Colbert Nation

With our last night in Canada Maggie had a rough time going to bed. It was after 10:30pm and Maggie was tired. Laur grabbed Maggie to take her to bed and I turned on the TV to see when The Daily Show or The Colbert Report would be on. The Colbert Report was just starting. Maggie flipped her lid. Bad timing on my part.

Laura lay down with Maggie and tried to get her to sleep. After at least 10 minutes of wrestling with Maggie and all of her cries for "Show!", Laur gave Maggie to me. She and Chloe were going to work on going to bed instead.

Maggie sat quietly tucked under my arm on the couch and I turned the TV back on to watch the last 5 minutes of Colbert and the first 15 of The Daily Show. I don't know why she likes those shows, but she does. I watch them online some evenings at home. Maggie apparently enjoys watching people sit behind desks and talk about the rather informative fake news.

The last I looked at my watch it was 11:22pm, and Maggie and I were laying down on the bed together. Both of us were out basically until 7:30am, and after a bottle Maggie stayed in bed until after 9:00am.

It's silly that 20 minutes of fake news was enough to calm her down for the night. At the commercial break I turned off the TV and all she said was "all done". She's a nut.

End of the Holidays

Well, we're coming to the end of a good extended holiday. We've been in Canada for over two weeks. This was only our second trip to Canada for 2009, so we were excited to get our girls up here to show off to the family. It's been a good time.

Chloe is still a mama's girl, but she has learned that she can be content in the arms of lots of other people besides mama's.

Chloe has also been quite curious. She has enjoyed watching her cousins and they have captured her attention for extended periods of time. Chloe has rewarded their attention with plenty of smiles.

Chloe has become much more vocal on this trip. Not a lot of jabbering, but she has found a strong volume for her shouting and hollering. Her noise-making doesn't seem to be directed at anyone, she just has to make a ruckus now and then.

I will feel sad for Maggie when we go home. She is going to lose a lot being back home. Maggie has had so many cousins to play with. She has been put on center stage so often here. Besides all of the regular play time with cousins closer to her age, Maggie has had plenty of time to show off all of her signs. There have been a few times where nearly everyone in the room, adult and child, have watched Maggie show off her knowledge. It is especially fun to have Maggie show off with the alphabet or her signs for feelings. "SCARED!" She is such a smarty-pants, and loves to interact, smile and laugh. She is has been so good to play and explore, even if some of that exploration has given Laura and I a lot to pick up after.

Besides exploring and having people to play with, Maggie may have other hardships when we get home. Maggie and I have been slumber party buddies for these past 16+ days. We've even laid down together for a couple of naps. She's a little rough at times. I've had both headbutts and kicks to the face, and she wiggles ALL OVER the mattress in the night. Even with all of her rolling around, it has been fun to peek over in the middle of the night and see Maggie's sleeping face. I don't know how she'll adjust to the the confines of her crib, not to mention having to fall asleep on her own at home. I hope that the familiarity of Maggie's crib and room will make up for not having me and her mom put her to bed in such a one-on-one manner.

This family time is so good for the girls and for us. I am sure that both our babies have learned a lot, and had experiences that will benefit their little souls. I will be sad to leave for all of us. Not only will we have to make up for whatever our girls will miss not being here, I am also going to have a wife to tend through her mourning. We're not sure when our next visit to Canada will be, and Laura is always sad to leave. We at least know that Grandma and Grandpa will be visiting soon.

We will never sleep

When you have a sixteen-month old and a two-week old, you should not still be losing sleep because of the sixteen-month old.

Sleepovers with Maggie

Maggie has had three nights with just me at home. we've done okay together. Maggie has been surprisingly good for me. she's been eating well when i feed her, sleeping a little longer than she was before laura's surgery, and only fussing a little for me as i try to take care of the night shift.

laura was worried to send maggie home with me. she doesn't trust me to play mom. all joking aside, i was worried about taking maggie home because i am a deep sleeper. our first night home, arriving after 3:00am, i was scared that i was going to have more problems than just waking up for maggie when she cries. i was sure that i was going to fall asleep in the middle of getting maggie ready for bed. during these three nights together i have drifted a couple of times while feeding her, but after a few tries at keeping the bottle in her mouth i usually wake up enough to finish the job.

Maggie starts out each night sleeping in her own space, but she ends up in my bed each night. she shares the bed well. i put her blankets over her, and then pull my sheet and blanket over top of that too. Maggie likes to keep arms out from under the blankets and free to wave around, so the extra covers on the rest of her are good to keep her warm.

Who Needs Sleep?

"i do not have ADD," is a phrase i subconsciously keep telling myself again and again. "i don't have ADD." if i tell myself often enough, maybe it won't be true. i've never been officially tested, but sometimes i just have to wonder if some of my less endearing habits are only symptoms of a larger mess. every once in a while i feel like i am being honest enough with myself to take a critical approach to my own character and i wonder if i have weaknesses that remain as of yet undisclosed. the people who know me best also let me know that i'm not the only one who suspects that i have attention deficit disorder.

i will admit that i have a hard time getting my brain to settle down at certain times. if there is a task that is sufficiently large or complex, i have a hard time getting finished if i can't imagine the end in my own mind. my mind races back and forth trying to find the viewpoint where all of the intermediate steps can be seen. i stall in dissatisfaction rather than accepting limited foresight in order to move on with what is presently available. some of the more intricate projects are even hard to start because my stream of thought gets caught in an eddy of its own making as i cycle through the possibilities of what might be "the best way" to tackle the challenge. there is an overdraft on my mental resources, as i try to estimate the most economic solution to the end goal.

on a smaller scale, i lose way too much stuff and i know it's not because my brain isn't capable enough to hold on to information. sometimes i think i have more than a knack for remembering trivia, from pop culture on down to stories i've heard from friends and roommates. then there are important daily things like my glasses, credit card bills or my car registration, my keys or whatever else was in my hand when i got out of the car that get put in "safe" places but my mind is too busy to take any notice. soon enough, i'm off again on another search for today's lost object.

somewhere in between these two examples lie the procrastination, the general disorganization of my personal space, the seeming need for constant stimulation - the feed from wearing headphones plugged into an mp3-player most of the day generally provides enough stimulation to calm down my mind. then there is the difficulty i've had my whole life of going to bed. growing up i HATED going to bed and i still have a hard time talking myself into laying down at a reasonable hour.

i can't go to bed unless it's the last thing i can do and my body is too tired to let my mind stay awake. i can have a relatively full and long day, but i will still need about an hour to myself just to complete a series of "one more thing"s that will let my mind be settled once my head hits the pillow. i know that if i go to bed too early, my mind will just get caught in a whirlwind of useless thought. there were years when i had to listen to music so i could stay still enough to fall asleep. the music would give my mind a constant stream of information to concentrate on, but not too much information in which i can get entangled. later i got an eBook reader and i could sit in the dark and read as the words would direct my mind into a calm long enough for my body to take over. i'd eventually fall asleep; the reader and my brain eventually turning themselves off.

after emptying my pockets onto the table beside my bed...

¿how did i get so many pennies?
pennies aren't very useful.
¿was the silver dollar more useful?
i haven't seen a 50¢ coin in a long time.
the 50¢ coin has a good weight for a coin toss, even better than a quarter.
there are a lot of cultural uses of the coin toss.
a coin toss is a good choice for 50/50 option
what about the percentages for a die? -- 16.67% -- that's not very clean
what about two dice?
Still messy - doesn't account for 1 and there's only one way to get a 2, a 3, an 11 or a 12 but lots of ways to get a 4, 5, 6 or 7
9.09% is just a messy percentage
what about even/convenient percentages? -- 5%, 10%, 25%, etc.
i guess they make 10 and 20 sided dice
Weezer has that song
¿what about thirds -- can you get 33%?
¿can you get a three sided object?
"I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide, I've got a 12-sided die..."
a pyramid - oh that's four sides
four sides is good for a one if four chance.
"...I've got Ace Frehley, I've got Peter Criss..."
1/2, 1/4, 1/10, 1/20
¿do dice have to come in even-numbered sides?
how can you make a 3 sided die?
"...in the garage, Where I belong..."
i guess a coin technically has 3 sides if you count the edge.
You could just use 6 sided die and count 1 and 2 as equaling 1, 3 and 4 equaling 2, and 5 and 6 equaling 3
there was that football game when the opening coin toss had the coin stick in the ground on it's edge. "...No one hears me sing this song..."
you could make a 3 sided die if you made it spindle-shaped.
¿what is the percentage likelihood that a coin would stick on it's edge?
¿how come only biology texts use the phrase "spindle-shaped"?...

yes, i'm going to be up for a while, but i'm still not going to get tested for ADD. instead, i will still have my headphones plugged into my ears most of the day and i will still have to read myself to sleep most nights. i will continue to work on getting myself to do something now, even if i can't wrap my brain around all of the future possibilities. and finally, i'll keep going to bed when i can't do anything else and then, maybe, i will prevent my mind from hijacking the opportunity to get a full night's sleep.

even better than that, i just might be able to avoid the whole mess of convincing myself AGAIN that there is NO WAY to make an all-wheel-drive bicycle.

sleepy, grumpy or dopey

so, i was trying to be good. i didn't watch TV. i studied some GRE. i hid from people. i was going to go to bed at a decent hour. i accidently fell asleep on my floor for about a half an hour. i woke up at 11:00. i got ready for bed. i wasn't as tired any more. i read some more. i got in bed again before 1:00 and sat there for a half hour.

nothing.

i was up until 3:30, at least. finally i could fall asleep again. then to continue the downward spiral, my alarm went off for 2 hours without any snooze breaks because i can't reach my clock from my bed. finally i turned it off, and slept for two hours after that.

yeah, i probably won't be in bed on time tonight either.