Everyone has seen the weight loss ads with the fine print underneath “Results not Typical”. This is my beginning story of my results, without the weight loss products.

My wife mentioned to me recently of a report saying that obesity in America had recently risen. I’m not going to go into all of the causes, fixes, etc. There are FAR better areas to discuss that. But I do want to write a little bit about something that did happen with me.

First, some pictures. I’m only going to show face shots.

This was me about 3 years ago.

This is me, a week ago.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way, immediately. I still don’t have hair. Strangely enough, I might have a BIT more hair now, but that’s also probably an illusion based on the fact that there isn’t as much face as there used to be. I don’t even want to think how much I weighed then. I know that my waistline was a generous 36, IOW a realistic 38, but I wasn’t going to wear 38s. I’m currently wearing a pair of 30s, loosely. And frankly, 28s would probably be a better fit now.

What I do know is that I had already started to loose some weight in May 2008. That’s when my wife bought us a Wii fit. And no, it didn’t cause me to loose weight, but it did allow me an easy way of tracking my weight. 209 pounds. I’m 6′ tall. I was not obese. But yeah, that’s heavy.

So let’s bring out the graph. Click on it for a larger, more readable version.

This capture is current as of 5/18/2010. So, it’s about 2 years of weight data. It’s also about 1 year since I started running.

What happened to me? I’ve lost over 60 pounds of weight. My average weight seems to be stabilizing around 162, although I’ve said that before. I’ve recently been hitting 158 as a low, and as my training continues, who knows? Body fat keeps falling, based on the scale. The scales I have (Withings Scale) aren’t exact on body fat accuracy compared to calipers or water weighing, but they certainly are good enough, and very useful in terms of showing a trend.

Exactly zero of the clothes that I had fit anymore (including, distressingly, my tailored suit and shirts from Hong Kong). I have 2 pairs of jeans that fit, and I don’t buy clothes unless absolutely needed, because it seems that if it’s in my closet for more than a month, it probably won’t fit anymore. That is the downside, that no one tells you about.

It’s expensive buying new clothes just to replace your previous clothes every month. It’s really cool the first time. Slightly less so the next. And it gets OLD real quick.

So what happened?

I started eating smaller portions.
Healthier foods, although I wasn’t eating HORRIBLE.
I eliminated Soda. Period. Diet or otherwise.
Lots of water replaced it.

Oh, and I ran. A lot.

Last year, I spent the majority of the year in Denver, on the weekdays. As part of the contract I was on, we worked all the time. I couldn’t sleep very well out there for a significant time. So, it quickly because a situation where I would wake up early, and could either get started working again, or run. Easy access to running trails helped. Living with a guy who does Ironman Tris regularly helped tons.

I couldn’t run 2 miles. Heck, I couldn’t run 1 mile without including walking. But I kept going. I entered my first race (a 10k after the aforementioned Ironman convinced me to do it instead of the 5k) on Labor day.

I’m also going farther. After the 10k, running 5k distances just didn’t challenge me. Nor did the 10k to be honest. So, I started training for the Half Marathon. I ran the Nashville irunfortheparty.com Half Marathon in November 2009. I then ran the Memphis St. Jude Half Marathon in December 2009. I dropped about 4 minutes off my time in the month between.

I trained for the Country Music Marathon in April 2010. What happened there will be another post. During that training, I was regularly running longer than those half marathons, and wasn’t even thinking about it.

So, now, 3 years after that first picture, I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m loving running, and I’m actually happy about my body. I wouldn’t say I was unhappy before, but I know I wasn’t happy. I did it gradually, and I don’t regret or miss a thing, except perhaps, that I didn’t start earlier. I focus on the running, but in regards to my weight loss, it was really only part of the equation. I changed my lifestyle. I didn’t diet. I ate well and moderately (although in fact, I NEED to eat more now). I firmly believe that eliminating Soda made a huge difference.

I’m not setting any speed records. I’m ok with that. I read tons of blogs of very competitive racers, and I’m just not there. Yet. I enjoy running, I enjoy racing, even though I KNOW I’m not going to win against Ryan Hall. But against myself, that’s another story completely. I’m still early enough in my training that I continue to improve my Personal Record regularly.

Anyone still reading?

ANYWAYS…. And then Jeffie comes driving up. 10ish. That’s not right.

Is everything ok?

Well, not really……

And in she comes with an 11 pound ball of fur and teeth. And Droopy eartips. She’s been given an 8 week old male German Shepard dog.

We had an incredible dog, that was with us practically our entire relationship. Jeffie came into my house AROUND THIS TIME of the year 15 some odd years ago, carrying Kosh. And we loved her dearly. She was the absolutely best friend and dog we could have ever asked for. She was the maid of honor at our wedding. (don’t ask me… Maybe Jeff will actually explain with a post. She hasn’t posted in a while. ) and she became super protector for both of the kids. But time and a spinal disease finally caused her to have to leave us, and it’s been a very different year without her. Some of the reduction in ‘hassle’ and certainly DOG HAIR (Kosh could shed more hair in an hour than some dogs do in a life) has been nice. But it’s also been much lonelier without that constant greeting at the door when we came home.

This GUY! is not Kosh. Oh, he reminds. (And you can actually see a picture of MV and Kosh IN his pictures) And oh boy, he’s cute and playful.

And 8 weeks old. Which is most definitely not house broken.

By a LONG shot.

Make that a light year WIDE long shot.

And my, those little puppy teeth are sharp. And Active. Cat 5 cables don’t stand a chance. Power cords should at least prove entertaining.

And HE’s definitely a boy, and he’s got a dominating personality. He did NOT like the Vet doing the physical. There was some snapping at hands during that. Ms. Kosh was as gentle as possible with the kids, and frankly, unless they or Jeff was in danger, would hurt anything more than a Fly. Flies were actually fair game to her. Rabbits too, but she never came close to actually getting those.

Puppy here… Oh, not at all like what we were used to. I can see the 3 year old Human boy grabbing the puppy, and fur and kid skin mixing with blood and flying. And I can definitely see the hugs and kisses immediately afterwards, from both sides. Too Protective?

I took him back this afternoon, after getting his shots and physical, leash, collar and food, before the Kids could see him. I’ve got to think about this, We have to talk about this as a family. I’m not saying ‘No’, but I want to be so sure before I say ‘Yes’, and introduce him to Mary and William. It’s a long commitment, and I want the best for both us, and him. I asked for a few days to discuss and think.

(And until we make up our minds he’s not touching the d0gz.net domain. Kids might see.)

I am so incredibly conflicted.

William isn’t potty trained yet. This guy doesn’t even know when he’s even peeing at this point. It would be a ton of work, and disruption. And Hair.

But then again, I have ALWAYS said that Mary was going to have a BIG Male German Shepard Dog, that was HERs. Not mine, not Jeff’s. Mary’s. So that when she’s Ten and playing outside, anyone that looks at her funny would have a curious feeling of being separated from their trachea. His name would be Guard.

I’m asking for advice. ANYONE. Do we take the puppy?

Do we wait for a little more age on the children? (William being my major concern. Mary is big enough and grown enough to begin to understand. She obviously wouldn’t take care completely of him, but I don’t worry about her jamming her fingers in his Eyes and having the ensuing battle of teeth.)

I don’t think he’s a bad dog. I think he could EASILY be the protector for both of them. He’s 11 pounds at 8 weeks, and looks to me like he’s going quite a long ways to grow. He’ll very obviously be a great dog. But I do so worry about that dominate personality and the different dog that He would be from Kosh. Both kids remember Kosh, and they played well with her. She put up with a LOT from them, and the worse she ever gave back was a licking (which ALWAYS actually did the trick in making them stop. She was a smart dog). I don’t see him being as laid back as her, and I worry about the initial learning curve from the children.

In a lot of ways, this is just for me to get some of my feelings and doubts out there. But I’ll still ask. Any suggestions?

Turns out… the backlog apparently works differently.

So… A week before Thanksgiving, the scheduler for the area calls Jeff. There has been a cancellation. Can Greg do December?

Emails are sent to me asking this question. Immediately after reading first email, I notice second email, with answer ‘Yes.’

Oh boy.

(There is only SLIGHT liberty taken there…)

So, It’s pull out ALL the archives, load them up, sort them through, remove the duplicates, rebuild the index, throw all that out, because you should have removed the Duplicates BEFORE adding them to Aperture, and Aperture doesn’t like it when 30,000 pictures disappear at a time.

NOW, you can start actually figuring out which 20-25 pictures are actually going to make the cut. I didn’t pull much of anything from before 2003, so Five years. That worked out to be around 150,000 pictures in the archive library (not counting the years 2007-2008).

2007-2008 were easy. I had already been using Aperture to handle all of my Digital asset management, so it was a relatively simple task to pull photos that were already marked well, and choose there.

But, I wanted to get some the earlier stuff as well. Neither Jeff nor I wanted to put recent pictures of the Kids on display. Jeff does work in the Public, and DOES have to tell people NO. Having the kids up there readily identifiable and letting some upset person pull the comparison wasn’t going to happen. Having said that, some of the early pictures of Mary don’t give you a good indication on how she is now, so those became fair game.

It’s not kosher to sell directly from the Library… So we now have a new Domain and face for some of my stuff. GAN Photo is now up and running, with a separate gallery and blog system. Given that it went up a few days before the pictures did, I’m sure that it is going to change and evolve. Some parts of it I like, some… eh. It’s hopefully going to get more updates than this site has over the next month.

Of course, on top simply getting the photo’s selected, I had to re-edit most of them, as the software available today is SO much more powerful and precise than what I was using 5 years ago. I was pretty happy seeing some of the older images pop back into existence and breath. My old D60 Camera did a VERY fine job, given it’s limitations.

Printing was actually the easiest part, aside from the fact that I was producing about 50 feet of 17″ paper to display. My Epson 4000 did eat some roll paper and drink heavily from the ink well. Combining with the Thanksgiving timing, that meant that I was making multiple trips to the local (Nashville Local, not Franklin Local) Pro Photo shop.

Two of the prints are Panoramas. Those, as well as three of my more recent favorites, went on Gatorboard to keep the cost down, and sizes up. The rest were framed and matted in Arab, AL right before (and after) Thanksgiving. My Dad made an incredible find on Ebay of 22×28″ frames, and we spent some significant time cutting the mats and getting everything just right. I thank both Dad and Mom heavily for their help.

The pictures came out wonderfully. I’ve got the exhibit area COVERED with frames, colors and images, and I’m really proud and happy to see it. I regret the Gatorboarded pictures, because we did SO well with the framing, and they just don’t look nearly as good. And Those were the ones that I personally liked the most.

That said, If I had not done them that way, I wouldn’t have had the space or the weight capacity. It does all work out.

I’ll post more at GAN Photo. I’d like to be able to detail some more of the methodology and stories behind each shot that is going up there. I’m going to be busy.

In summary, before edit 1 there were nearly 6,000 frames.

With the initial cut, I deleted the frames that weren’t QUITE there. This included strobes that didn’t fire, focus points being wrong, or not seeing anything worthwhile at all.

That left me with over 4,000 frames.

You wondered why nothing was posted. Choosing from that selection isn’t easy. Tagging that many isn’t easy. And then, once you’ve done that, and you think you have your selections, you actually can start to WORK on them.

Historically, I’ve put these up chronologically. This year, we’ll try grouping them by subject.

Sunrise: As I’ve said earlier, it’s a miracle that these even were taken.

Sunset: What’s stranger, in most cases, I have frames from BOTH sunrise and sunset.

McGuires: Chronicled here, some of these you’ve already seen.

Fudpuckers: Fishing for Alligators. Need I say more?

Crabs: Mary still declares this to be one of her favorite activities. I think the idea of pulling a live crab from the ocean, and putting it in a bucket is her idea of heaven. The child IS weird.

Bird Feeding: The idea is to feed to Gulls so they come closer. THEN, you chase them down. One of these days they are going to get one, and then it’s going to get REAL interesting.

Beach: Yeah, we were at the beach. If it’s not in one of the above catagories, chances are, it’s here.

Everything else: Ok, there were some that didn’t fit. The experiment with the REALLY CHEAP and BAD underwater camera. William telling Papa exactly HOW he needed to make the ice cream. These went into the root folder.

The Original plan was to come down Friday night, stay in Arab, and then go to the airshow in Huntsville on Saturday. Jeff had to work Sunday on a Literacy program for the Library, so we’d come back Saturday Night. Shades were drawn, and the kids wouldn’t see the fort until Sunday Morning. Perfect planning, deserves perfect execution, right?

Ok, so, it wasn’t the perfect plan, and it didn’t have flawless execution. Friday night, we find a 70% chance of rain during the airshow hours. Immediately, and especially after the previous week, we start contingency planning. Mary has always loved the Rocket coming into Alabama (Saturn 1b at the rest stop). So, let’s go to the Space center.

Even on Saturday, Mary didn’t want to go. I think one Airshow a year is probably going to be pushing it. A Friend SMSed me later that due to the traffic, we made the right decision. He drove further than we did, and never made it onto the grounds.

Ok, she’s 4. It’s a reach. She did enjoy the beginning of it. They have done a pretty decent job restoring the Saturn 5 that was laying on it’s side in the original space park. It’s now suspended in an environmentally controlled building, and it’s been cleaned up. They have all sorts of exhibits in the building, and Mary loved the science (kid friendly) demonstrations.

Then, the second treat. Kung Fu Panda on the Imax screen!

First off : None of the following apply to Kids.

Second: Rectangular projection movies should NEVER be played on a spherical screen. I think it’s Mercator’s revenge.

Third: Grandma would violently agree with the above.

I enjoyed most of the center. It needs money. It needs massive amounts of restoration done, but unfortunately, I don’t think it’s getting much of that, even with the money it’s getting. It seems like much of the facility is now devoted to Space Camp (and hey, *I* went to Space Camp). It’s a shame that Space Camp is taking the priority away from the history, as much of Space Camp itself IS history now. Look to the future, but always remember the past.

The fact that we can’t DO some of our very recent past anymore is very troublesome to me. We haven’t been out of low earth orbit in practically my entire lifetime. And that isn’t progress.

Kennedy’s quote about space being the next ocean, and America needing to be able to sail it seems quite right to be on the wall of the US Space center. Why does it feel like we stuck our toe in, said “WOW, that’s cold” and walked away?

We finished up, and took some tired kids home. They slept a large part of the trip. They needed their strength for the last phase.

The Pictures are up now, the post will follow when the Video is done.

This turned out to be pretty easy, as Grandmother met us at the Cullman exit Crackerbarrel. Neither kid knew anything about it, and their faces when they saw her was priceless. Mary was all smiles, and William was literally trying to rip himself out of the car seat to get to her.

William was funny, as immediately after getting Grandma, he holds his hands up and to the side, and with a quizical look, “Papa?”

Papa was still at home, as his treatments haven’t left him with much energy. Thankfully they will be over soon.

We had figured that this would reduce the amount of time the kids were in the car, and give them some time with the Grandparents. They just don’t seem to get enough of that anyways! Next week was the Airshow in Huntsville, so we’d return for that. In the meantime, we had our own plans!

And no, it’s not what you think! (or us for that matter).

We bought the Kids a playfort. That was Monday Lunchtime. I’ll now show you the following week. It’s completely wrong than an entire week compresses to 30 seconds. It looks best if you press the expand icon next to the Vimeo logo. That will show the clip in 720p High def.

Playhouse Construction from Greg Nicholson on Vimeo.
Rockwalls and Upside down mounting beams SUCK.

We spent practically every available moment building this thing. Both came home at lunch, and we worked from 5 till after ten most nights to get this done before the kids returned. Jeff was quite happy at first, when on Wed, it started to storm. She actually thought I might stop and we could go eat dinner at the local Mexican place. HA! There were parts that could be constructed in the Garage. She didn’t speak very much to me that night.

I don’t think the kids missed us at all, although they did ask once if we thought about them. Oh, I assured them, they never wandered from our minds.

Last post, I showed our first look at the Baby Blue jays.

Yesterday, I was able to get a better shot of 1 of them.

Unfortunately, It’s sibling didn’t survive. Jeff and I debated about the nature of Blue Jay’s (we both thought that they were the type to push the sibling out of the nest to maximize the biggest’s chances).

I had thought a feline had taken care of it, but this morning I had to do the duty with a trash bag. Then, this afternoon, we found the remaining sibling. I don’t think there are any left. I don’t know if they left the nest too early, or what happened. I don’t think that a cat got them, they weren’t very disturbed.

Now, the issue… I tried VERY hard to make sure that Mary didn’t know what I was doing. I told her I had to take care of some stuff out in the yard, and get rid of some things that needed to go into the trash. Jeff had obviously mentioned baby bird loud enough that Mary could hear… I didn’t realize that. So, as I brought the bag back in, took care of it, and washed my hands, the inquisition began. I had thought I deflected it well enough, but when I came back in, I heard Jeff explaining that a baby bird had died, and Daddy was taking care of it.

Honestly, that was the last thing I wanted her to hear. Yes, I’m a protective parent. Yes, I have told less than the complete truth to her. I know that she’ll come to age. I want to make sure that she’s emotionally able to handle that when it happens. She still talks about her pet Kosh. I have enough problems in my heart when that comes up. I really don’t want her to make the full connection yet.

I know I can’t protect her from the fact that life includes death. Heck, some of her favorite programming is the Giant squid programs and the Killer (Humboldt) squid from the Discovery channel. She’ll quote facts and figures! from that shows all day long. And yes, it includes death. I think she does know, but it’s a theoretical knowledge.

I don’t want her to realize that it’s a real phenomenon just yet.

I certainly don’t want to field the questions, as even though she does have that incessant ‘why’ that kids have, some of her questions bite a bit, and you can tell that there is a mind behind there, probing, and trying to learn the reality. I want to enjoy the kid in her, and I want her to enjoy it. I don’t want her to grow up too quickly. It seemed that I had grown up quickly because of all of the relocations that my family went through. I feel that I came out stronger because of it and it certainly forged me, but I’d like for my kids to grow up ‘normal’.

I didn’t expect a 4 year old to have to deal with death. I was worried.

She dealt with it much better than I did. I hope it’s done and over with, and my worries were unfounded.

And yes, I’m a bit sad that the ugly UGLY bird above won’t make it to be a prettier adult. I was looking forward to watching them grow.

That being said, Having a two year old and a four year old under foot certainly makes you feel old and young again at the same time.

We’ve basically been celebrating all weekend, which is fine, as Mary Vic got to run around all weekend singing happy birthday and making birthday cards.

It’s been a good weekend. There has been so much going on, it’s hard to hit all the high points. The pool opened at Polk Place, so we spent several hours over there during the weekend. It was nice to be able to walk down there, but I have to say, it needs a bit more warming before that water is going to be really good. The kids pool was a bit chilly. The Main pool was downright cold. IF you jumped in, and stayed in, you’d be ok. You couldn’t ease in however… You’d never make it all the way. The kids, of course, were completely oblivious to the temperature. We need about a week of 85+ to get it nicer.

Papa has spent the last few months re-working our grill, and that hard work finally came to a close. Wrestling with mail order grill fulfillment has been the order of the day, complete with multiple shipments and broken grids. The supplier obviously isn’t used to drop shipments, as their packaging was completely inadequate for UPS (or Fedex for that matter). If I can’t ship servers that have been packed well without having UPS take pleasure in disassembly via tow motor and other abuses, there is no way the grids were going to make it with a single piece of Bubble wrap.

But it all came together in the end, and we cooked some burgers and hot dogs to start it up with. I managed to sear a temperature probe wire across my index finger and thumb. The wire braid over the sensor wire conducts heats ALL too well. That sucked pretty badly, but it was pretty much alright the next morning. Neither Mary or William would have anything to do with the cooking…. If they weren’t picky over everything right now, I’d take it personally. We did some trimming of the trees and bushes earlier in the day, which also allowed us to find that we have another family at the house…

They are hard to see, but there are a couple of grey little heads right at her feet. I don’t believe that she was overly happy about our discovery of them.

Mary was able to finally get a Rose bush. We waited until it was slightly cooler and less humid to plant it, but it was done. Mary dug some of the hole herself, and replaced almost ALL of the dirt herself. She was VERY proud of her gardening skills, complete with her own wheelbarrow and tools.

Papa picked up some crickets, so we had to find time to go and retrieve the smallest fishes capable of actually bitting the hook. More than a few hits on the lure and hook weren’t large enough to even think about getting the hook in their mouth. Mary and William didn’t care. I think they enjoyed the smallness of the fish, and the ability to torment them while hanging on the hook.

Monday was a bit of a washout in the afternoon, so no pool, but we did have a Birthday party. Mary acted as the officiator of presents, and William acted as the official Cake icing removal expert. Jeff has the pictures from that, so maybe they’ll come later.

The Grandparents looked after Mary and William while Jeff and I went to dinner and a movie (Indy 4). One of the high lights of the meal was the server coming by to check on us after our food was brought out. We went to a place that we had been going to since I moved to Tennessee. They have been revamping their service, definitely trying to push into the ‘upper level’ of service and food. For the most part they succeed, but it doesn’t feel the same for us anymore. The waitress was fresh from training, VERY nice, but unfortunately, we are definitely in the south. I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but in order to place our expectations in line, the phrasing of her inquiry into the preparation of our meal was toward the exemplary. “Is everything with YALL’s dinner excellent?” was the question. The dichotomy of the word choice was wonderful. And while the dinner was good, I can’t say that it was Excellent. It used to be. I want it to be. Heck, I proposed to Jeff in this place. We used to think very highly of it. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s also not as good as we remembered. They want to play in the bigger leagues, but they just aren’t there, and frankly, their metamorphosis hasn’t been the best for them in my opinion. Trying to be everything to everyone rarely works well. We’ll probably try there again in a while…. as I said, it’s not BAD, just expensive and not as good as it used to be. And we’ve got great memories there.

Indy 4 was entertaining. Suspension of Disbelief was a bit harder to come by with this movie as opposed to Raiders or Indy 3, but it was eventually fun enough that you stopped thinking about how insanely bad the realism isn’t.

Of course, one of the best gifts I could have had for my Birthday was William’s followup examination from his femur break and subsequent Spica cast. He did super well in the Xray room (for the FIRST time), and the Xray’s came out wonderfully. You can barely tell where the break occurred now on either angle, and he’s set for a followup in Six months. Unless something really drastic happens, we won’t even need to xray then. Dr. Martus was pleased with his recovery. Seeing that nearly clean Xray, especially in comparison to the previously broken shots was a wonderful gift. It’s amazing how well the body heals at this age. Dr. Martus told us in the beginning that they don’t try to match the ends of a break together, but just get them in the general area and pointing in the same direction. It’s strange to hear when they tell you that, but it does look like it’s true. He says that there isn’t much point in a followup xray after this, as it will look identical to the other bone.

Of course, that has to be peppered with a little additional ‘lookout’. Because the bone is going to heal faster and grow to match the other, it’s possible that the accelerated growth will cause the OTHER leg to be a little shorter. Of course, it’s also likely that over the next 20 years the two bones will leapfrog each other, eventually closing the gap to nothing, or effectively nothing.

Whew. That’s enough for now.

William started attending daycare last week. The owner is keeping an eye on him herself and we have tailored his return around her vacation. He went a half day on Monday and Tuesday then a full day on Wednesday. MaryVic went half a day on Monday and for a full day on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Drop off on Monday was awful. MaryVic went to class with no fuss after getting hugs from Momma and William. William who had been ignoring all talk of his imminent return to ‘school’ on Monday tried to keep on going past his classroom. There was no coercing him into the room and no one wanted to make a bad association by forcing him through the gate. Finally, the owner pulled just a little and I pushed just a little and he scooted past the gate. He had been quietly saying ‘no’ to all our entreaties…play with your friends, color, get the tractor, etcetera. The volume increased noticeably when the gate closed and he went to bawling. I sat in the office for 20 minutes listening until the owner came to talk to me. We agreed to see if he would go to breakfast and if not I would leave work to retrieve him. No one was going to pick him up and carry him, he had to get up and walk. Right then, he was laying on the floor refusing to do anything. “NO!”

He did perk up and had a nice time. He was quite happy to see me at 12:30 and didn’t really want to wait for his sister to get out of the lunch room. He would point at the door, take a few steps, and look back at me, annoyed at his escape being delayed. We all went home, took naps and had a nice afternoon.

Tuesday, both of them went to class without fuss. MaryVic was excited to see her class was in with Williams. She went through the gate while I whisper hissed, “Mary, grab your brother’s hand!” She turned around and said, “William! Come On!” He ran on in after her, pausing to enthusiastically wave bye to me. I ran!

I picked him up at 12:30. I had time to chat with the owner who said he was much doing better than she expected. There was one piece of the playground equipment they were not letting him get on but it was more them not being ready for him to be on it. William was happy to see me again and we spent another afternoon at home.

MaryVic wanted both parents to pick her up so William and I waited for Greg to come home before getting her. Of course, she then fussed about being picked up late! Fortunately the distress didn’t last long since it was Tuesday night and time for the weekly visit to see Cow at Chik-Fil-A.

William’s special balloon surprise. It was slow when we got there so Sean Hughes the Balloon Guy made more elaborate balloons for the children present.

William loved his balloon man and couldn’t decide which way to wear it.

Minnie Mouse ears were very popular with the girls.

The Cow is a ham and cut up with Greg some. He really interacts with customers, stealing milk, asking for phones and cameras, and high-fiving everyone. He does like to have his picture taken.

Wednesday William went to class without a problem, waving bye to me. MaryVic was unhappy despite big hugs from Mom and brother. Unlike before the ‘break’, William gave her a huge hug each day. He stayed all day at daycare. I was worried he would be fussy after nap. We had a note from the owner about trying Tuesday through Friday of the following week.

William was tired each day and we made sure he had a warm bath with epsom salts at night. Otherwise there were no issues.

The daycare did move the teacher who was in the room when the break occurred, to caring for a different age group. The new teacher is the one he had prior to being moved to the 2 year old room. The trucks the children were pushing have been removed from the room.

Now for some pictures of our time at home…

I couldn’t resist taking these pictures of the kids waving bye to Daddy on Friday morning. MaryVic had been borrowing my bedroom slippers but the slippers were upstairs. I let her borrow some of the shoes I had stashed in the pantry and William snagged a pair too. They clattered around for part of the morning before returning the shoes to me.

And that’s all the pictures I have of them at home!

Everyone at work has been super nice and welcoming my return. I am still on intermittent FMLA leave until the first or second week of June. The first full week at daycare for William will be the first week of June. This lets me have the flexibility to be available should any issues arise. Currently I have no sick leave so once I’m off FMLA completely, Greg gets to be the point man for child care. Sick leave accrues at 8 hours per month so what are the odds that the kids will get sick in the first month of daycare?

Thankfully everything has worked out in all areas of our family life from my job, my availability to care for William, Greg’s ability to provide for our family when my income went to nearly nothing, toys from friends and family to entertain the ‘stuck’ little boy, little mother MaryVic, the return to normal going smoothly so far, and many other things big and small. Hopefully everything will continue to progress in a positive manner. Now that our time will be more crunched between work and the home front, I anticipate that our blogs will be less frequent although I hope we can pause and share our lives with our family and friends on the weekends. Maybe at naptimes like now!

William’s next appointment with the doctor is May 27. His leg will be x-rayed to be sure it has healed or it is continuing to heal well. We are not anticipating any problems and will be sure to let everyone know what the doctor says about it.