Up, Up, and Away!!!

Jacen is totally into superheroes right now. He runs around the house yelling, "I'm Super Duper Jacen!" "I'm coming to save the day!" His sunglasses have become his super hero shades, and he wears them all day, or at least carries them with him. And on Sunday, when Ethan forgot to tell the nursery worker Jacen's name, he introduced himself as "Hero". He loves The Incredibles, Larry Boy, and Super Why! And he can sing all of "Superhero" by Go Fish:

Up, up, and away! is all I want to say
When I fly away and I save the day!
If you're a bad guy on the run
I'm gonna get you just for fun.

Fear is something I don't know
I'll fight for justice wherever I go!

I'm a superhero flying around
No need to worry, you're safe and sound
Battling evil, fighting for good
I'm a superhero in your neighborhood!

No me gusta

This is what I woke up to this morning. Not good. Not good at all.


On the bright side, I have photographic proof that the earth is actually getting colder, not warmer. Eat your heart out, Al Gore.

Too bad she's blind

Here's a great Jacen story:

He and Amber drove past the courthouse this morning on their way to a Bible study. Jacen noticed Lady Justice at the top and said, "Look, there's a man up there!" Amber replied, "Yes, that's Justice." On their way home, they drove past again. Jacen waved and said, "Hello, Justice!"

Priceless.

Would you please sit still?

Jacen has this problem; we call it wiggling. He is incapable of sitting still for more than 8 seconds unless he's watching a movie or his favorite TV show. This becomes especially problematic during payer before or after meals.

A while back we decided it was time for him to learn to pray himself. A side benefit of this has been that he is much much better about sitting still when we are praying, but he's regressing a bit. He folds his hands and closes his eyes when we ask him to, but as soon as the prayer starts, he is talking or banging a fork on his plate or eating what's in front of him. When we pray before bed, he bounces up and down or waves his arms as he says every line.

I started praying with him at bedtime and added a prayer at meal time once last week. I'm going the route of teaching him a sort of rhyme for his prayer, and Jacen is slowly picking up the bedtime one. I'm not particularly pleased with the ones that I know from my childhood, so if anybody knows a good bedtime or mealtime prayer for kids, I'd love to hear it.

Though he's not sitting still while we pray, Jacen definitely knows what we are doing when we pray, and that's one of the best things about being his dad. If you ask Jacen what we do when we pray, he says: "Talk to Jesus!" Awesome.

Mom's Side of the Story

This is my first time posting on this blog. I thought I'd just let you all know what Jacen and I have been up to while Ethan is out saving the world, one legal case at a time.

The weather has been cold and rainy lately. Jacen is a pretty high energy kid, so I try to have some sort of organized activity every day, whether it's something out of the house that we go to, or a craft or activity that we do in the house. Thankfully, we've had a few big things start this week. MOPS started on Tuesday, and Coffee Break started on Wednesday. Both of those take a good chunk of the morning. Jacen loves to go and play with the other kids. At Coffee Break he is part of a Sunday School type program; they have organized lessons and crafts, and even a memory verse to learn for the next week. Today we went to the library, another favorite activity of Jacen's. He can play with the toys and do puzzles in the Story Hour room while I look for books. Today I let him get a music CD also (Veggie Tales!), which was quite exciting. He listened to it 4 times before Ethan came home for lunch.

I completed my training at Blue Mountain today. I passed all of my tests on the first try (yipee!), and have my first shift on Saturday.

Other than that, my days are pretty normal. I spend my afternoons doing laundry and cleaning, or working on my Bible Study (in addition to MOPS and Coffee Break, I'm doing Beth Moore's study of Esther). The evenings that I'm not working I've been enjoying Dancing With the Stars (my current favorites are Donny, Louie, Melissa, and Mya) and the PBS specials on the National Parks (makes me want to travel!).
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Jacen quote of the week: "Super Duper Jacen to the rescue to save the day!!!"

Comments from the peanut gallery

Not that I think those of you who read this blog are members of the legume family, but I fixed the issue with people being unable to comment on this blog. I am currently working on the other blog and should have the comments fixed there soon. So . . . comment away!

War of words

I started doing the crossword on Newsday.com again. In college I was doing three crosswords a day, including that one. I bumped down to one a day in law school, cuz the free paper only had one in it. Since law school, though, I haven't been doing them for some reason. Recently, I've found it provides a nice break from the daily grind of legal research and document generation that goes along with being a law clerk (again). I'm looking forward to being able to take on my own cases. Although, since I'll be licensed sometime around April, tax season might just put me under. That's a bridge to cross when I get there.

Anyway, I started this post to talk about Newsday. The puzzles at Newsday.com get progressively harder from Monday to Sunday. I don't usually do the Saturday or Sunday puzzles, but I can tell you that Friday's puzzle is usually insanely hard. Which brings me to my next point. Today's wasn't, and I was a touch disappointed. Don't get me wrong; it was harder than Monday's puzzle. But it definitely was not up to the usual Friday standard. More like a Tuesday or Wednesday. Yesterday's was much more difficult. Way to drop the ball, Newsday. Maybe I should do tomorrow's puzzle, just to get a bit of a challenge this week . . .

Shout out

On this Patriot Day, when we remember one of the worst attacks to ever take place on American soil, I want to say thank you to all our troops, but especially to my father-in-law, who served for 25 years and my my brother-in-law and my sister who are currently serving. Your sacrifice for our freedom, our country, and our family makes us proud.

USA!

Zebras and Gators and Bison oh my!

Amber had her first day of training at the new job yesterday. She's working at a place called The Blue Mountain. It's a pretty sweet set-up: they own their own bison farm and grow their own produce. The food is extremely unique for this area - things like pheasant and rhubarb pizza or alligator. There's even a real zebra on the wall.

Yesterday, Jacen decided he need to be awake before the rest of us and started yelling to come out of his room at 5:15. Considering the kid won't stay in his bed and usually falls asleep between 9 and 10 each night, this was not a good decision on his part. Needless to say, yesterday was rough on both him and Amber.

No word on the house yet. Realtor says the yard needs some work, which is accurate. Especially considering it hasn't been mowed in 3 weeks. Good thing we're going to STL this weekend. Saturday's going to be a long day of yard work, though.

Labor daze

Well, it's back to the grindstone after a long weekend. We didn't really do much celebrating -- a trip to Sioux City, hamburgers on the grill, pizza with friends, and waffles (not necessarily in that order). It's always good to start the week with church, even if Monday isn't technically a work day.

Jacen escaped the house on Saturday morning. He apparently went to see the next-door neighbors, got bored there, and ended up 4 houses down and across the street playing with a big yellow lab. Of course, he took Autumn with him, so there was clearly no reason to panic . . . One of the neighbors described him as the little boy in "Family Circus" with the trail of footsteps showing where he'd been. Needless to say, now that he's opening normal doorknobs with regularity, we keep a much closer eye on him.

Just a bit o' news

I was sick yesterday - something from this gastritis thing I've been fighting with - and missed a morning of work. Went in in the afternoon, though, and was very productive. I'm hoping today sees similar results.

Amber got a part time job yesterday at what is probably the most high-end restaurant in Sioux County. She'll start training next Wed. and will likely work 3-5 evenings/wk. At least until we get ourselves rolling a bit more.

Amber is also leading a hymn sing at the nursing home with her grandma today. She's gonna see if Jacen will sing Jesus loves me or the B-I-B-L-E. Stay tuned!

Greetings from Orange City. We are settling in at the in-laws while we wait for the house to sell. Since when do realtors get 6% of the selling price? I mean, I know they make it possible for your house to sell, but seriously, 6%? You have to do what, punch a few lines of text into a pre-fab online form? Maybe go out every few days for an hour to show people the house? It's bogus. If I didn't reeeeeeeally need to sell, I'd say screw that and go "FSBO." But I digress . . .

I started work at Klay Law last week. It seems to be going reasonably well. I stay pretty busy most days. Amber's looking for a part-time job to supplement what I make at the law firm and playing with Jacen during the day. She's started walking in the mornings, and I've decided to start running with my f-i-l to stay (get back) in shape. First time out was Friday - we went three miles of which I ran about 2. I then took two days to recover over the weekend and ran again yesterday, increasing the distance I ran by about 1/4 mile. We still went about 3 miles total. I've always sort of disliked running, but it's a good feeling to know I'm not being totally worthless during the day.

Jacen is as rowdy as ever. He's started singing little kids songs, which he does whenever he's awake. Old MacDonald, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and others. It's really quite cute. The first week was a little rough on the sleep schedule - for all of us - but he stopped waking up between 1 and 4 am and now sleeps pretty much until 7 every day. Additionally, his room is across from his grandparents' room, so we don't necessarily have to deal with it should he wake up at 2:30 -- thanks, Dad!

We miss our friends in STL very much, but also feel like this is the place God wants us to be for this chapter of our lives. That said, we hope to make it back to STL sometime this month to take care of the house a bit and see our church family. Afscheid!