Yesterday we went to Los Bravos (a/k/a “Cheepmex”) for dinner.  We went slightly early, as to avoid the rush, and since I was flying solo without Steph, I wanted to go before the kids started getting all over themselves with hunger.  It worked out pretty well.  I didn’t give them a snack after nap, so they were eager to chow down on some “whackamoley” and salsa with rice.  It was a good time, so we went to the playground afterwards.

 

Devin likes experimenting with gravity, especially when it’s with his cars/trucks/airplanes, and Maya loves to swing on the monkey bars.

A few more photos:

This morning I decided to take advantage of my Georgia Aquarium Annual Pass and take the twinkles down to look at some sea life.  This is my “pay it up” trip – the annual passes pay for themselves after the second trip, so after this visit, the rest as gratis!   And we like gratis around here. 

Since Steph is still out of town visting Tara until this evening, I met up with Kim & Tony & Natalie, and Natalie’s Nana, which meant that we outnumbered the kids – which makes for fun times usually.  This was no exception.  The twinkles were fantastic and had a great time!  And strangely the Aquarium was not crowded at all – we got to spend plenty of time in the touch tank rooms (well, Devin did – Maya is not interested in that sort of thing) and we got plenty of wall-time in each of the rooms. 

Before lunch we got to see Deepo (the Nemo knock-off character that is the avatar for the Aquarium) and friend in a 3-D movie that was surprisingly cute.  The twinkles were not interested in wearing the 3-D specs, so I bet they didn’t get as much out of it as I did.  It was well done – water sprinkles, bubbles, and simulated jellyfish tentacles sans nematocysts.

Here are some pix from the trip.  I’ll post some additional ones later, once I get them from Kim.  You’ll notice Devin is in most of these pictures and that’s because he really loves animals up close.  Maya prefers to observe/enjoy from a distance.  Unless we’re talking about sea otters or turtles.

Things are moving along, albeit slowly, with respect to the closings on our house and home.  Due to some !#$*!$ neighbors who bought houses they couldn't afford, and !#$!$% lenders who loaned money with too much risk, and !@$#% federal government that failed to provide oversight and @$%*@! Wall Street pricks with too much avarice, the first unofficial appraisal for the house was lower than it should be.  Luckily, it was unofficial, so the buyer is getting another appraisal, hopefully from an individual who uses common sense.  We had to file an amendment to extend the due-diligence period by 5 days, so we will hopefully know where we stand by October 10th.  Which would be good, since 4 days after that all heck breaks loose in terms of our personal schedule.  I'm hoping we don't have to maneuver too much to get this to work out, but I'm steeling myself for the possibility.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

In the meanwhile, the kids have been pretty good lately.  Nothing super stellar to report as we've been engrossed in the housing market garbage for the last few days.  I'm home with the kids myself this weekend while Steph is off to visit her sister, so perhaps I'll come up with some gems from the weekend.

So the past few days have been, for lack of a better word, crazy.  Last weekend we went to see Sesame Street Live (yes, I have videos but I've been too busy to edit them down for posting--read on).  We happened to be there with our realtor, who helped us score primo seats.  During the intermission, she got a ring-a-ding-ding on her cell, and it was an offer on our house!  After some hand-wringing due to technological delays with our realtor and her email and the buyer's agent's lack of understanding of how to spell, it took a while to get the offer.

Fast-forward two days later, and we have the offer in hand.  Given the state of the real estate market, it was of course a bit of a low-baller, but we expected that.  After counter-me-this-counter-you-that, we struck a deal which was amicable to all parties, and we are currently in escrow on the sale of our house!  Closing is on October 14.

To you gentle readers who are in the know, you probably are aware that this falls dangerously close to our highly anticipated trip to Paris/Amsterdam.  If you didn't know, well, consider yourself enlightened as to our calendary* situation.  Luckily for us, we already had a buyer's agent and had spent considerable time scoping out our options and schools and what-not, so finding the house was really a matter of having the right one on the market at the right time.  Wouldn't you know that we found it?

That's right, only a few days after entering escrow on our current house, we located the perfect home for us and the family, in a great school district, in a great suburban location that is quiet, wooded and nestled in among near-by schools and conveniences.  We are very happy with the pad we have chosen, and we're hopeful that everything comes together.  Believe me, when I relay to you the sequence of events that will occur in three weeks' time you will understand that these cogs are more intricate than a Swiss Master Clocksmith's finest work.  Well, perhaps not, but I digress...

As I mentioned, we close escrow on our current pad on 10/14 and vacate by midnight.  As soon as closing is over, the kind folks at Bekins Moving will show up, pad down the joint and pile our 12,000 lbs of stuff (yeah I hardly believed it myself) into a trailer.  Said trailer will be removed to the Bekins Storage Facility (hopefully not a nearby Wal-Mart parking lot) where it will sit.  Meanwhile, we will check into a local room and board facility for lodgings for the night, and then we'll wake up bright 'n early, and Karyn will knock on our door to watch the kiddos while we close escrow on our new home.  Then we'll pop by the new home, show it to the kids, and then take off for Charlotte...  And, a few days later we "take possession" of our new home and Bekins will show up to unload all our 6 tons of junk.  All while we are away, as Deb will be overseeing the installation of our stuff.  Kind folk, Deb.

So then after vacating, we'll be back in the saddle of unboxing and setting up shop in East Cobb... Look for us in November.  Until then, we'll be busy boxing and taping.  And boxing and taping.  And boxing and taping some more.

*made up word

Daddy is laying back relaxing on the slide, and Maya is learning about static electricity.

That's saying something when your real estate brokerage has listed itself for sale/lease.  Isn't that some sort of conflict of interest?

A few gems from The Maya:

- At dinner at cheap mexicans, we ordered some guacamole, which the kids love.  As soon as the green delight appeared at the table, Maya immediately started shouting "whackamoley!  whackamoley!"

Devin woke up this morning about 7:15am, and I went in to tell him it's not time to get up yet.  He listened for about 15 minutes, then complained about it for 5 minutes.  Steph and I decided to weather the storm, and this tactic worked.  He was quiet until 8:00am, at which point I arose and retrieved Mr. Man for some breakfast.

While I was getting Devin changed and ready to eat, I heard Maya in her room, talking to her toys and probably saying something about how Daddy needs to come in here and get her up.  After Devin was situated with his morning milk and vitamins, I went in to retrieve The Maya (this is what Devin calls her).  I opened her door, flicked on the light, and was greeted by my child holding her diaper out over the side of the crib, saying, "Maya needs a dry diaper!"

I looked around in the crib, and she had removed her pajama pants and unfastened the diaper all by herself (assuming of course that the manatee, monkey, and Dora didn't help) and luckily there were no, um, solids to be disposed.

I suppose at this point she needs to have a potty in her room and we have to start letting the sides of the crib down.  Or perhaps we need some sort diaper-lock underpants?  Yeah, that's probably better.  The longer we can keep the kids contained overnight, the better, however I would not enjoy waking up to see my child and her bed covered in..."stuff".  I'm going to imagine that my child will enjoy staying clean.  I'm going to chase that dream.

If you're a regular user of Picasa, you may have overlooked a newly-released feature of Picasa Web Albums.  After you've marked and uploaded pictures to a web album, surf on over to Picasa's web site.  From there, look for the People tab and click it.  Once there, you can look for the face tagging section on the right, and go through the process of identifying faces.  For my albums, I had about 1300 faces that were identified in about 5 minutes or so.

After that, you start the identification process - which basically links identified faces to your Google account contacts.  You can create a contact without any special information, just a name will do.  You can also identify faces that weren't automatically found by Picasa.

After about two hours, I successfully identified about 1100 of 1350 "faces".  Approximately 222 of the 1350 were either not faces (very few) or just people I didn't care to identify (very many).  You can share the name tags (make public), share some album's names, or share none.  Right now, I've left mine as public.  Head on over and check it out.  Maybe you'll find yourself!

This morning I was getting Maya dressed for school. As we were putting her shirt on I said, "Are you ready for school?"

She replied, "Maya wants to get some breakfast first."

"That's fine, we'll get some breakfast before school," I answered.

Maya responds with, "Breakfast, thank God!"

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Occasionally, Maya will refer to Stephanie as 'Mom' and myself as 'Dad'. Apparently she's decided to act like she's 13 already.

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Also this morning, I was asking Maya how she slept, and she answered with, "Friday, we see Varelie!" FYI: Varelie is Aunt Valerie. So, Varelie, your plans for Friday have apparently been made.

Check out photos from a Labor Day dive trip!  Jason Walden, Martin Walker and I trucked it down to Vortex Springs for a 2-day, 7-dive trip in the 68°F water of Vortex Springs. Pictures and video are in my Picasa Web Album - just click the album picture below!

Vortex Springs Summer 2008

John mayer channeling hendrix

As I mentioned earlier, we had some good one-on-one time with each twinkle on Sunday.  Devin spent a good portion of his running around jumping, as evidenced by the pictures below.  Note: I should point out that Stephanie is intently working on her homework as I requested, so that will be reflected in the images and video.  Rest assured that prior to my grabbing the camera, she was ignoring my wishes to finish her homework and was paying full attention to her little boy :)

How about some video?  Yep, I’ve got tasty video of Devin’s jumping accomplishments, right’cheer:

Bonus picture of Devin eating an orange, sans digits.

I realize I’ve been remiss in posting lately, so allow me to fill you in on what’s been going on.

“Cheap Mexicans” – on Friday night we met our friends Tony & Kim & Natalie, at our local Los Bravos for some kidtastic dining entertainment.  Let me just tell you that unless you have kids, stay away from Los Bravos between 5pm and 9pm.  Consider yourself warned.  It’s like Chuck E. Cheese’s in there, without the animatronics rodent band and old video games with today’s prices (yeah, like I’m paying 50 cents for Galaga).  If you have kids, however, take em and let em get all over themselves at cheap mexican.  I’m rather partial to their Fish Tacos.

Tomato Sauce Making and Canning – I spent two weekends at the Marietta Farmer’s Market buying fresh vegetables and herbs.  I already posted about the first attempt.  On the second trip, I got up early and let Stephanie sleep in as I took the kids with me.  I didn’t let the twinkles run around on foot since the Market is on the edge of the square and they could easily get into trouble – they were confined to the Chariot.  That actually came in handy as I bought about 15lbs of tomatoes from Craig of Two Mule Farms.  Craig also tossed me an additional couple of pounds of tomatoes with bad spots gratis.  I scored a couple of ounces of just-picked basil and oregano from another vendor.  I say ounces, because I don’t know how much basil is in 3 zip-top sandwich bags, nor do I know how much oregano is in 3 zip-top sandwich bags.  I made two batches this time, one as a standard tomato sauce recipe, and the other as a fantastically spicy version that the kids will not be allowed to taste.  Oh wait a minute.  Never mind then, I suppose they might like it.  So I’ve only a crock-pot’s worth of spicy tomato sauce left to can and I’ll be done for a while.

The Rocker – Saturday night we were childless as we booked Karyn to babysit.  We had dinner at P.F. Chang’s and for some reason we decided not to have the Cool Lettuce Wraps as our entrees.  Mental note for next time: have the Cool Lettuce Wraps as entrees and enjoy.  You can’t beat ‘em.  We finished up the evening with a viewing of Rainn Wilson in The Rocker.  Some folks have compared this to a poor man’s School of Rock, but the storyline is much different, the characters are different, and the plot is different.  Sort of.  It was cute, enjoyable and we had a good time.

We wrapped up Sunday by doing a little canning, getting the dogs’ baths and pedicures, running errands with the kids and just generally taking a little bit of easy.  It was a little crazy as Karyn kept the kids up past bedtime on Saturday, which meant that they awoke quite early on Sunday.  Grrr.  Usually when this happens we have to give Devin an extra long nap in the morning rather than a short one in the afternoon.  While that means that we don’t get any time to do chores while both kids are sleeping, we do get some special two-on-one time with each child.  That’s actually pretty special because it doesn’t happen very often.  In this case, I had a daddy-daughter lunch with Maya, while Stephanie stayed home to do school work (yeah, seems like that never stops) and some father-son wander-around-the-electronics-store time with Devin.  Steph got to have some playtime fun with each as well – but she’ll have to fill in those details as I was busy with other things and didn’t witness it myself.  Then again, with the course load she has this semester I suspect it will be December before you see that post.  Don’t hold your breath…

I have pix to post at some point.  Perhaps tomorrow.

Oh, and one last thing.  Lately Devin has been talking up a storm.  Not all of it intelligible, but he has some good 6-7 word sentences with about 75% of the words being recognizable (at least by us).  Maya surprised me this weekend with a few words I didn’t know she learned: teapot, spacesuit, terrific, and… *ahem* asshole.  Yeah, sooner or later it was bound to happen – and it did.  I was getting her out of the car seat, and removing a toy from her kung-fu grip, and she said, “Hey, stop it, asshole!”  I didn’t bat an eye and continued and then she repeated it.  I just ignored her, but boy was I laughing inside.  Not that I want her to repeat that, but it was certainly worth a chuckle to hear that phrase out of my sweet, sweet treasure.  Let’s hope she doesn’t follow up something worthy of a Kevin Smith script.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Fay didn't dampen our spirits on a trip down the Silver Comet Trail. Maya and Devin remained happy and dry, ensconced in the Chariot. Steph and myself, however, enjoyed a soggy ride at 73 degrees. During a brief dinner break at the Florence Road shelter, Steph and Maya tried to catch rain while Devin and I ate raisins. Life is best enjoyed when it's kept simple.
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This morning I planned to take the kids out to the Marietta Farmer's Market. It's open from May to the end of August from 9-1 in the Marietta Square. They have a 40 vendors or so, with the usual assortment of locally-grown tomatoes, peppers, honey, peaches, figs, pears, and beans. They also have some bakeries, natural home products, and other bric-a-brac you would expect to find at such a place. This was the first time I have visited this particular market, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect -- my experience has been limited thus far to larger established markets a la Pike's in Seattle. Let's just say this pales in comparison, but the folks are local, warm and friendly. Lots of kids, dogs and people wandering about. The thing I like most is the farmers represented here are into their craft. They love to discuss methods, execution, uses, and just about anything related to their product. And, they are always willing to answer questions to boot. I bought some heirloom tomatoes from a grower right in Sandy Springs which was nice, and he offered me a few pears for the kids, which they enjoyed. I also picked up a huge yellow watermelon from a nice fellow selling them off the back of his pickup truck. He and his wife looked like seasoned grandparents, and they were slicing off samples of watermelon for anyone who was interested, and Maya and Devin were more than interested. Devin was riding up top (on my shoulders) and proceeded to drip watermelon in my hair, which I am finding even now has clumped and stuck up in my hair :/ I suppose I'll have to shower up soon.

We had a house showing the other day, so we took all our dependents (two- and four-legged) to a local park that has playgrounds for furry and non-furry folks. Maya saw fit to climb up the ladder to this large slide, by herself, with no assistance. No fear in this child whatsoever.

Here she is climbing up, while Devin enjoys some juice, with both feet planted on terra firma.

We are spending the weekend up in Charlotte visiting the family, and this afternoon we had a bit of a rude awakening. The twins went down for their afternoon nap around the usual time. Devin was a bit early, having told me that he was "ready to to nighttime". I obliged, and Maya followed slightly thereafter.

There was a bit of an emergency around 2pm, went Devin awoke upset, likely because he decided to fill up his diaper with breakfast and lunch. Since we are visiting away from home, the twins share a room with two pack-n-play cribs. Maya was awakened by Devin's poo-fueled cryfest, and then there was a cacophony of whining until they were soothed back into nap time.

We passed the time playing Scrabble, rebuilding the dams in the creek, and bocce ball. We knew they were probably somewhat awake, because we could hear occasional chattering, but they were quiet and so we decided to let them remain in quiet time. Well, I'm hear to tell you we paid for that decision.

I opened the door to find Maya and Devin standing in the same pack-n-play. Maya's pack-n-play, devoid of Maya, was filled up with wipes she decided to unload from the package she swiped from the dresser. Devin's pack-n-play was full of Devin and Maya and a package of diapers they decided to unload from the package they swiped from the bed.

I called Stephanie and the family in to witness the life changing event that just transpired - Maya will no longer be confined if she wishes. We did the diaper change and we placed Maya back in her pack-n-play and told her to climb out, so we could see how she managed to pull it off. As we figured, she flipped her arabesque leg up over the side of the pack-n-play, and hoisted herself onto the nearby bed, then crawled down into Devin's pack-n-play.

I remedied the situation by moving the bed against the wall and moving a sweater chest next to the bed. The pack-n-plays are now end to end with a healthy 3' carpet moat between the side of the cribs and anything else. I figure if they want to play together, placing them end to end will allow that. We also noticed that one of the pack-n-plays has higher sides, so we moved Maya's bed accoutrements into that unit.

We'll see how tonight pan outs.

UPDATE:

Yeah, well the new configuration worked overnight, however the midday naptime Gods definitely favor the ingenuity of the child over the proactivity of the parent as Andy caught Maya straddling the pack 'n play with reckless abandon and without the safety of an adjacent bed. How will this translate to our cribs at home? I truly fear the answer...

Text says "M -the Moron"
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Let us just say that at this moment, being Two agrees very well with Devin.  He is loving his new-found ability to explore his world and express himself.  Maya, on the other hand, is loving her new-found ability to become annoyed at just about anything and express herself via yelling, kicking and screaming.  Thank God the household is only filled with one of her at this time.

Courtesy of Valerie and Stephanie

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Today after we finished up at the client site I had a few extra minutes to go for a hike in Carbon Canyon and check out the Carbon Canyon Dam.  Enjoy!

  

		Spot the rabbit.