-salt peanut butter and plain raw veggies with no dressing for the rest of the day. I know the food industry uses salt to increase shelf life and generally make food taste better, but gee.

The other day I noticed Amy's Kitchen meals in the organic section. These were much more reasonable with sodiums levels like 300-700 mg for a meal. They also make even lower sodium versions of their products, but sadly these aren't sold at Farm Fresh. I had a few burritos and Indian Vegetable Korma (no, I don't really know what Korma refers to), and I was happy with the results.

My doctor gave/lent me a blood-pressure machine. He actually said I should use it an return it when I'm done, or if I don't, who cares. One of my co-workers had been to the hospital after being shot in the foot, and had found out his blood pressure was really high. He thought it was because he had just been shot, but later it turned out that it's always extremely high, so he started checking with my machine. Another coworker found out his was high too. they both went to the doctor. One ended up on really strong medications and is undergoing tests. The other one is currently trying to control his with diet and exercise. They've both decided, jokingly, that it's my fault they have high blood pressure.

First Post. I suppose I should write something introductory here. I thought I would, perhaps, confuse the people who are unfortunate enough to read this weblog with some of my disjointed, tangental musings. I suppose sharing such things with potentially everyone on the planet sounds pretty silly, but it seems to be the thing to do.