The Monkey, The Wookie and Life in the Minority

Yeah, where have I been? It's almost the end of the year, heck, the decade for that matter. My last post was almost two months ago I could say a lot has happened or not much has happened. I guess it just depends on your perspective.

We'll get the mundane out for the way. A week or so after my last post I got sick, I felt it coming on, slowly, most of 'cross season with this weird back and forth weather we get in the fall. I was run down and had a really bad night then decided to race that following Saturday. That was it, the nail in the coffin. I had to pull out of the race halfway through I couldn't breath. By mid week I was at the Dr., bronchitis. Not bad, a quick 5 day Z-pack some rest and I would be back to racing. Well, then something big happened. Leah, a.k.a The Wookie, decided to come a week early and my bronchitis turned to pneumonia, game over.

So anyway, now on to the exciting stuff, Leah. Early the morning of Nov. 12th Gina tells me she thinks her water broke, "ugh, WHAT, really? No seriously, really?" What does she know, she was induced when Maddy was born. We really had no clue what to do. Maddy doesn't go to daycare on Thursdays and our plan was to leave her with my parents since Gina was also to be induced with Leah. We called and called and no one we called answered. As the three of us were leaving the house around 7:30am our daycare person calls back and says we can bring Maddy. Phew! One less thing to worry about. Drop off Maddy and head to the hospital where we hurry up and wait. I thought once things were this far it would go pretty quickly. Nope. Leah finally came at 1:45am Friday morning, the 13th.
We call her Wookie because she sounds like Chewbacca. We've never heard a baby make sounds like this girl makes. Don't let that cute, innocent face fool you, she can raise the roof. I guess I've been spoiled and have a short memory but I don't remember Maddy being this, should I say, difficult? Gina tells me Maddy was worse, I guess I'm just getting old.

Maddy is, well, Maddy. Still a free spirit but digging being a big sister. Maybe a bit too much sometimes. Shortly before Leah was born we moved her into a regular bed and fortunately she took right to it as there is only one crib. Maddy is free to get in and out and for the first couple of weeks she stayed in bed at night and would get up around 7:30 or so, walk into our room and over to the bassinet and promptly scream "Leah, Leah, what Leah doin'". Ugh, trying to sleep, like the rest of us thank you.

This past Monday was Maddy's 2nd birthday, already. We took her out to Frisco Grille for her favorite meal, guacamole. When we got home we ate cake and ice cream and opened presents. Her butterfly cake had some issues but nothing a few princess' couldn't fix.

She got the hang of opening presents pretty quickly.I guess 2 is not too early to start praticing for a career in roller derby.And apparently toddlers at daycare sleep in sleeping bags. I'm sure one day we'll catch her running away from home with it.So other than trying to figure out life with two girls, we recently went through a minor disaster. Last Wednesday morning I'm laying in bed half asleep and Gina says to me, "I hear elephants downstairs" What? What are you talking about. So finally I hear some weird sounds and decide to go inspect thinking somehow one of the dogs got out an is playing with Maddy's toys. As I step off of the last step I feel the rug waiver under my feet followed by a rush of cold water into my nice warm slippers. I flip on the light and realize our basement is now a swimming pool with about 3in. of water filling the entire downstairs, family room, office and laundry.

The next 6hrs were spent moving our belongings around, mostly outside on the patio under an Ez-Up tent and helping the Service Master guys rip up the wood floor I put down in the family room and office. So now we're living in half a house with a stripped out lower level waiting for the contractors to come put it all back together. With a Noreaster coming in I had to get everything that was outside inside last night. So far we've been dumped on to the tune of at least 2ft of snow today, shoveled the driveway twice.

BTW, I wrote most of this last night around midnite with one hand holding Leah.