Juneau

I am in Juneau, sitting in the Goldbelt Hotel, waiting for Amanda to give me a call. This is the first time I've been here in about a year and a half... I actually like comming here to visit every once in a while. It is nice to see the changes and progress being made. I also like visiting the RDI office here and meeting some of the employees that I've interviewed and hired but never seen or met. So, on this trip I'm here for three days doing some analysis on Department of Revenue permits as they prepare to put them online.

AP Boy and more serious topics

Well, since the beginning of this year Connor has had quite the series of accidents – broken arm, tooth knocked out. The latest is he got stitches. This was a couple weeks ago, he and I were playing around in the kitchen, right before bed, when he smacked his eyebrow pretty hard on the kitchen counter. Sure enough, it split open and so 9pm at night I made another trip to the urgent care center.

He did good, but he had to get three stitches. Of course, it required a shot, actually several of them to numb the area. Then, it didn’t take the first time so they had to give him some more shots and basically impregnate the whole eyelid with lidocain. He was in agony… he hates shots more than anything and the poor kid… he does so well and has such a great attitude until he sees that needle come out.

Anyway, 5 days later he had the stitches removed. He’ll have a little scar, but it looked to me healing up nicely. So we’re all out in the backyard moving their basketball hoop. We go to put it down and sure enough our accident prone (AP) boy gets whacked right on his cut… I mean whacked hard. It didn’t break back open but it swelled up about an inch out of his head. The scar is now all purple and his eye got all black and bruised. It is starting to recover, but I think the scar will be a bit more pronounced now and I’m not sure his eyebrow will grow back completely.

More serious topics…
Amanda and I are enrolled in Marriage Dynamics. It is a course designed by the Family Dynamics group. It is a pretty intensive 8 week course – homework, weekly sharing at class, mandatory attendance. There are 12 couples taking the class with us. When I told my Dad we were taking it he said, “what, are you having marriage problems?” Well, not really, Amanda and I both love being married to each other. But, we have our challenges like any other couple and we want to be married, happily married, for the rest of our lives. We want to stay in love and knowing how to do that after 10, 15, or 20 years (we’re at 12) is always a learning process.

My thoughts so far about the class are that it is good. I think it will give us some tools and concepts to be able to take forward for the years going forward. We are already learning a lot more about each other and what our emotional needs are, but I think more importantly we are actually learning how to respect and listen to each other’s emotional needs. Long and short is I would recommend it to anyone, but don’t enter lighthearted… you need to be serious or else it may overwhelm you.

Finally, on to not so serious topics… I received my tailwheel endorsement from my friend and instructor Rich Young. He’s been teaching my in the 170. It has been fun and challenging. Now I will work on passing Dad’s endorsement… the FAA was easy! Hopefully by the next post I’ll be soloing in 1863C!

First tooth gone

We have a winner! Connor was our first child to lose a tooth! It all started about a week ago, Connor and Andrew were playing hard running around and Connor smacked into Andrew, hitting his mouth. That jarred loose one of his front teeth. He was pretty excited about it and for the next week talked about it and worked at it until yesterday it was barely holding on.

At breakfast he showed it to me and I tried to talk him into letting me pull it (no way!) or pull it himself (he wouldn't take a firm grip on it). So, Amanda and I left for work once Asia arrived, knowing today would probably be the day. Sure enough, later on Amanda got a message from Connor that the tooth had come out... during lunch... and, he SWALLOWED it!

Our first tooth and we don't even have it to rally around, look at, admire, etc.??? Connor was so excited that it had come out finally and he could return to eating normally. Of course, being a good dad I didn't pass up the opportunity for a physiology lesson and let them know that the tooth would be coming out the other end. They have made sure this lesson isn't wasted and included this in their recounting of the story to friends, family, and strangers we meet at the soccer game! Amanda is very impressed with my fatherly wisdom.

Connor knows the tooth fairy is Mom and Dad, but he still was beyond excitement going to bed. We game him a little bag with a dollar and some other goodies that he is enjoying this morning. Maybe when Andrew loses his tooth we'll be able to keep that one!