One more cup of coffee

"That's a weird noise"

Nathan woke from his afternoon nap today, and his first word was "sick".

He seemed to have a slight fever, although we weren't even sure of that. But he visibly wasn't feeling all that great, and then had the world's messiest diaper. We let him watch Sesame Street while he drank some juice.

Part way through the episode, while he was sitting on my lap, a strange noise emanated from his chest. "That's a weird noise", I commented. Three seconds later, suddenly realizing what impending doom the noise foretold, I grabbed him up, hurtled toys and two baby gates, just making it into the bathroom, if not over anything with a drain, before he threw up.

In fairness to me, Nathan's never really thrown up before. This is, I suspect, unusual for an almost-two-year-old. But he's been, on the whole, a very healthy baby. So it's not like I had heard that noise a lot before.

After cleaning him up, and changing both our shirts, he felt noticeably better. He still didn't eat any food, which is probably just as well, and at bed time, he fell asleep during story time, so he's clearly not feeling that great. But hopefully the worst is past, and tomorrow will be better.

Nathanisms

Nathan's healthier already. He ate all of five saltines yesterday (and drank what seemed like gallons of apple juice), but then devoured a plate of scrambled eggs this morning. And the fever, which never went over about 101, is gone.

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A few weeks ago, he was starting to form complete sentences, and now he does it all the time. Even better, he'll now answer his own questions. Recently he came up to me and said "Nay-nay [how he pronounces 'Nathan'] have milk? Hmm ... OK, yeah." I like that he added the 'hmm' to indicate that I thought about it.

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The other night, he was talking about the letter K. "K! K! K!", he'd shout. Meredith finally asked him to please add a K. Or remove one. So far, he at least hasn't gone out in public shouting out K's in groups of three.

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Tonight, we're going to a friend's birthday party. Nathan has become excited about his own upcoming birthday, and will now sing "Happy Birthday to you, Nay-Nay" to himself.

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"Nay-nay hold moon." "Are you going to hold the moon?" "No ... moon heavy."

Henry (Hank) Michael Leach

My sister Erin and her husband Mike have a new baby, Henry Michael Leach. He'll be called Hank, after his great-grandfather (my maternal grandfather).

Hank was born 12/9/06 by caesarean section after the doctors gave up on the 20-hour induced labor. Poor Erin.

Welcome to Nathan's first cousin!

The ubiquitousness of MP3 players

In Toys 'R' Us today (shopping for Nathan's birthday and for Christmas), I noticed that almost all of the remote control cars (which Nathan is not getting) advertised that they included a hookup to plug your MP3 player into. Yes, into the toy car. Which therefore, presumably, includes an amplifier and speakers.

MY car doesn't have a direct hookup for an MP3 player. I have to use a cassette tape adapter. But that was bought 3 years ago. And now, even toy cars all have direct audio jacks. Amazing.

More Nathan moments

Today, after I came back into the house from taking the garbage out, I didn't immediately see Nathan. I found him a few moments later, sitting on the floor, starting up raptly at the front door. At my quizzical look, Nathan turned to me and explained "Nay-nay watch movie." He never did tell me what movie he was watching.

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After removing Nathan from the bathroom (and whatever dangerous thing he was trying to reach for), Nathan lost it. I said, "I'm sorry you're upset with me." He came back over to me, looked up, and said, "Nay-nay cry." And he did, for another minute, and then was fine.

Wind

The wind gusts were close to 40 MPH or so earlier today. When I went out at about 6 PM to check the mail, the utility company was busy working on a pole that was leaning about 15-20 degrees. They're done with that pole, but as I write this, they're still outside working on others. The guy waving traffic around their truck told me that it was going to be a long night for them, and that tomorrow is supposed to be even worse.

Cold inside, cold outside.

"Cold inside. Cold outside." (pointing to the open shed) "Warm other house?"

That was what Nathan said rather sadly yesterday morning, about 36 hours after we lost power in the giant wind storm. The storm had gusts of over 60 MPH, toppling trees around the region, often into power lines. At its peak, about 1.5 million people in western Washington and Oregon had lost power. About 380,000 customers in King County had lost power.

Nathan had a terrible time going to sleep Thursday with all the wind. He and I finally wound up going to sleep together in his bed, where I was then trapped when I woke up and realized that with no power, we had no baby monitor.

We woke up Friday morning with our house at about 62°F. We have a gas furnace, but no electricity to run the blowers. We have a gas hot water heater, but the thermostat for that is electronic -- so no hot water, either. Puget Sound Energy was warning that outages for some might last a week or more, so we went out to the grocery store and waited in a line of about 30 people buying canned goods and other food that could last without refrigeration. (Nathan was singularly unimpressed by the results of powdered milk.) In a sign of where we live, the hand-written sign on QFC's door read: "We are open. Sorry, no coffee."

For dinner, we grilled the chicken that was in the refrigerator (hot food!), then all got to bed around 9.

Saturday morning, the temperature inside had dropped to 52, prompting Nathan's comment about it being cold everywhere. Melissa called around to various places for us and figured out that Bellevue Square was open with power, so we went there to hang out for a while. We tried to watch Happy Feet, but Nathan was too scared by the dark, big screen, and loud noises.

We spent the afternoon at Patrik, Linda, and Markus's house, who never lost power. Their neighbor two houses down had a tree go through their dining room, though. For dinner, we went up to Shoreline and spent the night with Christina and her son Ashland, who had lost power for a while on Friday but had it back by that night.

Finally, today, power to our house (in the Highlands neighborhood of Kirkland) was back. A neighbor told us it came back on at 11 PM last night, meaning that we were out for about 47 hours. The thermometer in our bedroom recorded the low as 47°F. Lots of areas are still without power, though. The power crews are doing an amazing job in horrible conditions. They really deserve our thanks.

But Nathan, who turns two today, at least gets the gift of electricity and heat.

Q, R, S, Tennessee, U, V

Yesterday, I was asking Nathan to identify various letters as we waited for our food to arrive at Original Pancake House (since they had power). I pointed to the letter T on the UT cap he was playing with, and asked, "What letter is that?"

"Tennessee!"

That's my boy.

Night Terrors + Dennis-Brown Bar = Suckage

Nathan had his second round of night terrors last night. It sucked about as much as the first time, although we at least recognized what it was much faster this time. It took about 10-15 minutes for him to wake up at all. He kept calling out for Daddy, but with exactly zero realization that I was there. I was right there, though, despite the fact that he was beating the holy living hell out of me with the goddamned Dennis-Brown Bar (the shoes-on-a-brace he needs to wear at night for his club feet) while thrashing around the bed in terror.

Also like last time, the night terrors followed a fever by a few days.

He did eventually wake up and realize that Meredith and I were there, although it took him another 15 minutes or so to calm down enough to have the slightest interest in getting back into bed. He went back to sleep fairly quickly, snuggled up next to Meredith, although it took me another half-hour before I could drift off at all, and I still woke up every time he made any noise in the night.

Also, my legs are still bruised from that bar.

Bobby Knight is NOT about to set the college basketball record

I keep seeing articles such as this one, which includes the sentence "Bob Knight says he doesn't care about breaking Dean Smith's record for career college basketball coaching victories."

The only problem is: he isn't about to break the record for college basketball coaching victories. It's been done. Pat Summit did that coaching the Tennessee Lady Vols in March, 2005.

Knight is about to break the record for men's basketball. Not all of basketball. Pretending that women's basketball doesn't even exist is offensive.