Making A Scarecrow

There's a great Fall Harvest Festival in Rockford, and one of the things to do is make your own Scarecrow. For $6, they give you all the supplies to make it, and some of the proceeds go to charity. So we went and made our first Scarecrow this Saturday along with Ginny, Spencer, and Greta. We think he turned out pretty well, and he's now standing guard over our front porch.

(That day we also made our first trip to the Rockford Farmer's Market -- a great local market! I can't wait to go back.)

Jed

Buh-Buh-Bus!

Owen's love affair with school buses continues -- this picture is from our departure for an overnight choir retreat last weekend. Since Grosse Pointe doesn't have any school buses, he's been having a blast watching all the buses go by all day every day in Rockford. And he always yells "Bus!" when one goes by or "Buh-Buh-Bus" if he sees two or more together. Fun!

Jed

A little night-time story

Once upon a time, I was a little one who sometimes crept into my parents' room at night and would crawl into their bed. I quickly learned that if I got in on Mom's side, I'd soon be on the floor, in a sleeping bag she kept under the bed for these occasions. If I picked Dad's side, I got to stay on the bed. He might not allot much space, but he let me stay. Mom has always said that a double bed is just too small to add a little one.

Flash forward to September, 2008. Since we moved, Owen has been having a tough time sleeping in his new room. There were several nights last week when he'd wander in at 12:30 or 1, flip on our big overhead light, and crawl in our bed. One night in particular, he was unwilling to fall back asleep for, oh, 5 hours. Quite a departure from his usual habits. (with help from Dr. Ferber, we've mostly solved these problems with the following post-move adaptations: 1. no closed door; 2. later bedtime, earlier wakeup (so he's more tired at bedtime); 3. make his room more welcoming (we put his bookshelves back in); 4. play in bedroom during the day so it's more familiar.)

But the problems are a sidebar to my reaction. For the past 20 years or more, I've assumed that when the time came, I'd welcome my children to bed like Dad did for me. It seemed completely obvious to me. It turns out that I'm just like Mom in this case -- GET that child back in his OWN bed!! I swear, at 1AM Owen turns into some strange creature made entirely of elbows and knees. Mandy is more welcoming, but since he ends up in the middle, I've had to draw the line several times in the last few weeks.

Mostly I just think it's funny -- the difference between the parent I thought I was and the parent I am. And it sure vindicated the Queen to know that after all these years, I agree with her!

As you can see, we're finally back online after a struggle. For curious techies, cable and DSL aren't available in our neck of the (literal) woods, so our choices were dialup or Satellite internet. OK, our choice was Satellite. When the first installer (DISH Network) couldn't find a location, we picked a second one (HughesNet) which would cost $400 upfront on top of a minimum $60/month. That's for speeds somewhere between DSL and dialup and a 200MB download limit per day, after which they either shut you off or limit your speed to 56K. OUCH! Luckily, my sister-in-law Ginny sparked a memory at the last minute of an article by David Pogue. Long and short, we now have a Sprint data card hooked into a USB port. It's fairly brisk compared, though not blazing. And we're here. I expect we'll start more regular posting again soon, including pictures and such!

Jed