She’s got her own way

Posted on September 2, 2010 by thom

image

Kayleigh doesn’t like to be bothered with crust or pretty much any outside portions of bread-related foods. Not that she doesn’t like it, simply that she prefers to eat the insides first. Physics doesn’t really seem to bother her.

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Pretty much amazing

Posted on September 1, 2010 by thom

I feel bad that the only words I’ve written about Kayleigh over the last couple of months revolve largely around her deciding to have a major meltdown upon entering the “terrible twos”. The reality is that our little girl has been blossoming into a a truly wonderful person to be around… most of the time. She just has a habit of showing off her worst side just before I get a chance to write about how much I love her. 20 minutes of uncontrollable screaming somehow manages to nearly wipeout an entire day of joy.

Kayleigh

We’re talking blood curdling screams because we forgot to let her grab the diaper out of the bag before changing her. Or dropping to the floor and sobbing when we don’t let her press the buttons on microwave while rushing to get food prepared. Sometimes she can be such a… you know… baby.

Kayleigh

But it really isn’t fair to the girl she has become to harp on those moments. It’s easy for kids to get pigeonholed for certain bad behaviors they develop. We still often think of Kayleigh as a bad sleeper even though I can count on one hand the number of times she hasn’t slept rather soundly through the night (or at least put herself right back to sleep) the last few months. And yet the habit of tiptoeing through the house and jumping at every rustling sound on the monitor is hard to break.

Kayleigh

Just as our little mop topped moppet regularly beds down at a regular time with significantly less fuss than, say, 6 months ago, she has also grown as a person. With each passing day I can see in her a desire to connect with people – to connect with me. Leaving the room for too long provokes calls of “Daddy, Daddy” as she comes up with some little endeavor to demonstrate, just because she wants the company. She takes us on adventures throughout our house, acting out cartoons from the previous day while re-purposing various rooms to represent imaginary locales. Her little chair with the fuzzy cover has become an easel to accommodate her interest in “painting” with a basting brush. If we are so inclined to join her, a chopstick may be offered for our artistic contributions.

Kayleigh

After months of being pushed away in defense of her personal space, the walls have been crumbling as she begins to reach out more and more for contact with people beyond Mommy. And while she remains a timid child (still requesting our support for navigating even the smallest of slides) a rambunctious side has broken through in the form of jumping on Daddy with great delight.

I haven’t done a good job of chronicling the changes this remarkable little scutch has gone through over the past year or so. Trust me when I say that it’s pretty much amazing.

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Are you there blog? It’s me, Thom…

Posted on August 19, 2010 by thom

So that happened. Apparently taking my blogs offline so that I can fulfill some nerdy desire to have them installed in a very specific fashion for rational reason other than my own whims does not actually guarantee that anything will be accomplished. This is reminiscent of way back when I switched domain names and swore I wouldn’t write anything until the redesign was complete. A month later the transfer took place sans promised theme. At least this time more was accomplished… I guess.

As intended from the start, this blog is my major – perhaps only – outlet for creative endeavors. Shutting down for too long depresses me a little. Coupled with the torrent of e-mails inundating me with demands to return my content to the world as soon as possible, it became necessary for me to either figure out my way or switch to anyway that would work. What follows is an incredibly boring discussion regarding the technicalities of blog maintenance.

When WordPress 3.0 came out recently, my excitement level hit an all time high… in relation to other excitement levels recorded at WordPress releases. You see, this one included multisite! Finally I would only need a single installation to cover all 2 of my blogs! Alright, that may not be a big deal, but I dream big when it comes to websites no one but my sisters care about… plus my other site. The truth is I viewed it as a way to get more active by utilizing a single interface, and possibly open myself up to other projects. So what was the problem? Why didn’t I just upgrade and move on?

Way back in the early days of WordPress I had a single site that was sitting on my home server. All of the files sat in the main directory and it looked like a mess, but it worked so who cared? Eventually they made it possible to keep the bulk of the files in a subdirectory and only have an index.php and .htaccess file in the main directory. This made it easier for nitpicky idiots like me to keep software running in different parts of the website separate. It also made backing up and upgrading (before the automated systems in place) a breeze. It also worked well with my Site5 multisite plan which had everything not thomnottom.com as a subdirectory of thomnottom.com. It kind of looked like this:

public_html
   /_domain1
   /_domain2
   /_domain3
   /_subdomain
   /wordpress -> all of my precious WP files in here
   .htaccess
   index.php

Awesome, I know! But now multisite won’t play that way. It requires the installed directory and website to match. After debating moving my blog to a subdomain itself (blog.thomnottom.com? hmm, that actually sounds catchy now) I searched high and low for any kind of guides. Eventually some forum posts directed me to ideas of how to put the domain in a subdirectory and hide it via .htaccess. So I did. And it worked. So I reinstalled WordPress and imported my old site. And it worked. So I enabled multisite. And it worked. So I logged in… wait… it didn’t work.

For some reason it was botching the login process. Many more days of poking around Google and forums and whatnot led me nowhere. But a funny thing happened on the way to giving up. I realized that Site5 did not limit any of my other domain from being in directories above public_html. Why not just move everything else? So I did. And it worked. So I… you get the picture. Or else I can paint you a word picture:

mydirectory
  /domain1
  /domain2
  /really are there more?
  /pretend another directory goes here
  /public_html -> lots of WordPress files here

Maybe things aren’t exactly as I wanted them. And maybe I’ll still move this to the blog subdirectory because I just can’t leave well enough alone. Regardless, it’s time to move on and get back to writing about boring crap rather than just researching it…

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Your moment of (baby) zen #12

Posted on July 16, 2010 by thom

Kayleigh is 2. She hasn’t technically been a baby for a year. So this is probably the last “baby” zen I’ll post as it’s time to come up with a new name.

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Two

Posted on July 11, 2010 by thom

About twelve hours ago my little baby girl officially turned 2 years old. A few hours before that she made her official declaration that the terrible twos had begun. Alright, it wasn’t an official declaration; after all this has been building for days. Somewhere along the line Kayleigh went from constantly asking for help when encountering obstacles to throwing minor (and occasionally major) fits whenever we even suggest she need our assistance. Today the issues just happened to be complicated by a lack of sleep.

Kayleigh does a much better job these days when it comes to the tricky subject of sleep (not counting naps). The incidents of middle of the night or, indeed, any pre-6:30 AM wakings have practically vanished. At most she may inconvenient us with an hour of bizarre monologues streaming across the monitor sometime in the vicinity of 1 or 2 in the morning. Fortunately these tend to lead to later wake times. But today she decided to combine all of the issues into one. To be fair, that might have had more to do with the contents of her diaper rather than a personal decision. Regardless, a 4 AM wake time is simply no good for us or the little one, even if she did continue to perform her 1 baby, off-Broadway improv show for 1 and a half hours before it was time for me to kick down the door.

Even with a 2 hour nap in the middle of the morning, the day was filled with little tantrums around every corner. And we’re not talking “whining because we won’t let her watch TV” tantrums. No, we’re talking full blown freakouts because I had the audacity to answer the phone rather than check to see if she wanted to first or some kid briefly touched a toy that she was no longer playing with. Navigating this behavior is normally pretty rough, but doing it on a day when most of The Woman’s family was around for her birthday exaggerated the issues even more. I rarely look as forward to bedtime as I did this evening.

But that’s enough complaining. Really, I love my little girl.  But days like today push that all to the limits. Still, I can’t express how much my love has grown over these 2 years watching my little girl grow up right before my eyes. Thank you Kayleigh for another wonderful year of being my daughter.

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Why it is important to watch your language around kids

Posted on June 12, 2010 by thom

Scene: The Woman is changing Kayleigh’s diaper. The tube of Balmex just exploded out the bottom.
The Woman: Oh my god! That’s why the Balmex wasn’t coming out.

Scene: 5 minutes later. Kayleigh is watching Thomas & Friends.
Kayleigh: Oh my god! It’s Thomas! Oh my god! It’s Diesel! Oh my god! It’s Thomas again!

I’d give her some credit for using it properly, but it really wasn’t that surprising or exciting that Thomas or Diesel were on TV when we had clearly started an episode of Thomas & Friends for her. And let’s be honest, 3 times in less than 20 seconds is beyond excessive. I guess it still makes more sense than her constant declarations of “that’s possible” as though possible was an adjective you’d use to describe objects around the house.

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Your moment of (baby) zen #11

Posted on June 11, 2010 by thom

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We may run out of band-aids soon

Posted on June 10, 2010 by thom

I’ve told this story too many times in the last couple of days, but since it involves my little Kayleigh, a large mirror, and a huge welt on her head I guess it bears repeating. Actually, I can’t even tell the whole story because I wasn’t there for the incident and The Woman didn’t really see what happened for sure either. It’s a bit of a mystery – one that isn’t all that mysterious.

The  long and short of it is that our bedroom is not truly child or baby-proofed. In some cases it appears as though we are actively discouraging our toddler from harboring any feelings of safety in certain areas of our house. Hey, if we can’t be very comfortable in our own room, why should she? Anyway, there’s this dresser with a big mirror on it. They are not attached. That is, apparently, a safety hazard. Who knew?

So Monday afternoon I got a frantic message from The Woman. She had moved the dresser a couple inches to reach something. The mirror fell. Kayleigh was under it. Panic ensues. By the time I got home, Kayleigh was somewhat comforted but rather sullen while curled up next to Mama. Oh, and there was a huge welt with a cut on her forehead. Head injuries are fun for the whole family! Fortunately she didn’t black out, throw up, or become overly irritable – which meant that she most likely didn’t get a concussion or attend a kegger. Sighs of relief ensue.

While the doctor said there was no need to take her anywhere since all signs pointed to A-OK, we still needed to treat the wound. All attempts to put ice on the new appendage growing out of her skull were rebuffed. That idea was abandoned as it only seemed to fire up the irritability factor. But there was concern for the cut (although it wasn’t bleeding) and we had to push forward with bandages.

She fought the good fight against any kind of healing potions being applied to her head, but I eventually whipped out my notes from Parenting 101 and realized that this was the perfect time to apply some TV knowledge. That’s right, I played the ol’ “Daddy needs a bandaid, too” card and got her to accept one after both of us put them on our own foreheads. I feel like I earned some serious daddy cred by using that method successfully.

Even with her new lumpy head she’s adorable. And that’s how she was able to milk this for all she wanted. Which is why we headed over to Whole Foods for a bunch of blueberries and to see her favorite cashier (seriously). It’s also why we head out to Panera in the morning for breakfast – where she gets to enjoy all of the butter she can cram into her mouth in the 10 seconds we give up trying to stop her.

Are you going to say no to that face?

After 3 days I feel pretty confident in saying that we dodged a bullet. Kayleigh seems happy and healthy – black and blue mark and all.

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That's a spicy meat… chicken sandwich

Posted on June 1, 2010 by thom

What a lovely holiday weekend – filled with beautiful weather, some much needed yard work, and a whole lot of quality time with the wee little one and the rest of my family. But there’s plenty of time to talk about that, instead I need to address a more pressing mattter: Chick-fil-A’s new spicy chicken sandwich.

Certainly I have spoken of my love for all things Chick-fil-A in the past, but there’s always good reason to emphasize the point. And the latest reason is their method for promoting a new product. In case you hadn’t seen the link passed around last month, they have a website to reserve one of the new sandwiches. So for starters, they’re giving out a ton of these things for free at every location (sorry to my fellow North Jersey readers, but all 3 nearby locations are booked); but rather than simply giving you a coupon to go get one whenever, you are asked to literally book a reservation for a select time period – 3 each day from Memorial Day to the 5th. A little odd but…

Since there was little chance of making one of the “local” Chick-fil-As during the limited time preview, I jumped on the chance to stop by one before heading over to a BBQ yesterday. As I said, you “make a reservation” and when you get there they give you the “VIP treatment.” We’re talking fast food here, but they had one register set aside just for those with reservations, designated a section of the eating area as “VIP Reserved” complete with red table clothes and vases with flowers and even brought our food out to us.

Seriously. Alright, I know it’s dorky. I’m excited by a pretend fancy dining experience at a fast food joint, but it struck me as clever. And clever easily trumps dorky for me. As for the new sandwich… I still prefer the regular one. But it’s got some real heat on it, and if I’m in the mood for spicy it would more than fit the bill. And as hot as it was, The Woman (a fairly timid creature when it comes to hot and spicy) was able to eat most of hers.

Now that I have somewhat endorsed a product received for free is my integrity as a blogger shot? I sure hope so…

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The (possibly) last word on Lost… for now

Posted on May 27, 2010 by thom

Had I seen these posts before mine I would have, at the very least, included them at the end of my write-up. Or else I would have simply directed you to more eloquent words on the ‘Net than I typically provide. As it stands, both Matthew Baldwin and Ken Jennings seem to share my opinion (or some form of it) regarding the Lost finale. That means a lot to me, because Matt is far funnier than I could hope to be and Ken is far smarter than I could hope to be. In addition Jason Kottke posted this amusing video regarding the mysteries that “don’t matter” even though “all of this matters”.

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