Shaving

I shaved today. I was really a little bit worried about it because I'd had the beard for so long, and since Nathaniel has basically only known me with the beard I was worried what his reaction would be. He certainly did react, though, he had a puzzled look on his face and kept feeling my face. He often reaches out and feels my face, but on this occasion he seemed to be trying to figure out what happened. I used the clippers out on the deck to trim it down, and let him watch from the doorway. He was getting ready for a nap, though, so I was a bit worried about how he would react after he woke up, but he ended up not really having any problem with me. He did show a little puzzlement as to what had happened to Daddy, but didn't seem to be concerned as to who I was.



Next it's time to trim the eyebrow

Not sure why, but today feels like a crummy day looking back. I think I felt guilty when I woke up because it seemed that Stephanie had been up with Nathaniel for some time--or at least struggling with him. The day was really a rather leisurely one overall, with a trip to Target and Cub and a Twins game in the afternoon. After that we went to Hillcrest for a bit and Nathaniel played in the sand. He wasn't too enthralled with grass, and seemed to be scared in the swings, but he did enjoy the sand and dirt and all the sticks and such on the ground. We got him a ball at Target, which he seems to quite like, so hopefully we'll be outside playing soon.

I made steak sandwiches for dinner tonight, and i don't think they turned out as well as the last time. I'm not sure what I did differently other than to use cream of mushroom instead of cream of onion soup, but I don't think that was the problem. I think perhaps I should have fried the steaks longer without the soup or something. I'll keep experimenting and get it right at some point, I hope.

After dinner I went to Half Price Books and Byerly's with my mom, stopping at Menards on the way home. I got High Fidelity and Dodgeball on DVD on clearance, but didn't end up getting peppers at Bylery's as planned because they were even more expensive than I'd expected. There must be something going on because the price was insane both there and at Cub where the peppers were total crap, hence the trip to Byerly's in the first place. Hopefully we can stop at Aldi or something to get some. Or the Chinese market.

At Menards I got some bug stop stuff that I will be spraying on the outside of the windows to try to keep the ladybeatles out of the house. Nathaniel is interested in everything on the floors, so hopefully this stuff will actually work and keep the bugs out and out of his hands.

Time for bed though as it is late and I need to get back onto a better schedule.

Trip to the park

We took Nathaniel to the park to try the swings for the first time yesterday. We had gone on a bit of a walk beforehand, though, so he was rather mellow and didn't seem too keen on the whole experience. He also went down the slide with his mom, and while that seemed to go better, there really wasn't too much of a reaction to that either. We'd gone to the bank and Lund's first, so he was a bit tired. He did like the sand, though, so we'll be back later next week to try again.

For dinner, we went to Brasa with Nicole and Nik. We tried a number of new things including a few appetizers; fried something or other, beans, cheesybread... it was tasty. We have been planning to hit a number of restaurants with them over the summer. Brasa, Fogo de Chao, the Wienery. We'll see how it goes. It was fun, but it is hard to plan those sorts of things.

Today was a good mail day. My bar results/admission letter and our state income tax return check. We took a walk down to the bank to deposit the check and then stopped at the park to put Nathaniel in the swings for the first time. He was unimpressed, very mellow and apparently uninterested. I think we was tired, so we'll try again tomorrow or on the weekend.

Today was a strange one. It started out relatively normally, but after a very short nap, Nathaniel began to change the schedule. He ended up napping from before noon until after four! It totally threw off his schedule. With such a long nap, he hadn't eaten for a very long time. Stephanie was unsure what to feed him--fruit and cereal or meat and veggies. He was in a fairly good mood over all though. He did a lot of exploring, and even got a chance to wave at his grandpa on TV.

Stephanie paused the NewsHour with my dad on the screen and Nathaniel clearly recognized him and waved at him. She did it right after I left for a run to Menard's, so I didn't get to see it. It's still on the Tivo, so hopefully we can do it again tomorrow.

I managed to do a bit of reading today in the morning while Nathaniel played in the living room, and I started Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn. I've quite enjoyed the first 100 pages or so, and was engaged in the book much more quickly than usual. In fact, I was more interested in reading than playing Final Fantasy XII or watching TV, which is a surprise. Hopefully I'll be able to find more books like that in the near future.
Tomorrow Nathaniel goes to see his grandmother, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few things done. I'd intended to wax the bathtub--I'd been told that a porous tub could be helped with turtle wax--but while at Menard's I couldn't figure out which of the myriad options I should use. I did some research online and now am unsure whether to use the stuff at all. We'll see.

Back to general daddy duty today. Nathaniel was very expressive today and made it fun. He played nicely and took a good nap in the morning as well. He ate his extra meal quite well, and was generally back to his normal self--making a mess with all his toys and exploring the house as much as I would let him.
He didn't really want to nap in the afternoon, but he did rest a bit and was in a good enough mood for me to get a couple of things taken care of while he played on the floor.
When Stephanie came home, we took a trip to Trader Joe's, where Nathaniel took his first real ride in a shopping cart. He never looked at the camera for me to take his picture as he was far too interested in looking all around him at all the colors and people to see.
He took a little snooze on the ride home, but was ready to play and kicking when we got back. My mom came over for a bit to play with him and Stephanie and I had some of the orange chicken we'd just picked up.
Hopefully he'll be in a good mood tomorrow as well. It's still supposed to rain, so hopefully we'll get a chance to take a walk, though. It's nice if we can get out of the house, and the rain doesn't help. He was woken up by the storm this morning, but hopefully the rain will hold off long enough tomorrow that he'll sleep a little later than 5AM.

So it's been a few days, and my first big absence from this blog. It came as a result of our son's first real illness. I guess on Wednesday Oma said she thought he was a little warm, but he seemed to be playing normally, so I didn't notice anything. Thursday morning he woke up regularly and went down for his nap a little early, but I didn't really think anything of it. I still didn't when he woke up as soon as I put him down. He wasn't sleeping too soundly, so I just figured that I would hold him for a while so that he'd nap. I was in the basement, so I was worried about him being too cold, so I kept checking his hands, which were warm. By this time, I should have figured it out, but I didn't. It wasn't until he was eating after taking the nap (a long-two-hours) on my lap. Stephanie called and asked if he had a temperature. I checked it and he definitely did. He got up as high as 102.7 degrees in fact. I ended up just holding him and having him nap as much as possible all day. We gave him tylenol and tried to get him to rest. He slept a lot, but every time we did get him to sleep in his crib, you could feel the heat from his body when you picked him up. Stephanie was on the phone to the nurse line, and Diana came over for a while when I went to the Stars Soccer Supporters meeting.

The meeting was relatively uneventful, but more on that later, when the things that need doing (and I agreed to do) come up.

When I came home, we planned for me to just sit in the recliner downstairs and have Nathaniel sleep on my lap all night. We set me up with my laptop, the PS2, and a movie all ready to go if I needed them. His fever finally broke around 2:30, though, so I was able to lay him in his crib from then until about 5:30, when he woke up for the morning. We'd planned for Oma and Opa to take him for a few hours (before a doctors appointment, if he needed one) but those few hours allowed me to sleep enough that we decided against packing him into the car.

Then, he seemed to be feeling pretty good in the morning. He hadn't had another dose of tylenol since the early morning, and he was playing in the living room just fine. But only for a little while. In less than 20 minutes, he was feeling warm and getting clingy again. Even so, we decided to wait a bit to see about the doctor. Later, with his temp still going up when not on the tylenol, we decided to go in to the doctor, who made a special appointment to see him (her only patient of the day) just to be certain there wasn't an ear infection or something. She checked his ears and no infection! But she warned us that he might develop one, because with fevers and colds and such the inflammation of the ear can cause an infection. We're watching it, but he seems to be feeling better, and doesn't show signs of an infection at the moment.

He started seeming to feel better, but not fully himself over the weekend, but both Stephanie and I ended up with illnesses. I actually had a fever of 100.3--the first fever I can remember having in years. Both of us have been coughing up a storm, Stephanie has had a sore throat for days and I've been hacking up really thick mucus. We spent an absolutely beautiful weekend in doors recovering.

Today Nathaniel went to Oma and Opa's again so that I didn't have to worry about still being worn out, and so I managed to get the floors cleaned in the kitchen and bathroom, and to clean the garbage can lid, which was dirtier than I realized. I also got a lot of laundry done, so hopefully heading into tomorrow Nathaniel will be back to his playful self, and we can spend the day playing, exploring, and maybe take a walk.