In Search of Clear Focus

With all the joy of my daughter’s first birthday, there was bound to be some kind of letdown this week, but things have just been lousy in many ways.  It doesn’t help that work has picked up and I’ve been spending all my time in the office writing documents and not doing the more interesting technical work in which I’d rather lose myself.  These documents–and the difficulty of getting them reviewed between various time zones and often without network connectivity–have become a real bear.

Work, though, doesn’t really factor into things too much, other than the fact that I have to be there to get stuff done.  I think I’d be home today if I didn’t have to finish the docs by Thursday.  Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll be posting much this week.  We’ll see how things go.

This past weekend had its ups and downs. The downs (sports teams losing, etc.) were so insignificant on a grand scale, that I just can’t help but feeling incredibly blessed.

Saturday was my daughter’s first birthday party. This meant a lot of yard work and cleanup around the house last week. I spent good portions of my night on Thursday and Friday mowing the lawn, edging, trimming the hedges, and pruning trees and large bushes. While not my favorite activity, there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment and pride that comes along at the end of such a task. Of course, no one ended up outside, so it may have been for naught.

Anyway, the party went off without a hitch and my daughter did so well with everything. While she did look a little nervous with all the people a few times, she didn’t cry or whine and she even smiled and clapped when everyone sang to her. The most shocking thing to me, though, was that she didn’t like the icing on the cake. She tested it out, made a face, and then discarded it off the side of her tray. The cake itself she gobbled up, after my wife scraped the rest of the frosting off.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with her new favorite toy:

I’m back at work after taking a week off, which is why nothing has been posted to my blog recently. I spend far less time at the computer when I’m home and find it harder to focus long enough to write a semi-coherent post. Somehow, my wife finds a way, though. Anyway, the transition back to work was OK for me, but maybe a little harder on my wife, which is why I found a great solution on the Onion:

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

I often wonder what life will be like for my daughter, considering the drastic differences in the world in the 20+ years since I was growing up. My interest got piqued once again as the Supreme Court ruled to limit student speech and Al Gore is accused of hurting the children with fear mongering about the environment. My expanded thoughts after the jump.

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Sigh… Our daughter is wonderful, a true joy. However, last night our little angel decided she needed to wake up at 12AM and stay up until about 3AM. It wouldn’t have been so terrible except that we had just closed our eyes when she awoke. We get up at 5:30 in the morning so we’ve spent almost 24 hours awake. Yippee!! Of course her midnight awakening doesn’t stop her from waking at 6:30 as normal (she was so tired that she’s already down for a nap - must be nice). As bad as it is for me, it’s far worse for my husband b/c he has to go out and drive to work and function in the real world. Today, I’ll be functioning in baby land where we don’t get dressed all day and lie around and watch lots of tv. I’m too tired to do anything else.

Normally, when I’m having a week like this last one, I end up not posting at all. In an effort to not let my blog completely stagnate (I am averaging a whopping 5+ hits a day for the 16 days I have numbers, after all), I decided to write a quick post. The other reason is to postpone the two tasks I have for work that are not exciting me at all this moment: my self-evaluation for performance reviews and a proposal section I just got assigned.

Really, my rough week started last Friday. Knowing that I was going to be heading out all night, I took the day off to spend with my family, only to spend the day doing chores and meetings and not playing with my daughter very much. It started with a 7:30 AM lawn mowing experience, went into a painful 1.5 hour meeting with our financial planner (we’re going broke within 10 years), and went into lunch and then having to get ready to go out. Now, out was a bachelor party for the best man at my wedding a year and a half ago. This seems like it should have been fun (and it was for a time), but it ended up being a much later night than I wanted. I didn’t get home until just before 3:00 AM… The is only about 5 hours after I usually start getting ready for bed for the night. I realize this makes me an old man at 29, but with my work schedule and my daughter, I’m OK with that.

The weekend followed with late nights due to the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner and wedding/reception. I couldn’t stay awake on Monday to get anything done around the house. I slept in late after not being able to wake up and fell asleep while lying on the bed while my daughter played with her toys. Thankfully, my wife was there so we didn’t have a repeat of me letting her roll off the bed. Tuesday saw me back at work, but leaving early to come home and watch my daughter as my wife had an appointment. This was all good, but with making dinner and clean-up, it wasn’t an early night by any means. Note: I did sleep well all these nights, just not nearly enough.

Yesterday, I got caught at work late (almost an hour-and-a-half after I started to head out the door. I got home after my daughter was already asleep for the night, so I got all of no time with her for the day. I can’t tell you how much that sucked. Ruined my night. Didn’t make my wife terrible happy, either, though she said it didn’t bother her. So last night was a failure, though I got a chance to go to bed earlier than normal. So, I just drifted off and my little girl cried out. I woke with a start, waited to see if she really needed anything, then went into her room to give her back her pacifier. Of course, by the time I got there, se had fallen back asleep without it. I, unfortunately, was just wired after being woken quite suddenly from that almost-sleep stage; I couldn’t get back to sleep for hours. On roughly four hours of sleep, headed back to work this morning and tried to clear the cobwebs.

And then came the performance evaluation and proposal work. Great.

My eldest niece (age 9) and nephew (5, I think) were supposed to come spend the weekend with my wife and I. While I was a little scared of dealing with the two of them and our seven month old, I was looking forward to giving it a try. On top of that, I was all excited because I had a great excuse to go visit the Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum annex, the Udvar-Hazy Center. It’s been around for 3.5 years and I still haven’t gotten there.

I remember visiting the original Air & Space museum as a child and I was hoping to enjoy this trip as much as those. I was also looking forward to watching the kids’ reactions. I remember a feeling of awe when I visited A&S and standing in line when you first get there so you can touch the moon rock, brought back by Apollo astronauts. I also remember the soaring ceilings with planes and rockets everywhere and little videos to watch and posters to read. I don’t remember ever being bored, just tired from all the walking and finding new things around every corner. Maybe my parents remember different, but it’s nothing but good memories for me.

We may still go to the museum tomorrow, but a lot of the shine is off the trip if I can’t share it with a kid and see if it’s as special for them as the original was for me.

With a little one in the house now, I’m more interested than before in child psychology studies. With that little caveat, I have to say that I found this article in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook sections pretty interesting. It talks about letting boys play with toy guns and the good/bad associated with that.

They address the idea of whether this is innate male behavior or the product of marketing. The article also talks about gender roles with such gun play. An interesting read.

I’m sure my wife thinks I’m a huge dork for this, but I’m so happy with my new electric toothbrush. We just got a Braun/Oral-B 8875 DLX electric toothbrush set from Costco.

It comes on the heels of my six month checkup/cleaning at the dentist. I’ve been doing pretty well, after my rough dental year in 2006 (one root canal and one pretty deep filling, both resulting in crowns). Anyway, I have a really hard time cleaning my back teeth, due mainly to the fact that they’re a little rotated. I’ve used the new toothbrush for the past two days and it’s amazing how clean my teeth feel afterwards. I can tell how much more plaque has been knocked off of them.

Ok. I’m done now as my wife is reading this and making fun of me as I type. Blah!

My daughter was back at it again last night.  As I previously mentioned, she occasionally decides that she doesn’t like me all that much.  So, I get home yesterday and she smiles at me a little.  I pick her up and the wailing and tears start.  I tried to play with her, walk around, sing to her, etc. and nothing worked.  My wife had to take her back and comfort her.

Now, this is bad for so many reasons.  Last night, my wife needed a break.  She was just done with everything; the way we all get at some point.  In fact, just the previous night, I was so exhausted that she totally took care of everything and sent me to bed early.  I passed out and had the best night of sleep that I’ve had in months (it helped that our little girl slept through the night as well).  Well, I wanted to repay the favor, but my daughter wouldn’t let me.

I even went as far as to shave off my beard, in case that was what was bothering her about me.  Ditto with taking a shower in case I smelled different. Note that I usually shower in the mornings, so it’s not taking a shower that was odd for me, but taking one in the evening…  Nothing worked.  I’m really hoping she grows out of this phase soon.

On a much better note, Tuesday night offered some of the cutest, happiest times with our girl.  She was all smiles and laughs (some of her first) afterwards when she was getting all lotioned up.  The most difficult part of this recent dislike of me is to see that one night and not be allowed to hold her the next.