Life Moves Fast

Taking a moment to gather my thoughts and reflect on dad-hood has been tougher and tougher. It has been almost a month and half, and the things that need reflecting are many.
The Holidays.
The holidays came and went without much incident. Tiernan got his train table so he’s happy. Here’s a hint for all you parents of toddlers obsessed with Thomas and his gang of “Really Useful” but wallet emptying friends, Step2,-- the folks that make outside plastic play stuff like houses and sandboxes makes a train table. It is plastic and all the “tracks” are molded plastic. Everything is preset. All train sets, as well as Matchbox cars, fit on the tracks/roads. There are hills and bridges and my son loves it. And here is the best part. It comes with a cover. You can put the cover on it becomes a regular play-table.
Tiernan got one for Christmas. He loves it and the trains seem to enjoy it, as well. Tiernan got a bunch of toys, Reagan got a bunch of toys. Tiernan was so happy with his train table he decided he didn’t want to open his last four presents. It was nice. Not great but nice. Reagan’s first Christmas was much like Tiernan’s uneventful.
Ok, everyone with two kids under four that had a fantastic/super-special/unbelievable/one-in-lifetime New Years Eve please raise your hands. Nobody. We didn’t either. We went to our friends house, took the kids with us. Tiernan didn’t feel good. We went home at 11 o’clock, put the kids to sleep, watched the ball fall on the couch, kissed my wife and went to bed. Such is the life of a parent.
Tiernan’s Birthday.
Tiernan turned 3 on 1/3. It was like Christmas all over again. I went down the basement grabbed the left over Christmas presents and gave them to Tiernan. He opened them, he likes them, he plays with them. All is happy and shiny.
The Daughter
Reagan is growing up so fast as well. Just before Christmas we took her to the doctor for her check-up. She was 19 lbs, 15 oz. We’re gonna call that 20 lbs. and 27 and half inches. Dr. Wong declare her to be perfect. Teeth continue to sprout. She’s a pretty good eater, she no longer wishes to eat baby food and wants to eat, “human food” so we are introducing more and more table foods. We’ve almost completely stopped buying baby food. She is doing very well.
The Major News.
For those of you who have been following along for months, we have been trying to get Tiernan potty trained since August. We didn’t really start pushing hard until after Thanksgiving. It was with pride and trepidation (because saying it will jinx it) that I can declare that my son, Tiernan is potty trained. No more diapers for my boy. Even at night. He’s wearing underwear and keeping everything dry. The boy is brilliant.
And he’s getting smarter, because potty-trained equals pre-school. He started pre-school last week thrice a week for 2 and half hours. The kids loves it. I drop him off and he barely even looks back at me. The teacher seems to gush over him. “He such a good boy. He goes to the potty. He listens so well. He gets along with the other children. He’s great.”
To which, he responds, “Yeah….I know,” in a awe-shucks voice. Brilliant.
The Ride
The last of the big news, I am no longer a minivan driver. Longtime readers with will know the three part saga of the minivan which I bought last June, well last week I traded it in for a Ford Freestyle. Higher gas mileage, higher value, higher self-esteem. Who needs sliding doors?

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Sick Puppy

The other night as we were preparing to attend Tiernan’s first Big Time college basketball game, the St. Peter’s College Peacocks vs. the Seton Hall Pirates. (FYI: My wife and I are SPC alumni.) We about to walk out the door, all decked out in our SPC gear, including Tiernan when the boy begins to vomit all over his new Saint Peter’s College t-shirt and, perhaps more importantly, the living room rug.
As my wife makes a mad dash for the cleaning products, I shepherd Tiernan into the bathroom, for another round of reverse yawning. I instruct him using gentle, soothing tones to aim the stream of yuckiness into the toilet. Because he is the quick study, that he is, he soon figures out how to aim his vomit and further mess is avoided.
After he finishes, after a few dry heaves and a thorough face washing, he looks up at me and says, “Daddy, What was that? What’d I do? What happened?” And then it dawned on me that this was the first time that he’s vomited as a conscious thinking sentient being. He’s only 2 and half, and this is the first time anything has forced itself out of his throat since he was an infant. Its the first time that he knows he’s getting sick.
I thought to myself, what a weird feeling that has to be. The poor little guy must be feeling like his body just played a trick on him. He was so sincere, “Daddy What happened? What did I do?” He wanted to understand what just happened and, thankfully, he wanted to know how to make it not happen again. All he knew was something weird just happened and it was not fun-weird.
I explained to him that he didn’t do anything wrong, and sometimes our bodies just get sick. Something goes wrong in our bellies and the only way to make it right is to shoot it out through our mouth. I told him that everybody gets sick. “Even Mommy and Daddy?” he asked. I said everybody gets sick, even Maggie our puppy gets sick.
After that little episode he seemed to feel much better. However, we never made to the basketball game, though. Just as well, St. Peter’s got beat pretty bad.

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The Police and the Halloweenie

It is Halloween, and its going much as I suspected it would. Tiernan doesn’t want to put on his costume, and he is being a real brat about it. Carrying on, throwing fits and tantrums. And my wife, who took the day off from work for the festivities finally, pulls out one of the old tricks in the Parent Trick Bag. She says, “If you are not a good boy, the police are going to come and arrest you!!”
Have I mentioned somewhere in this blogsphere, that Tiernan loves “COPS”, not necessary actual police officers, but the show COPS. From the time Tiernan was 24 months old, we let him watch COPS. Now, some might call it a lapse of judgement, but we prefer to call an early Actions-Have-Consequences and Bad People Go to Jail/ Lesson. For more on the COPS thing, check out an earlier blog on the subject.
The policeman’s coming threat works every time. Every parent has used “the Police will come and get you” line. And if you haven’t you should consider it, because A.) it works and B.) it instills a healthy respect for the boys in blue and C.) it works every time. I have seen Moms at the mall use it and all the other parents look around and give each other a knowing grin. Some even join in the lie, “Say, do I hear sirens?”
So, we’ve finally, got everybody’s Halloween costume on. Tiernan, a handsome and brave Sir Knight complete with helmet and sword and Reagan, a green and purple Dragon complete with wings. Nobody ever mentioned to Tiernan that knights slay dragons. And if they did, we never told him what slaying means.
Everybody is dressed and everybody looks cute. As we walk out the door, one of the town’s police cars is driving by the house. The officer sees the two kids in costume and backs up and pulls in front of the house. Tiernan sees the cop car stopping and the policeman getting out and coming toward the house. The boy freaks out in a total full-on state of toddler hysteria, tears, read face, shaking, stomping of feet. “No, Mommy, No, I’ll be good.” My wife and I, start reassuring Tiernan that its OK and he’s a good boy. The poor cop, who is the local DARE, anti-drug officer just wants to do some community relations and give the cute kids some candy on Halloween doesn’t know what to do. He’s thinking, “What the heck did I do? Do I keep going or get back in the car and drive away?”
Eventually, everything is settled down and the brave sir knight and the dragon made their rounds and collected a whole bunch of candy which was then passed up the line to me in tribute for my benevolent Kingship. When it comes to Halloween candy, we all must tithe to the boss. It is good to be the king, even if it makes me a Halloweenie.

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Share and Share Alike

The hardest part about having two kids, is not the juggling act – not attempting to provide the same level of attention or care to both kids, that is easy. Not the sleepless nights associated with a eight month-old’s teething. Not the juggling the different dietary needs of the little ones. Not the extra laundry. The hardest part of having two kids is getting the older one to share. And not just his own toys, but his sister’s toys.
  Anything that Reagan picks up to explore is soon swatted out of her hands to a chorus of, “Hey, that’s mine.” Anything. No matter if it’s a Thomas train or a plush dolly or an Matchbox car or a building block, or Pooh or Pigglet. Everything is his. He can be totally engrossed in whatever he’s doing and not even realize that his sister is in the room. But if he looks up from the train that he’s been meticulously constructing and sees that Reagan has something in her hand and a smile on her face -- Tiernan feels that it is his duty to remove both of them.
  I am tired of telling him to share. “You have to share your toys.” “You have to share your stuff.” “Reagan, can play with that you are playing with your trains.” “Give that back to her and say you’re sorry.” “Say you’re sorry.” “Give it back.” “Don’t take that from her.” “If you touch a toy that Reagan is playing with again, I will throw away one of your toys.” “You have to share.” “You have to share.” “You have to share.” “You have to share.” “You must share.” “You must share!” “YOU MUST SHARE!!!!!”
  It is baffling to me, because Tiernan is really good at sharing when it comes to other people. He understands that if we’re on the playground and he has two toys and another child comes over and wants to play, he should give one toy to his new friend. And he does. He is willing to share on the playground with strangers, but with his sister, he refuses to share his stuff.
  In his defense, most of the stuff was at one point his and only his. Most of the “baby toys” were toys that he played with at Reagan’s age. Now, he has moved on to bigger and better toys, but any time the girls touches a toy, there he is asserting his ownership rights.
  This must be the beginnings of a sibling rivalry. One of my biggest fears about having two kids was handling sibling stuff. As an only child it is hard for me to grasp how Tiernan feels about his sister and vice-versa when it comes to things like parental attention, playing favorites, and sharing space and the world with a rival. Now, I am trying to find a way to bring peace to the chaos, and allow Reagan to same opportunity to explore and learn that Tiernan, when it came to toys and experiences.
  I was always both amazed and very proud of the way Tiernan developed. And to pat myself on the back, I was proud of job that myself and my wife did in guiding him on his journey as he developed to skills to make advanced development possible. I want Reagan to have the same skill set.  Sometimes I think that I worry too much about whether Reagan is getting the right experiences and doing all the things that are necessary to develop the skills she needs to take the next steps.
  Is my need to keep Tiernan happy, active, healthy and safe, and the attention that is required to keep him from hurting himself detracting from the attention that Reagan needs to develop the skills she needs for the next three months? Or does the presence of an older sibling and the things that can be learned from watching her brother, compensate for the parental attention diverted by a need to be responsible for two children? In other words, will she learn more from her brother than from me? And if that is the case, should I spend more time worrying about raising Tiernan, since he will be a big factor in developing her future skills? Which brings me back to how to I get Tiernan to share, his toys and his knowledge with Reagan?
 

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Tripping Over Milestones

It has been awhile since I’ve had the time gather my thoughts and put them in blog form. Here are some of the things you, gentle reader, have missed.
Reagan, the daughter, is no longer a pagan. She became a member of the Roman Catholic Church Aug. 20, in a lovely baptismal ceremony that she completely slept through, including the water being poured on her head. And like many Catholics, she hasn’t been back to church since. In fairness to her, we were away on vacation for two Sundays, away visiting her grandfather another and she was sick last Sunday.
In other developments, Reagan is also no longer stationary. She crawls!!!! And she’s fast and getting faster. She crawls, she sits up, she pulls herself up on tables, she crawls up and down the step to the den, she tries to crawl off the changing table, and this development is perhaps the biggest reason why I have not had the chance to write a blog entry. As ESPN’s Dan Patrick says, “You can’t stop her. You can only hope to contain her.”
In another de-velop-ing sit-ua-tion, to paraphrase Bill Pidto another ESPNer. Reagan has sprouted teeth, two teeth in her bottom gum, and she is currently cutting a few more, which means she is both mobile and unhappy, and wet. The arrival of teeth is heralded by the opening of the drool floodgates. The poor little girl’s chin and neck are always damp.
While the fact that she is crawling and pulling herself up on tables and couches is great, however, she still has not figured out how to fall, or that certain actions will result in falling. So, she falls and hits her head on the rug quite a bit which means there is a crying factor involved. Kids fall and hit their heads, until they acquire the skills to break their fall, or get used to the feeling of falling. I don’t think the crying is from the contact as much from the shock and the feeling of helplessness that come with a fall. As adults falling can be unsettling, for an infant, falling must feeling like skydiving.
I suspect the thought progression is something like this, “Look at me, hanging on the couch with one hand. This is cool. Whoa! Whoa! I am falling, I am falling. BANG. Hey, that wasn’t cool. I’m hurt. My head, I am hurt. I must let out an audible cry so the big creature that feeds and cleans me will know that I may be badly hurt and in need of serious medical attention. WHAAAA!!!! WHAAAA!!! Hey, wait a minute. If I open my eyes and look around, I am only inches from where I was prior to the fall. And the cry seems to have a clearing affect on my head and I no longer feel that pain I felt a second ago. That didn’t hurt that much at all. Oh wait, here comes that large male caregiver. I better make it look as though I am really hurt, otherwise he’ll ignore my cries in the future. Whaaaa!!! Lungs: breath harder, short breaths. Eyes: make with the tears. Not too many just enough to show him that we mean business. OK, he’s picked me up, and is consoling me. Yes, the soft pats on my back make me feel much better. Resume normal breathing. Stop crying and end the tear production. OK he’s putting us back on the rug. Excellent. All functions operating normally, now where is that couch I was climbing on?”
Now, the den is stocked with at least 15,000 various in sundry toys that, you think would appeal to a creature with a developing — if not already keen interest in all things bright and shiny. Objects created to stimulate just such a mind. But these toddler jewels, go unnoticed by little Reagan. What is she attracted to? The step up to the living room. And developing her own ability to navigate up and down said step. As an experienced parent, I know that a 7 month old spending her day playing on a step will eventually end with a trip to the emergency room. Maybe not the first day but, if you allow this behavior to continue, and you throw in an overactive older brother by the end of the week you get a baby with a permanent scar. And nobody wants that, especially on a little girl. You might be able to get away with it on a little boy, because chicks dig scars, but not a beautiful little princess.
So to avoid the permanent scar, I adopted the Ottoman Doctrine. Which means that we place a small ottoman, which fills up half the doorway and fill the other half with large throw pillows, thus creating an padded obstacle for the infant, and path for the rest of the family. The Ottman Doctrine is only a temporary fix, because by this time next week, Reagan will have the ability and will to climb the pillow hill and gain unabated access to the rest of the house. However, the Ottoman Doctrine prevents a trip to the emergency room and possible visit from Child Services.
Speaking of the emergency room, I had my first trip to the ER as a parent. The week before vacation, Tiernan developed Pink Eye. It started with a green ooze from his left eye and a trip to the pediatrician proved useless as it was misdiagnosed as a the body’s natural cleansing of a piece of sand in the eye. However, when the other eye started oozing ectoplasm I knew we had larger problem. After a nap, Tiernan could not get his eyes open as a result of being caked closed. And then after they were pried open, he said he could not see. So, we went up the ER at HUMC.
There is such a thing as a pediatric ER. A whole ER with separate waiting rooms, patient rooms, and procedure rooms just for the little ones. Complete with TVs in each room. It was I dare say a pleasure. No dealing with scary old people with old people sounds, fluids and smells. No stabbing victims, no gunshot wounds, it was very nice. Toys and books for the kids to keep them occupied while they wait. If you have kids and they need medical attention and you are in the HUMC area stop in. You won’t be disappointed.
The folks at HUMC prescribed some drops and the Pink Eye was banished in a matter of days, with out further infection to other family members. Another victory in the war on germs.
There are three basic rules of parenting. I mean the bare bones of being a parent are made up of these three tenets:
1.) Avoid Death. Keep your kids alive. It doesn’t get more basic than that.
2.) Avoid The ER. This is closely linked to no. 1., but can be harder to follow. But, it is your duty to do your best to keep your child out of the emergency room. I am not saying that a trip to the emergency room equals bad parenting, but if this is your third trip because you child keeps playing with fire and burning himself, you might want to rethink your approach to parental supervision.
3.) Avoid The Permanent Scar. Again closely related to Nos. 1 & 2, but harder to avoid. Everybody has permanent scarring somewhere, at some time in life well lived the body becomes deformed somehow, either through an act of God or an act of foolishness. It is you duty as a parent, to ensure that the later does not happen to your child while in your care. If stepping over a throw pillow 20 times a-day, can help stop your little girl from breaking her nose before she’s a year old, throw the pillow down and step around.

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"What's That, Dad?"

Yeah, its Sept. 11. I spent most of the morning fighting back tears. I woke up and looked out the window at 7:10 a.m. saw that it was a beautiful crystal blue sky and said, “The weather is just like five years ago.”
I watched the beginning of the reading of the names ceremony and quickly had to flip to something else. The kids were great. Tiernan was in the den playing with his toys and occasionally watching Noggin. He’s just trying to figure out why Daddy is walking around the house wiping his eyes and mumbling “fucking bastards” under his breath.
Reagan was with me in the nook just hanging out, literally hanging from the Baby Bjorn, the handsfree device that allows the child to hang from you chest and keeps parental hands free. The American Indians called it a papoose.
As I flipped through the channels, MSNBC was replaying the coverage from Sept. 11 as it happened, in real time in 2006. And, since I had never seen it, because I was working that day, I could not tear away from it. I watched the first tower fall and as the second tower collapsed. I was full of sorrow and anger and pain, with tears streaming down my face. As I watch the smoke and dust fill lower Manhattan, Tiernan walks in, looks that the TV and says, “What’s that, Dad?” Then he looks at me and says, “Are you OK?”
For a moment I had to try to figure out what to say to him. Finally, I said, “I am fine. It is just a very sad day,” then between choking back sobs I said, “five years ago, before you were born, a bunch of bad men did a very bad thing and a lot of people were hurt.”
The tragedy that is 9-11 continues to find new ways to infuriate me. First and foremost is all those lives cut short and all the victims families that have to carry on.
Next, is the loss of innocence. As I said earlier, it was a beautiful day. And I can never wake to a beautiful morning without thinking, “This is the type of day in was Sept. 11, 2001.” These fucking bastards have tainted one of Gods most precious gifts, a beautiful day.
Next, is the emptiness in the New York skyline. I loved to look at the World Trade Center. It was a testament of mans genius, an engineering marvel. They were beautiful buildings. Another gift from God taken from us.
Now, for the first time, I had to explain this barbarism, this senseless slaughter of innocents and innocence to my 2 year old son. That is something I should not have to do. Thankfully, he is still too young to understand any of this, beyond, bad men did bad things. But, eventually, I will have to tell him and my precious daughter what happened five years ago.
How do you explain it to a preteen child? A bunch of men hijacked a plane. “Daddy, what does hijack mean?” Well, it means that they took control of the plane. They bullied everybody into letting them fly where they wanted the plane to fly. And then they flew the planes so that they would crash into buildings. “These men forced the pilots to crash into buildings? What about the other passengers, Daddy?” Well, pumpkin, the hijackers killed the pilots and flew the planes themselves.
The act that I have just described is almost too much for the brain the process. Men took control of planes full of people, killed the pilots, and crashed the planes on purpose. Try to forget for a moment that almost 3,000 people died in the buildings. Just getting your head around the first part of this terrible event is difficult. “Why, daddy?” Because they don’t like Americans. “Why not, daddy?”
You see where this is going, right. I am not sure I have answers to the questions that my kids will eventually ask me. And the very idea that I have answer these questions pisses me off and steels my resolve and feeds my hatred of these bastards.
For now, bad men did bad things. And I picked up my 2 year old son and hugged him and told him that I loved him. And he hugged his 7 month old sister and looked at me and said, “Dad, lets go to the park.” And we went to the park and moved on. Soon the only person crying was Dylan, the redhead that cries when he doesn’t get his way and doesn’t know how to share.

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Carry-On Baggage

For a half-hour last Wednesday night the weather and the mosquitoes cooperated and allowed my two year old, Tiernan, and I to sit out on the deck and watch the airplanes.  Tiernan is going through an airplane phase. He’s very interested in planes. And he’s lucky, because we live almost directly under the landing path of two major airports. We are a stone’s throw from Teterboro and about 10 miles from Newark Liberty International. For a kid who loves airplanes, we live in a target rich environment.
  It was kind of magical. We were having a great time. I was having fun, looking at the planes and telling Tiernan what planes were going where. “Planes going East or that way,” I would point toward the front of the house, “are going to Teterboro. They fly that way and turn in the sky then fly over Grandma and Grandpa’s house and come around and land at Teterboro Airport.” And Tiernan would get all excited. Then a big jet would fly south on approach to Newark. “That one is going to land at Newark,” I’d say and then I would quiz Tiernan, “Where is that plane going?” and he would answer either Newark or Teterboro.
  Then I started to teach him about directions, North, South, East, and West. He was very interested, he didn’t quite get it, which is understandable since it was the first time he was learning about directions.
  Then Tiernan would spy a plane that was way up in the stratosphere and ask me where that plane was going. And I would say, “Oh, that one way up there is going North and may be going to maybe Boston or Montreal in Canada.” He would point to other planes flying too high to be landing anywhere nearby. “That one might be flying to Europe, probably London’s Heathrow Airport or Dublin Airport or Shannon Airport in Ireland,” I’d say.
  It was a Father/Son moment. Guy stuff. Talking about flying machines and directions. I remember thinking that I have always had a great sense of direction, and I wonder if he is going to be blessed in the same way. It was just another daddy fantasy, playing “The I Wonder If Game.”
  And more than just guy stuff. It was a special moment in time. Tiernan was enthralled and listening to every word and paying attention. I wasn’t being discipline daddy, I was just hanging out being Dad. I was able to look at airplanes in a different way, to see them through his eyes, as these great cool machines that fly through the air. I was able to get into his head and try to ask the questions that he had but couldn’t speak just yet. It allowed to view planes as an innocent child again. To see them as magical machines that make cool noise and can soar like birds.
  It was the first time that I looked at an airliner as a just a plane and not a weapon that may kill me since 9/11. On that faithful Tuesday in 2001, I was walking across Fifth Ave to my office in Greenwich Village, a block north of Washington Square, when I heard an airline flying very, very low behind me. By the time I turned around it was behind the buildings and I couldn’t see it. But, I remember saying to the stranger that was passing me, “That is not good. That guy is flying too low.”  And I continued walking to me office, and as I sat down at my desk, my phone rang and my wife called to tell me that a plane had just slammed into the World Trade Center. After that, I went back downstairs and walked back to Fifth Ave, where I could get a great view of the Towers. And while I was watching the North Tower burn, the second airline hit. I couldn’t see the plane, I just saw the huge fireball. And I knew that none of this was an accident and my world was about to change. And the feeling of security and innocence in America was gone.
  After the attacks, every time I looked up at a jet liner, I thought is that the next one to kill thousands? Every time the big jets on approach to Newark would alter their flaps or reduce engine power creating a strange noise, I would get a jolt of adrenaline. Look up and prepare to run. In the years since the attacks, the thoughts of airliners as death machines had diminished, but if I stared at a plane flying across the sky for too long. It would stir up all those 9/11 feelings, the anger, the fear, the heartache. And I would stop looking at the plane and concentrate on something else and go about my business.
  So last Wednesday, Tiernan and I watching the planes fly by and I am enjoying the father/son moment, and I didn’t have a single feeling of dread or fear. The evening was so nice and cool, the sky was so clear, and the excitement that Tiernan was exhibiting was so innocent, the combination chased the ghosts of 9/11 from my psyche. Eventually, it got too dark and late and it was time for Tiernan to go to bed.
  As I drifted off to sleep, I remember thinking that it was pretty cool night. My son and I shared a moment. That is the payoff for being a parent and since the weather was supposed to stay cool and clear, maybe we’d be able to do it again the next night.
  I woke up to the television telling me that the British authorities had disrupted a planned terrorist attack involving the blowing apart of 10 airliners from  London’s Heathrow Airport bound for America. I thought, this is a joke right. These Bastards have managed to taint a memory of my spending time with my son, as he marveled at the magic of flight. Now, I will never be able to look back on our night of plane watching without thinking about the thwarted plot. Thank God, that they weren’t able to pull of the attacks. However, the plot had its victims, just as my innocence was beginning to get off the canvas after being knocked down on 9/11, just as it was being helped up to one knee by the purity of a child, these bastards, came along again and punched it in the back of the head. And once again, in my psyche, planes are not magical vehicles, but vehicles of murder.
  Thankfully, Tiernan is too young to comprehend terrorism and the dangers of air travel. To a two-year-old every plane is cool. It is only the adults that carry the extra baggage that can never be checked. Unfortunately, it is a carry-on that I may never be able to put down.

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No Autographs, Please

Your humble Poop Truck driver is a minor, very minor celebrity in the small world of stay-at-home moms and dads. Back in May, I was interviewed for an article about stay-at-home dads in Bergen County to appear in Bergen Health & Life magazine. It was nice interview and there was even a photo shoot with me and the kids. They sent a team of photographer type people to snap some shots of Daddio and Tiernan and Reagan.
  It was all very exciting, but I’d all but forgotten about it. Until, I walked into Gymobree on Tuesday with Reagan, and the Diane, the Gymobree site manager, calls to, “Kevin! Kevin! Look!!!” and she points to the bulletin board and there is the article with a full page picture of me and the kids as the opening to the story.
  I read the story, which was very well done by writer Jeff Iorio and even I am impressed with how smart I sound when quoted. For those of you that don’t subscribe to Bergen Life & Health, (of which I am one, in fact I’d never even heard of the magazine before the being asked to do the interview) I am told that you can probably pick it up at Barns & Noble, provided that I didn’t come in and buy up all their copies myself.
  In other news: Tiernan has crossed what is, in my opinion, a major threshold in his development and just in time for foot ball season.
  He has gained enough strength in his arms or learned to leverage his weight in such a way that he can open the refrigerator door. I noticed him do this earlier this week and Wednesday, while I was feeding Reagan her rice/gruel and applesauce Tiernan wanted some cheese. So, I told him to open the refrigerator and get the cheese and bring it to me and I would open the package for him. He did so, without making a mess or doing anything else that would earn him a Time Out.
   Now, he will be able to get me a beer while the game is on. Life is getting better.
 

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