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Leslie was traveling yesterday during Paul’s month day, so I offered to do a guest post covering it! So, here goes…

To Paul: this is how you spent the day you turned 2 years and 3 months old.

There are no pictures of this day at all, because I didn’t remember it was your month day and I was solo dadding and usually had both hands full of childern and their supplies.

You woke up around 7 but were peaceful enough that I could ignore you in your crib while I prepared “express breakfast cups,” which is our system for getting kids out the door quickly by placing fruit, toast, and a vitamin in the cups in your car seats before you even rise. So around 7:30, I plunged myself into the kids room with the task of getting clothes on everyone and out to the car on our coldest morning of the year so far (low 40s).

Annie was unusually helpful and so took herself to the bathroom while I got your diaper on and failed to convince you that pants and a jacket would be a good idea.

I toted you both downstairs with the crooks of my arms full of clothes, whisked you to the car pantless, and there convinced you to get the rest of your clothes on while you stuffed your face with grapes.

Dropoff at school went smoothly; you insisted on two hugs each from me and Annie, and a kiss (right on the lips) from Annie as well. Then you went to play with the rice tubs.

At pickup, you claimed that you played with “da fie-tuk, and da udda fie-tuk” when I asked if you played with friends. You have been mentioning friends a bit more in these conversations, but not today.

We drove to Doug and Kalia’s house to have pizza dinner there. Pizza was a great motivator and mood lightener. Traffic was light because it was the day after Veterans day. You were intensely curious about our unusual route “why we go dat way? why we not go dat way?” and very eager to open your window “peas open mah weendo,” but I refused this request because it was chilly.

At Doug’s, you romped with Eleanor on the bed, leaping off onto a comforter and bonking your head a couple of times. You gamely ate the top off a slice of pineapple+bacon (not Canadian) pizza at the kid’s table while I chatted with Doug and Phil (in town for work).

Around 7, I rounded you up and stuck you back in the car. We fed a very patient Sous and I prepared for bed while you and your sister started to unravel. Because it had been since Saturday (and Annie still had lollipop in her hair), we really needed to do a bath, and you actually made it pretty easy on me.

Afterward, you screamed on the ground in protest of the fact that I read the book Annie selected first (A House That Once Was), but I talked you down and got you back in my lap for Peekaboo Barn, your selection. Good spirits prevailed as I put you down to sleep.

Tuesday was date night, and we got home happy and beer-buzzed after kid bedtime. We sent home the sitter, watched a little TV then hit the sack.

Then about midnight, I heard Annie yelping from the kid room. Usually these days this means she needs a bathroom trip or has already “had an accident.” I staggered in hoping for the former but getting the latter, and geared up for hazmat duty.

I got her stripped down, which was distressing because she was worried that her socks were going to get wet. This was all that was required to plant the seed of emotional destabilization as I sent her off to the potty while I started tossing soiled bedclothes in the washing machine. My goal was to get her back in bed without rousing Paul or Mom.

Alas, I couldn’t find any clean crib sheets. I woke Leslie looking for them and we realized that, because of a string of earlier accidents, we had none. I dug out a king-size sheet from our bed. As I was wiping down the mattress, Annie went into full oppositional meltdown and screamingly refused to let Leslie apply any clean clothes to her because all options had critical defects, like a bow or button or something.

Near her snapping point, Mom bugged out and I did a half-ass job of wrapping this huge sheet around the crib mattress. Tapping into my deepest well of patience and sympathy, I convinced Annie to put on a dress and lifted her into bed. I asked if she was okay. Teary-eyed but calming down, she requested a bandaid for an imagined injury.

I made a trip back to our bedroom to get one, and was just settling her under her “covers” (a beach towel), when from across the room a plaintive cry rose from Paul:

“Wheres my bandaid?”

Leslie is on a work trip to SLC this week and I’m doing some solo dad work. It’s amazing how much easier this is than it was just a year ago. I’m not saying it’s easy, just hard instead of near-impossible. It gives a glimpse of a future where our lives “come back” to us from that hazy past before Annie was born.

As seen from my SEA -> AUS flight yesterday. Seemed so close I expected to see climbers.

Ten years plus deep into BBQ experimentation, I finally tried beef ribs. Easy cut, lots of fat, came out great.

A Strava friend pointed out that I crossed paths with Lance Armstrong on my morning run. The Strava Flyby thing is pretty cool! Lance had the better pace 🙂

Sous stole Scout the puppy’s chew toy. Then she stole another. Scout approached her to lodge a complaint. Sous responded thusly:

This translates in dog to “I drink your milkshake”

Apparently not many of my readers are familiar with Alia of the Knife, brother of Paul Maud’dib (the Kwisatz Haderach). So fine here is the scene that Annie is unknowingly acting out in her bath towel:

 

In June of 2014 I moved offices from way up north to “University Park,” better known as “the Longhorn Network Building.” It was a good move because it shortened my commute from 12 miles to about 4 miles, although I traded Mopac for the worst 3 miles of I-35 in the country.

Today was my last day in that building, which was pretty bland and unremarkable, although I did have my own office for much of it because my officemate so often traveled, worked from home, and eventually left the company. Goodbye office:

The part of the building I probably have the most intimate relationship with, though, wasn’t my office. No, it was the “fitness center” located in the catacombs underneath the lobby of the building.

When I was warned of an impending fracture in my femur while training for a marathon in late 2014, I replaced my long runs with long stints on the elliptical strider in the UP fitness center. Like, two hours or more, to simulate running 20 miles or more. Here’s one I found from the end of January 2015. Click through for the heart rate analysis, I was really working!

Two weeks later I ran the marathon anyway and broke my hip at the 22 mile mark, six weeks before the birth of our first child. Good times!

After surgery and six weeks on crutches I was not exactly excited about running, so I returned to the elliptical strider for exercise (along with swimming), and I’ve been logging time ever since.

According to my Strava records (which surely undercount), I’ve spent at least 50 hours on the UP catacombs elliptical strider since we moved to the building. I passed the time sweating by watching TV and movies on my phone, including Seasons 2-5 of Game of Thrones (now all up to date, thank you), Seasons 1 and 2 of “Narcos”, Season 1 of Breaking Bad (I found it intolerably slow paced so I stopped); lots of weird foreign films (mostly Asian) with subtitles that Leslie would never watch with me like “Touch of Sin”, “White Material”, and “Ong Bak”; a many many movies I just never got around to seeing  like “Sicario” and “Strange Days” and “Million Dollar Baby.”

This morning I did my last stint on the strider with the second 30 minutes of “Jackie Brown.” I will never forget the particular smell of that lonely room, or the countless hours spent before work sweating profusely, ratcheting up and down the resistance, working hard but going nowhere.

Goodbye, faithful steed.