MOVING

I have moved my blog over to http://smartmenmarrydoctors.wordpress.com/. Come check it out. Not only are there the adventures with Noah but also postings from my sketch book and soon paintings.

Hiatus

I have found over the last few weeks without anything to write about. Noah is at a stage where the things that he is doing are not particularly entertaining and I am at a stage where not much surprises me and we seem to have settled into somewhat of a routine.
That being said I am going to take a bit of a hiatus from the blog. This will of course destroy by goal of making an entry every week but I do not want to be making entries just to make them, I want you to be entertained. This break could be a few weeks or a few months that is entirely dependent on Noah. In the mean time it is painting season again so on occasion I may post some of my paintings as they are completed.

Cheers,
Jorden

840th Month Surprise Birthday Trip to Vermont

The alarm went off a three in the morning; we stumbled to the shower with half open eyes. The bags (mostly for Noah) were packed and waiting by the door to be dragged through the dark to the car. We arrived at the airport around four thirty and I dropped Erin at the terminal with some of the bags and drove half way back to the house to park the car in the economy lot. In the airport, Noah gazed pie eyed in amazement at the lights, sounds, and new faces around him. Strapped to my chest he kicked his feet with glee and drooled as we made our way through security, where the TSA officer made some crack about needing to see his driver’s license.

Two stops, one plane change and seven hours later we landed in Albany glassy eyed from lack of sleep. Erin went to get us some coffee and I headed to the rental car counter. While the clerk tried to up-sell us, Noah and I stared at him pie eyed and drooled. Three trips to the car and we were on our way, at twenty-five miles an hour behind a plow scraping the snow off the shoulder of a two lane country road. Two hours later we met up with my brother and continued to drive to our parent’s house. We knocked on the front door and stood whispering with anticipation. Dad opened the door, we yelled, Noah screamed (because we woke him up), Dad looked puzzled. After months of planning we had managed to make it home to surprise Dad for his 70th birthday.

We learned two very valuable lessons about traveling with a baby on this trip. The first one was that the “mattress” in the pack and play is little more than few slats of wood with a couple of feathers zipped in for “padding” and that was one of the reasons Noah did not sleep very well. The second and most important lesson is that having your child sleep in the same room as you downright stinks. Babies, at least ours, make a lot of noise in the night. Noah would scream, coo, cry, cough, and make a myriad of other noises that would jolt us awake and send us scrambling to his little wooden floored pen only to find that he was fast asleep.

Our time in Vermont was spent relaxing and was filled with good food, good drink, and a lot of laughter. Noah learned to roll onto his stomach in front of the roaring fireplace that kept out the winter chill. I strolled through the fields I had played in as a child and sketched the old barn on the hill. We walked past maple groves and listened to the river as it tumbled over rocks. This is what going home is all about, slowing down and spending time with those who are most important.

I have showered and put on clean clothes

It is eleven in the morning and Noah is taking a nap, it is rainy and cold outside and I am waiting for the second and third loads of laundry to be done. Monday is Laundry day. Am I doing something productive while I wait? No. I am staring at the TV watching a show geared towards stay at home moms and trying to get some tips on blogging. I have showered and put on clean clothes.
We have an extremely busy week this week with a going away party, Marti Gras gathering, Church service, and a pot-luck. Why am I telling you this? Well I have nothing else to write about, the TV show I was watching said the bloggers they interviewed posted daily, some at the same time each day, I became inspired. I am also hoping that as I type some clever line will come to me that will make you laugh, So far it is not looking good. Until that line comes to me here are five ways to keep your child and yourself entertained:

1. While eating make noises like Cookie Monster
2. Dance and/or sing for him
3. Fly him around the house like superman
4. Give them a new toy to play with
5. Take that new toy and play with it yourself

Tune in next week when I will tell you how much fun it is to take care of a four month old while fasting.

Silly Make Them Up As you Go Songs

Generally when I have house work to do I put Noah in his little chair and sit him where he can watch me and we can “talk”. This normally works out well and he is sufficiently entertained. Sometimes however he finds watching me attend to these mundane tasks less than interesting and I often have to sing/rhyme and dance to keep him from crying. Though this is a horribly inefficient way to get chores done it is amusing.

We have neglected the kitchen for the last few days. This happens when we do not put the clean dishes from the dish washer away as soon as it is done. Of all house work, I hate cleaning the kitchen the most; on the flip side it drives me batty when the kitchen is not clean. Though not batty enough to get off my duff to clean it right away. Today I reached my batty peak so after breakfast I began to cleaning. Noah found this less than a desirable way to spend a half-hour, so I found myself dancing and singing/rhyming silly make them up as you go songs while shelving clean dishes and stacking the dirty ones in the dishwasher. I began to feel as if I were channeling the Marx Brother's brand of silliness.



The dancing and singing/rhyming do not just happen during chores. They also happen at random times for a multitude of different reason but mainly because I like to make up silly songs and Noah likes to see me “dance.” I encourage this kind of behavior from all Dads. It not only entertains your child but it also reminds you not to take life so seriously. Below is one of my greatest hits, feel free to use it at the next diaper change.

You have stinky pants
So I will do the poopy dance
Lift up your left and lift up your right

(these are your legs as you hop back and forth)
What’s in that diaper will give me a fright

Repeat all lines as many times as you see fit.

Thanks Dad

The non-descript brown book sized package was resting by the back door when we returned home from our afternoon walk. It was addressed to me and Noah, in my Dad’s handwriting. Stamped on the package were the words   “media material”. I hoped inside was the book Dad and I both loved so much.

I opened the package while Erin and Noah looked on, inside something was wrapped in Christmas paper, with a note;

I knew at that moment it had to be Robin Goodfellow and the Giant Dwarf. I tore open the paper as if I were a child on Christmas morning. There was the book that could make my Dad and me laugh before we even opened the cover. It looked newer than the tattered and torn copy from my childhood, and yet it was not brand new as I thought it would be. As I opened the cover a picture postcard of Tomie de Paola (the illustrator) fell out, odd I thought as I turned to the title page, and then it all made sense. The inscription read:

The book is no longer being printed, which makes it all that more special, that it is signed for Noah and I brings tears to my eyes. It is the simple things in life that mean the most; that is one of the many lessons my Dad has taught me over the years and continues to teach me even now. It is something that I plan to teach to Noah, I just hope I can do as good of a job as my Dad.

Childhood Dreams

Had the two major events of my teenage years, an unplanned pregnancy at seventeen and the death of a best friend a year later not happened, would I have chosen a different path? I have been mulling over this question a lot these past few days. Thinking about God’s plan and the dreams we have as school children. How if we are patient enough then the things we dream eventually happen, though maybe not in the order we thought.

By the time I reached 7th grade I had decided that I was going west to ski after high school. By 10th grade I had concluded that I wanted to get into the search and rescue field and spend my life helping people in the backcountry. I would get a black lab, go west, eventually meet the girl of my dreams and live happily in our mountain home. Then on a warm night in May 1996 I no longer wanted that dream, I just wanted to return to the carefree post graduation simplicity of the morning. I wanted our friend back. I bounced around the East after that; first to Pennsylvania to work, Florida and then New Hampshire for school, then Massachusetts with lofty dreams. Eventually I landed back in Vermont, working jobs I hated while dreaming once again of escaping west. I convinced my roommate we needed to move and we began to make plans. Two months before we were to leave I backed out. A few months later I met Erin, a year and a half after that we moved west.

Today sitting in our home in Utah with our black lab, the mountains visible through the dining room window, Noah in his swing and Erin knitting him a new hat I know my childhood dream has come true. God had and has a plan, though I am not always privy to it. The order of events may be different and the path not what I thought. The outcome however is the same and even more wonderful than I could have imagined.