Carpentology

A Year in Review

Towards the end of every year I get tons of questionnaires about how the year went for me. I usually do not pay any attention to them, but as I read my daily web logs, I saw a couple of people had posted these, and I thought it was a good idea to post my own.

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Crib Time

We finally got Tony to fall asleep in his crib. Now all we have to do is work on that whole sleeping through the night thing?

Thank God, I’m A Country Boy

“What we have the right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man. The boy can best become a good man by being a good boy – not a goody-goody boy, just a plain good boy … “Good,” in the largest sense, should include whatever is fine, straightforward, clean, and manly.” Theodore Roosevelt

My mother got me this book for Christmas, and I read it for the first time this morning. I hope I can instill the values presented in this book in my sons.

Errands

I never realized how little I accomplish on my days off until I have too much to do, and no time to get it done.

Today was definitely an exception to that rule.

Today I …
• played with my boys. This is not really a job, but my obligation as a father. I am listing it first, because it came before all of the other chores that I had to do today.
• cleaned the house from top to bottom. This undeniably needed to be done with a newborn in the house, and a toiled that overflowed this past weekend.
• went to the store. Like most men, I hate shopping. Unless it is for electronics or power tools.
• replaced the blinds in the family room. RJ had broken nearly half of the vertical blinds off in his attempts to reach the balcony. We had given up on the whole blinds thing, and went to curtains. This was going well until he ripped the curtain rods off of the wall trying to swing from the curtains. We figured he would have a harder time trying to hold on to vinyl blinds.
• changed all of the static pages on this site to XHTML, from HTML(link), and validated the entire site. It did not need to be done; I just wanted everything to match. Go ahead and check it out, there are links in the menu for your convenience.

Parents / Grandparents

Tonight is the first night that we will be alone with our two sons. My parents came out not only for the holidays, but also for support with the birth of our second son, and hence provided a stratum of security that is no longer available.

I was aware of how much they spent on the boys. They spoiled them rotten, as should any grandparent who is not the guardian of a child. I was also aware of the individual attention paid to each of the children. Again, this is something that any respectable should do if they are not the guardian of the child.

What I was not aware of at the time and am dolefully aware of now is how much they shielded both me and my wife from the rigors of having a toddler and a newborn. As the Christmas holiday passes, we attempted to run errands this morning, our first such endeavor with two children. I have never been so tired.

Not only did we forget the added time it takes to leave the house with a newborn, we wholly underestimated the amount of attention required to mind two children. Since my wife is now, and will for a while be, recovering from a cesarean section, a bulk of the child rearing had to come from me.

CHEERS! to the most mentally fatiguing day of my life that I can remember right now, and the fact that it is almost over.