When I'm Not Home

Tonight after we FINALLY got Jake down for the night (long story), and after we watched the Wizards beat the Bucks and Obama beat Clinton, Ali went to bed and I cleaned up a little. I found the camera in the kitchen and turned it on and found this video. This cracks me up. Apparently Ali is running a little Irish indoctrination camp while I'm at work.

Spring Forward

Daylight Savings Time is a cruel trick for parents with little kids. They're pretty set in their schedules - at least ours are - so trying to get Jake to go to bed at his normal time last night (which was actually an hour earlier than Saturday night) was, um, what's the word?...torture. "But I'm not tired" "But I need some apple juice" "But I'm just going to read some books" "But..."

By the time he fell asleep it was pretty much his pre-DST bedtime. So the score is: Jake 1, DST 0.

Tripdub Turns One!

Well, today is tripdub's one year birthday. One hundred and ninety-seven posts later, here are a few stats:

• 98 percent of tripdub readers are in the U.S., but we also have a pretty good following in Ireland (Slainte, Reillys!) and China (Ni Hao, Fergusons!)
• Top internet searches that bring random people to tripdub: Amodex and Pipettes
• Most popular video on tripdub: Pizza! (153 views)
• Busiest day on tripdub: March 19, 2007 (234 views)

In other news, Monday I stayed home with Sadie in the morning while Ali spent a few hours at work and Jake was at pre-school. She and I don't get as much one-on-one time together as Jake and I did when he was her age, so it was a nice morning. I let her feed herself some yogurt:


And then we played dress-up. Here's a video of Sadie walking around in her Baby Prison Stripe PJs, with a ballerina tutu (this is why Dads get a bad reputation for dressing their kids):

Getting Ready for St. Patrick's Day

Saturday was Alexandria's St. Patrick's Day Parade, and funny dog show and car show, etc., and we went down to check things out. It was a bit chilly, so we ducked into a Chipotle for a bite and to warm up. We got some seats right at the window looking out on the parade route and ate some traditional Irish fare -- guacamole and chips (hey, at least the guacamole was green). The parade was fun and both kids enjoyed the show. And we were happy because on the way home, two great things happened: 1) we stopped at the Italian Store in Arlington to pick up some hoagies and 2) both kids fell asleep which meant we could thoroughly enjoy our hoagies.

Here we are in Old Town, outside of a pub waiting for Ali to check out the scene inside. Turns out it was a bit too crowded for our little leprechauns: Oh, for those of you out there with little kids: I read somewhere that a funny thing to do on St. Patrick's Day is to mess up the house after the kids go to bed -- turn over furniture, open drawers, put pots and pans on the carpet -- and then tell your kids that the leprechauns came! The only challenge for us will be to make the distinction between the mess that Jake and Sadie make on a daily basis, and what the 'leprechauns' do.

Happy Leap Day

You might have woken up this morning feeling like it was March, but thanks to leap year we get one extra day of February this year. I just read that the extra day every four years isn't quite accurate, and that the year 4000, which should be a leap year, will not be a leap year, so that we can re-adjust and make sure we're back on track with the actual year which is 365.242374 days long. Ok, enough trivia.

I got back from a work trip to Florida and brought the kids a surprise that got me some funny looks from the TSA guys at the airport. On my way to the airport in Ft. Lauderdale, I noticed that my taxi driver had a tree branch in his trunk with about 5 or 6 big green coconuts still on it.

He could tell I was impressed and offered me one, which I gladly accepted. So, there I am at the airport, suitcase in one hand and coconut in the other. Anyway, we cut it open today and Jake was really excited to see what was inside. I was kind of curious what I'd find, too, since I hadn't seen a green coconut before. Turns out it had a good two glasses of coconut water in it, but the 'meat' hadn't ripened yet and was too fibrous to eat. Here's Jake at the table, scraping out the sweet jelly-like interior:

Team Lightning McQueen

I made mac n' cheese for the kids (and me) today. As we were sitting around the table, Jake looked at me and said, "Look, Sadie has tiny mac n' cheese and you have mac n' cheese and I have mac n' cheese!" I said, "Yeah!" Then he looked at me with a sideways glance, gave me a thumbs up and said, "Its Teamwork!"

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