Friday, June 30, 2006

Andrew Pooped in the Toilet

Andrew pooped in the toilet yesterday. We would like to believe that is a step in the right direction.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Teenagers

Something strange must be in the water at our house (my mom would say it is probably just hormones). Ever since Andrew stopped taking a nap he has been consistently sleepy at 8 in the evening. For the past week or so, he has gone to bed in less than ten minutes. Well, I guess he has had enough of that. Last night I took him upstairs at 8:15, and at 8:30 I decided I was wasting my time. We went back downstairs and played until abuot 9:30. He has been this way for the past two days. Not only is he going to bed late, but he slept in today until 8:45.

Mari has been having some slep adventures of her own lately. She just can't decide on a firm routine. Last night she fell asleep in the sling on our walk at around 7:30. I tried to lay her down, but she refused and eventually woke up and was up until 10.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: experts always say that kids need consistency, but I think that parents need the consistency. I wish that my kids would just make up their minds already.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The Heat Is On

Some hot weather has greeted as as we get back into the swing of things after our trip to Des Moines. Susan and the kids were out there for a week; I made it out by lunchtime on Friday. It was a pretty busy weekend, with Mari's 1st b-day party on Friday night, a brunch (which Susan attended) on Sat morning, followed by the World Cup game, mass, and Susan's ten-year high school reunion. We left Des Moines Sunday morning and made it back to Cincinnati just before dark. I should have some pics up soon.

Things are getting a little back to normal in our house. The kids' sleep schedules are still off from the trip, but hopefully we will get them back on track tonight. Andrew is much more fun to hang out with when he is sleeping right.

Speaking of the World Cup, which I did a little bit ago, the US is still hanging in there. We need a win on Thursday combined with an Italy win to advance to the round of 16. There are actually other ways in which we could advance, but they are a real stretch.

Mari is moving around really well. In Des Moines she learned to go up the stairs. She pulls herself up a lot and likes to stand now, which is a radical shift from a month ago. She also learned the sign for "more," which she puts to use a lot. She also likes to wave "hi" and "bye." She even occassionally waves at cars as they drive past.

Susan is going to the Ani Difranco concert tomorrow night. It should be a great show and it is at a cool outdoor venue. I really wanted to go, but Mari and Andrew are still a little too demanding these days when it comes to bedtime.

I am headed to the Pearl Jam concert on Saturday with Holly. It is in Cincinnati, which is nice. Last time they were supposed to play here (my birthday, 2003) it got cancelled because the venue was flooded. Hopefully they will play a good make-up show.

Julie is out of town taking her massage boards so that she can be a licensed masseuse in Ohio. She will be gone until Friday. I just noticed that Susan and I haven't watched a movie since May, so maybe we will be able to get one in this week, if the kids ever go to bed on time.

Catch ya later!

Thursday, June 8, 2006

Welcome to the Blogosphere

Two years after we joined the fray, the Reagens are on board with a blog of their own: Reagen Blog: Random Notes from the Reagen Southern Division.

Susan had Wild Women Wednesday last night, and it must have been wild since she was out past ten. This afforded me the opportunity/challenge of getting both kids to sleep, by myself. I had done this once before, and was very successful. Last night I was again fortunate and the kids were asleep within twenty minutes. I fear that sometime they are going to stage rebellion, and I am going to fall down the stairs crying.

In other useless news, our hummingbird feeders are doing well. We don't get too many hummingbirds, but we have seen consistent activity at our front hummingbird feeder, and yesterday Susan saw our first hummingbird at the back hummingbird feeder. Exciting stuff, I know.

In baseball news, the Reds just swept their second straight series and are now tied for first place in the NL Central with the St. Louis Cardinals. They now have a ten-game homestand and hopefully I will be able to make it out for a game while Susan and the kids are in Des Moines.

Did I forget to mention that Susan and the kids are headed to Des Moines? We are going to meet Nate at his old elementary school in Normal, IL for the handoff on Sunday. I get to come back to Cincinnati and work while Susan vacations in Des Moines.

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

The chicken or the egg?

The past few weeks have been pretty exciting, a little too exciting in fact for my lack of entries.

We just got back from an awesome trip to Chicago for our friends Sara & Clark's wedding. I will have some pics up soon. We got to spend a lot of quality time with Susan's friends from college, which doesn't happen very often. It is also the first time that most of them got to meet Mari. We will see Susan's high school friends in a couple weeks for her ten-year high school reunion.

We left Cincinnati around lunch time on Friday and the festivities started off with the rehearsal dinner on the lake Friday night. The wedding itself was great. Sara and Clark both just finished up their studies at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC), which is where the wedding was. The ceremony was full of beautiful ritual accented with some great personal touches. The reception was a blast also. There was plenty of dancing for everyone. For the second time in two weddings, Mari fell asleep on the dance floor, which is pretty funny. Andrew danced his heart out, until he was exhausted.

The week before the wedding our friend Stephanie (of Stephanie & Terry, also Julie's sister) and her two kids, Terry and Julia, were staying with us. Stephanie and family moved to Cleveland a couple years ago so it was great to hang out.

My friend Nick, from college & St. Louis, also stopped by for a night last week. He is a Cardinals fan, but we fed him anyway.

This takes us back to our anniversary weekend, which you might think of as Memorial Day weekend. We started of the weekend with a barbecue at Eric's parents' house. Eric is a friend from college who is headed into life as a Jesuit. Saturday night we had our traditional anniversary dinner at the same location as our wedding reception. Then we headed of to a couple's shower for Holly & Alex. Sunday we relaxed at home. Monday we tried to do something special in the morning for our anniversary, but Mari wasn't cooperating, so we chilled at home until we went to another Holly & Alex shower/family party at my aunt & uncles.

The beginning of this week took me to Detroit for a great Pearl Jam concert. I see them again in a couple weeks with Holly in Cincinnati.

So, that is what has been going on. Here is what is going on now. We finally got our vegetable garden planted. Holly was nice enough to buy most of our plants for us, saving us the trouble. This year we have some garlic, onions, yellow tomatoes, red tomatoes, green peppers, and pickling cucumbers (from right to left). Should be fun.

Julie still lives in the basement.

Mari is crawling very well and pulling up on things. She often pulls up to stand up and then gets frustrated because she doesn't know how to sit down. She still doesn't know how to roll from her back to her stomach, so she 'turtles' a lot.

Andrew is Andrew. He is still really cute, except when he is tired, then he is just frustrated.

Soccer season is over. The World Cup is about to begin. This is where the chicken and the egg come to play. Do you think that the US needs to care more about soccer in order to win the World Cup, or do you think that people won't care until we win the World Cup? I would love to win it, but I think the rest of the world would be pretty angry if we do, since most Americans don't even care.

For a limited time, if you go to google.com and search for "Eddie Vedder" a picture of me and Eddie from 2003 comes up. My sister, Jill, discovered this and it is pretty cool. I am not sure how long this will be the case, so check it out now.

We have some friends, Jeff and Rebecca, who live in Washington (state) and both have pretty cool jobs. They keep a blog, which has some good entries. Even he is amazed at how cool his job is. I am not amazed at how cool my job is (though I do like it) but there are times when I just look at my family and think "Wow! Could it get any better?"