rees genre

Here are a few vignettes from the past week or so. My son, the nerd Yes, it's sad but true. I have made my son into a nerd. Hopefully it will only be temporary. As Chris and I are the epitome of cool, it is challenging to deal with the fact that our child is a nerd at the moment. The cold, hard truth is that our son wears socks with his sandals. Ahh ! I can't believe I am confessing this to the world wide web. Davin got a cut on the bottom of his foot because his mother was not responsible enough to make sure he was wearing shoes while running around in a our not-so-soft North Carolina grass (I desperately miss the soft fake lawns in Utah!). The cut had dirt in it and was starting to look infected, so I am determined to keep it bandaged and slathered in antibacterial ointment. However, apparently having a band-aid on is more traumatic than the wound itself. Davin cries with his "I am in pain" cry every time we put a band-aid on, and he immediately tries to tear it of...

When Davin was about 4 months old, I accidentally locked him the car. I put his infant carrier into the base in the car and threw my keys onto the front seat. The driver's door was shut and I didn't realize the car was locked until after I had shut the passenger door as well. In my fumbling with baby, purse, and keys, I had inadvertently hit the remote keyless entry and locked the car. Fortunately I was at a friend's house, so I could call Chris to my rescue, but it was not fun watching Davin cry in the back seat of our car. Our new car will not let me make this same mistake, however. Today we purchased a new 07 Nissan Sentra. One of the features is the "Intelligent Key" which was apparently designed for people like me who need a smarter key to make up for a personal lack of intelligence. We actually don't need the key to open the car or start the ignition; the car recognizes the key fob when we walk up to the car and unlocks everything for us. I can't lea...

My attempts at gentle parenting have back-fired a bit. When Davin did something bad, instead of yelling at him or spanking, I would give him a concerned look and say "Oh, Davin!" We would talk about what he did bad and usually he would go on his way without doing the bad thing again. Davin has a tendency to throw toys when he gets upset, so generally that is when I would chide him. Well, our little parrot has learned to repeat everything we say. Now, when he throws a toy or gets mad, he will also say "Oh, Davin!" Unfortunately, he doesn't say "Davin" as clearly as we would like. Instead he tends to add an "m" where there is an "v", thus making it "Oh Dammin" instead, which sounds very much like he is swearing. I groan to think of what his nursery leaders think when Davin has a grumpy moment in nursery, throws a toy, and says "Oh Dammin!" Davin having a very dirty moment.

We recently mentioned to some of our friends and family that we have been doing a little car shopping lately. Well, we didn't buy the car above. It is a rental. However, we have recently become more serious about car shopping. This story starts with a business conference I had on Tuesday in Charlottesville. Davin and I left Raleigh on Monday morning, sad to leave Chris but excited for a quick trip to see a few friends. We stayed with the Carrolls and had a great time seeing the Patchett's new baby, Ivan, and saying goodbye to the Vances. My conference on Tuesday went smoothly and it was good to meet with my coworkers as well. As I was driving back to the Carroll's to pick up Davin and start our journey back to Raleigh, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I concluded that I was too tired to try and drive back by myself, so I decided to stay one more night. I didn't mind the excuse to stop by the Brown's and spend a little time. The next day, I decided to tarry a little...

The day started with a bona fide 4th of July miracle. Davin woke up at 8:30 am instead of 6:30 am, his usual wake-up time of late. Chris and I woke up this morning feeling strangely refreshed, and we realized we had actually got a full eight hours of sleep. Hooray for 4th of July miracles! We had a patriotic breakfast of crepes, strawberries, and blue berries with whipped cream (for any of you protesting having a French breakfast on an American holiday, please remember that the French did give us the Statue of Liberty and helped us win the Revolutionary War; their contribution of crepes to our society is particularly noble). We headed to Apex (a town near Raleigh where the temple is located) for an "Olde Fashioned 4th of July", a family-friendly event with inflatables, vendors, and a fire truck spraying water on a hot crowd of kids. Davin particularly enjoyed the kiddie putting station, as golf is still one of his current favorite sports (wait until football season, though). ...

baby! Yes, we are having a baby! We were so happy to find out that in my tummy is an actual baby and not something else, which would have been very concerning. Everything seems to be in perfect order, with all of the right number of parts where they belong. Speaking of parts, there seems to be the right kind of parts to declare this baby to be a boy. We are having a boy and we cannot be more excited. As we have discovered thus far with Davin, boys are a lot of fun and having another one around will only add to our good times. We took Davin to the ultrasound and I'm not sure he really understood what was going on. He kept commenting on the room being dark, how he wanted to push buttons, and occasionally he would point at the screen and say "tree?". His time for understanding what it means to have a baby brother will shortly come.

Davin has two favorite toys, "Red Truck" and "Duncan the Train." Duncan came in a "Thomas the Train" DVD and Red Truck arrived in a Wendy's kids meal. Everywhere we go, Duncan and Red Truck come along, from the shower, to the pool, and even to the store. Most of the time it works out perfectly: two toys, two hands, no problem. However, then comes the moral dilemma: what do you do when you need to eat, drink, or even pick up another toy? This attachment has been a great way to develop Davi n's dexterity. There is the "grabbing the glass with my wrists while still holding a toy in each hand" or the "hold both toys with my left hand (Davin's dominant hand) and try using my right hand instead to throw a ball." In Figure 1, Davin is exhibiting the "hold the truck in my elbow so I can enjoy a few cashews" move. Figure 1: Davin maneuvers cashew in mouth by holding Red Truck in his elbow.

Actually, it was a family-friendly beach so everyone seemed to be clothed appropriately or at least there were no bare bums to be found (except for Davin's at one point when we hosed him down after playing in the sand as swim diapers are a good place for sand to hide). However, nothing attracts attention to an article better than a salacious title. Recently Davin and I have been hanging out at a pool with some moms and kids from our ward here in Raleigh. I asked these experienced Raleigh-ites which beaches they preferred. I was appalled to learn that none of them had actually been to the beach or would go very rarely. I decided that we needed to go to the beach immediately and not suffer the same fate (the fact that our landlord was spraying bug poison in the house helped encourage our need for a day away). The beach is only a couple of hours drive, so we headed out on Saturday morning. The weather was a little sketchy and we had grey clouds the entire drive, but they all went away...