Surfergeeks

Well, as everyone probably figured, Alex made a killing again this year.  He is quite spoiled.  Rob’s dad even visted yesterday and dropped off more presents for him.

So, he received tons of clothes, a lot of books and a few stuffed animals.  He now has a TMX Elmo (although he’s afraid of it), a Little People garage set.  A Thomas the Tank engine musical thing.  A huge safari wagon.  Plus more and that was just from the presents we opened at our place!

Then we headed over to my parents and there were more presents.  Mostly for Alex.  He now has a train table, wooden train set included.  It also has storage underneath and the board the train sits on is also a white board or a chalk board.  There was a musical chair, and a baby einstein book reader.  He got a larger wooding train set that is also blocks he can build with.  There was a mega blocks Pirate ship and a drum set.  Yeah, this was just from my folks.  We have a very spoiled child.

Rob and I received some great gifts too.  We now have a light sign of vegas to go in the poker room as well as a poker themed clock.  Coke glasses.  Rob got the 80′s Trival Pursuit game and my brother Travis game me a game based on the CSI TV show.  We now also have a new light to go in the living room.  It’s similar to the one we already have, but in the middle of it, is a lava lamp.  That is very cool.

I could go on and I’m sure I missed a few things.  I just wanted to list the important items anyway.  And finally the point of this post is to say “Thank-you!”.  Everything is great and we love all of it.

So, last night was the first time Rob and I had to basically stay away all night taking care of our sick child.  Alex has had colds before, where he woken up in the middle of the night, a little stuffy and needing his soother, but last night was much different.

Around 10PM last night, Alex starts screaming in his crib.  Rob goes in to check on him figuring he just lost his soother or had a bad dream.  A short time later, I hear Rob ask for help.  I come into the bedroom wondering what is wrong, thinking possibly Alex had a really leaky poop.  It turns out, he had vomitted all over his mattress.  Poor kid.  He’s still screaming and shaking.  He’s all clammy and he’s pale.  He’s definitely not feeling well.

After cleaning him up, changing his clothes, washing him off, changing the sheets, cleaning us up, since he was covered in the stuff and we had to pick him up to start cleaning, the three of us head to the livingroom.  I figure Alex is not going to want to go back to sleep right away, so sitting with us in the livingroom will help him calm down and feel better.

Probably 30 minutes later, Alex is acting tired.  Rubbing his eyes and being slightly fussy.  So I try to put him back to his crib.  Ten minutes later (during this whole time there was complete silence, so he had fallen right to sleep), more screaming.  We check, and yup, he has puked again.  So, we clean up again and return to the livingroom.  It looks like we will be spending the night out here.  Rob gets a bucket and we start our vigil.

Unfortunately, for my little guy about every hour to hour and a half, his stomach starts churning and up it comes.  Fortunately, between bouts Alex would fall asleep.  But as soon as he woke, we knew to quickly get him to the bucket.  So basically Rob slept on the one side of the couch and I craddle Alex in my arms and dozed on the other side.

This went on until about 5:30 AM.  Alex woke again, but he didn’t seem to need the bucket.  In fact, he kept motioning for the bottle of water we had ready for him.  He hadn’t wanted any earlier in the night, even though we tried, so I was happy to give it to him.  He started drinking and drank about a quarter of the bottle.  He seemed less pale and more alert too.  But, without any warning, a few minutes later, all the water came right back up.  Time to clean up including some of the couch as well.
After that, he still wanted water.  So Rob gave him some, but in stages, hopefully so that it would stay down.  It seemed to, so the three of us curled up in our spots on the couch again to wait and see.

It was around 8:30AM when I woke from a doze and I saw Alex opening and closing his eyes.  He was just working his way to wakefulness.  He looked much better.  There was colour in his cheeks and he wasn’t clammy anymore.  In fact, when Freya came to investigate he wanted to play with her.  I’ve also given him a little food and some milk and he’s had no further problems.  He seems his typical self again this morning.

So the damage total:

3 pairs of pj’s
3 of my T-shirts
2 sheets
1 of Rob’s shirts
1 couch

Not bad for his first time vomitting.

Well, first off, I’d like to think the editors for recognizing my ongoing contributions to bettering the world through writing. So, what the hell am I talking about anyway? It’s really quite simple. I was just recently named Time’s Person of the Year. Yep. L’il ol’ me. Last year was Bono and the Gates’ – this year, me. Well, okay, not just me exactly. All of us. Yes, you too. And you over there – yes, you – you’re on the list too.

Well, since the spotlight’s on me now, let me be the first to say that this has to be the absolute biggest copout I have ever seen from an established and distinguished media operation. What this really says to me is that most of the people wanted Kim Jong Il but there was no way in hell that Time was going to name him Person of the Year. Pathetic.

*not to be confused with our other favourite pasttime: hookers and blow.

So, as most of you are probably aware, last week was my 35th birthday. Rather uneventful day. I slept. I lounged for a couple hours. I worked until midnight. Well, we decided that this past Saturday we’d go out for dinner to celebrate. The choices were pretty simple: Applebee’s or Hooters – both having opened recently in the Forest City. The winner was Hooter’s – for no other reason than neither of us had ever ate at Hooters before. I’d heard many great things about their chicken wings so I was quite looking forward to it.

Okay, I can’t talk about Hooters without talking about the Hooters’ Girls. I think I’ll sum it tidily with this one word: meh. Sure, they had decent racks on them but none of them were terribly beautiful and the nylon orange shorts were rather hideous.

Now, about the food. Hang on…I’ve got the perfect word for it: meh. We both found the chicken wings to be rather greasy and, while we ordered them as hot, we’re pretty sure they didn’t deliver hot. I ordered a Buffalo chicken sandwich (hot) that came with fries. It actually was hot. Not burn your tastebuds hot, but an okay kick to it. I’ve had much hotter. It was a huge chicken breast, but, like the wings, was greasy – although not as greasy as the wings. Nikki had a Smothered Chicken sandwich which she said was quite good. She found the fries to be greasy as well but I didn’t think they were that bad.

If we were with a group of people that wanted to go to Hooters, we would probably tag along, but I don’t think we’ll be going out of our way to eat there again. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give Hooters a good solid meh.

Alright, so that covered the Hooters part of the title, now on to the Dough part. This morning, rather nicely after I had just awoke, the phone rings. I look down at the caller ID and see “Corus”. Now I immediately realize what this is but couldn’t quite figure out what the hell they were calling us for.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is Nicola there please?”

“Sorry, she’s not available, can I take a message?”

“Sure, this is {insert forgotten name here} from FM96. She entered the Freeloader draw for Future Shop and she was one of the winners. She’s won a $200 gift card for Future Shop”

“Most excellent!” (Yes, I really said Most Excellent, which, oddly enough, was more excited than I sounded when I won the FM96 $10K Payday back in ’01)

So yeah…Nikki won a $200 FS gift card. She hasn’t decided what she wants to spend it on, but it really sounds like she wants a Nintendo Wii. Wii’ll see….

That’s right, I’m 15 months old today. And it’s December! It’s the Christmas month. I can’t wait to get all my presents! Anyway, here is how I should be doing for the month.

I SHOULD be able to:

*walk well – yup.
*bend over and pick up an object – quite easily.
* use at least 1 word – we still aren’t sure if they really are, but “Thank-you” and “Kitty” seem to be words I’m capable of saying so far.

…will PROBABLY be able to:

*use 2 words – see above.
*drink from a cup – my bottles have been put away, I’m all about the sippy cups. Next I will need to practice will real cups.
*scribble – yup, all over my books.
*point to a desired object - yuppers.

…may POSSIBLY be able to:

*point to one body part when asked – yup, the nose. But then if you say point to the ears, or the mouth or actually any other body part, I still point to my nose.
*use a spoon/fork – I’m not too bad at this. I still need to use my fingers once in a while, but I am now able to get some food on my fork and even stick it in my mouth.
*build a tower of two cubes – I have blocks, but I never really play with them.