Hiking

Kayaking

Kayaking with Boppa

Swimming/Snorkeling with Boppa

Fishing

“Birdwatching”

Sculpture Climbing

They reported that, between the two of them, they saw 199 species of birds (they each saw 198, and each saw one that the other did not see). Apparently, there are “as many as 450 species of birds” in Alaska, which means they saw 44% of the species that inhabit the state.

I guess they’ll have to go back to finish the job.

The preliminary report of their trip did not include any data as to how many of these birds were new to their life list, but I’m sure that information will be provided in a subsequent report (or at least as a comment on this post).

He is thrilled with it.

Well, somehow, that evolved into Alana needing a bike, which became an early Christmas present from Boppa and J for her. Shocker…it’s pink!

J made several laps around the cul de sac teaching Alana that, to stop, she needed to just turn the pedals backward instead of putting her feet down.

Within two days, Alana had mastered the bike, and she now not only cruises the cul de sac endlessly, but she’s done larger loops on the bike trail with big brother Benton.

This first picture is not just of Alana and Carson doing the dishes one evening. It is also the last recorded picture of that glass in Alana’s hand being in one piece. 15 seconds after the picture was taken…it slipped out and shattered in the sink.

As much as Benton likes to skip rocks, I have a sneaking suspicion he’s going to experiment with pitching sidearmed some time in the next year or two.

Alana, Alana, Alana…

We really don’t expect her to become a Texas Tech Red Raider…but you never know…

J and Boppa stopped in for a few hours (doing laundry en route from the Arctic to Massachusetts for a weeklong class on shorebirds), and Alana recruited J to read to her on the deck for a bit:

Carson spent some alone time on the dock throwing rocks.

And…posing before jumping back into the water:

For as long as I can remember, and becoming a more openly discussed topic after Kim and I had left home and my parents were back to travelling as a couple rather than as a fullblown couple-with-kids, my dad’s engineer/early-riser/better-safe-than-sorry approach to trips has been, “Figure out how early you can start packing…and then start a day or two earlier.” My mother’s approach has always been, “If it wasn’t for the last minute, a lot of things wouldn’t get done.”

They headed out yesterday for a trip up towards the Arctic Circle. That means that, in a span of just a year or two, they will be putting themselves in a fairly small group of civilians who have spanned this broad of a range of latitudes. An excerpt from the e-mail that my dad sent out on Friday that gave Julie and me both a good chuckle:

Well, we are off to Ottawa on Saturday and your mother has been packed for a couple of days – first time ever. We are actually going to a live show and dinner tonight. I just got an email that we won’t be boarding our ship in Resolute, but in Nanisivik, instead, due to ice near Resolute. Perhaps they are being overly cautious due to the tour boat that hit ice in the Antarctic earlier this year and sank. Or, it may be that the mild earthquake caused by your mother getting herself packed and ready early shook the ice loose.

Happy travels, folks!

Jack and Ed went to Costa Rica with my parents earlier this year, and Jack has now guest-written about the experience on the 10,000 Birds blog. It’s an interesting read, with some great pictures from the trip. The second of the two pictures that includes humans — about halfway through the post — features the backs and Tilley Hats of my parents.

She appears to be pretty steadily on the mend. There is still some fluid around her heart, but she’s been given the all-clear to head home and simply avoid super-strenuous activity. She’ll go back next week for another echo cardiogram to see how things are progressing.

Less than two weeks ago, she pulled off a 10-hour day hike on the South Rim in Big Bend. Chasing birds, of course. And, from several accounts, that went fine. This was at the tail end of a mult-week birding trip that ranged across a good portion of the state of Texas.

Within a few days of that trip ending, she got what looked to be a nasty cold — the sort of thing that seemed like, “I’ve been pushing my body awfully hard, and, now that it’s realized I can relax a bit, it’s going to knock me flat for a couple of days.” Or, as she put it, her “once-per-decade illness where she basically slept from midnight last Tuesday until 7:00 AM last Thursday.” The kicker was when she woke up with acute chest pain Wednesday night, which resulted in a 4.5-hour trip to the doctor on Thursday. They drew a bunch of blood, took some X-rays, and sent her home with prednisone, some antibiotics, an inhaler, and instructions to self-monitor her situation.

By Sunday, she really wasn’t any better, so she returned to the doctor on Monday. That’s when the pericarditis diagnosis was made. That’s a treatable inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the heart, typically brought on by some sort of infection (and, I can’t help but think, exacerbated by a multi-week strenuous schedule) and is imminently treatable. But, that led to a trip to the cardiologist yesterday (Tuesday), where the diagnosis was confirmed. The cardiologist almost sent her home, but, at the last minute, decided to check her in to the hospital instead — both so they can monitor her more closely and so she’ll be more accessible as they try to determine the details around the root infection that brought all this on, so they can more effectively treat it.

The latest secondhand (thirdhand, actually: doctor –> my mom –> my dad –> me) information I have as of mid-morning this morning is that they think she probably has or has had some sort of viral infection. They are seeing something unusual with her liver function so are running tests of both that and the gall bladder as a precaution. They don’t think they will find anything but while they have her in the hospital, they are just being sure.

The cardiologist may rerun the electrocardiogram this afternoon, as he is going to be out of the office tomorrow. He doubts that there will have been much change.  He has a partner who will do the same tomorrow and may discharge her if there has been some improvement, but she will probably be going to his office every other day for a bit to rerun the tests and then move to monthly for 6 months.

That’s all for now.

So, what happens when grandparents come for a visit while you are getting to wear your princess underpants? The same thing that happens if you have a new hat, a new doll, or a new book: you show them off!

Imagine my surprise, though, when Alana wandered into the kitchen and very articulately asked to see Boppa’s (Grandpa Larry’s) blue underpants so she could look at the pictures? Not only did she know the color of his boxers, but she also knew they had pictures. Hmmmm…..

We were quickly able to ferret out the details that led to the request:

1. Alana was in the basement with J (Grandma Jane), showing off and prattling on about her princess underpants
2. It suddenly occurred to Alana that J might have princess underpants on, too, so she asked to see them!
3. J, being a doting grandmother, obliged (albeit without the full-on gusto with which Alana likes to show off her underpants)
4. Alana was disappointed with the result — not pink, no princesses
5. J saw the consternation on Alana’s face and, as she is prone to do when interacting with her grandkids, blurted out a thought without thinking through the possible consequences: “Boppa has pictures on his underpants!”
6. Enter innocent, unsuspecting, equally doting grandfather
7. “Boppa, can I see the pictures on your underpants?”

The rest is history.

Working backwards from my current position 30,000 feet in the air en route from Detroit to Austin.

First off, when checking in for the flight, I went through my ritual “check for better seats” (Northwest didn’t have the ability to do this from home, as far as I could tell). I was already in an exit row on the Columbus-Detroit leg, so no change. For Detroit-Austin, I wasn’t in an exit row, but I was in a seat that looked to have a vacancy next to it. On my last flight (Continental), the exit rows didn’t have any more leg room than the regular coach seats. So, this go around, I rolled the dice and stayed where I was. Bad call. I’m cramped, I have someone sitting next to me, and the exit rows have considerably more leg room! Lesson learned…

The Wilson Household just wrapped up the second of three consecutive weekends with company. My parents passed through en route to Maine last weekend. Julie’s mother drove in from Virginia this past Thursday, and then her brother, his wife, and their two kids came down on Friday from Akron. Once again, we were struck by how much easier it is to manage company in a house that has more than two bathrooms.

Next weekend, Julie’s cousin, Anne, will be visiting from Cleveland with her two sons. Anne’s husband is on call next weekend, and I’m sticking around Austin for the weekend to attend the 12th annual Columbus Day Party! at Camp Ben McCullough. So, it looked like a good weekend for Julie and Anne to get together with the kids. After that, though, I think we’re going to take a weekend or two off on the company front!

During my parents’ visit, my dad and I knocked out a number of honey-do-type projects, and we got a good start on a me-do project: building a workbench for my workshop. It’s a modified design of what Greg Phelps and I built for his basement in Chicago. The main change was that I made it taller so that it can work as a support table for my miter saw, while also giving me a work area that is comfortable to stand at — 42” is a much more comfortable working height for me than 36”. The design is sufficiently heavy duty that it could double as a bomb shelter, I think, which is…well…cool! Here and there over the past week, I managed to get it mostly finished up. By the time I left this afternoon, it was down to just needing the edges of the top routed with a roundover bit, and then I need to screw the top to the base. 30 minutes, and I’ll be done. At that point, I’ll be ready to post pictures of the workshop. To date, I’ve: run a new 220V circuit for my table saw, run a new 110V circuit with 3 fourplex outlets throughout the workshop, installed pegboard in 3 locations, and re-routed the drain on the A/C unit to accommodate rolling my table saw under the stairs without risking crushing the drain.

Kid Update

Still holding firm at three.

Carson: After being given a couple of Yugio cards (that’s phonetic; I assume I’m butchering the spelling, but I can’t check offline), became obsessed with getting his own starter set, which he spent some of his money to order. If you’re not familiar (and, truth be told, I’m not all that familiar), Yugio is sort of a combination of two popular male pastimes from my youth: marbles and Dungeons & Dragons. Kids build up their sets of Yugio cards. Each card represents a fantasy character of some sort – each character has different powers and strengths. The goal is to get others’ cards. So, through playing a wildly complex game where the cards face off against each other and do battle, you win or lose your cards. The “marbles” part is that it’s an on-going thing. You can sit down and play for 30 minutes or an hour, and then walk off with whatever cards you’ve won (and without the ones you’ve lost) and pick up another game some time later with someone else. Julie thought Carson might be happy to just play with the cards…but he actually wants to learn the game. Julie quickly realized a problem: no one else in our house has Yugio cards, so he has to loan us some of his in order to play.

Still on Carson, and still on the gaming front…Carson challenged my dad to a game of chess while my parents were in town. I didn’t know Carson knew how to play chess. My dad didn’t know how to play chess, but he gamely jumped into the instructions that Benton had printed out from the internet. The good news was that Carson didn’t get wildly upset when he lost. Not that that phase is entirely passed. I did a little fast card-swapping during a game of Sorry! with Carson and his cousin, Tyler, to prevent myself from coming from way behind and beating Carson after he was on the cusp of victory. It just wasn’t worth the risk! Tyler won a game straight-up and Carson didn’t have a problem with it, which was good.

Benton : Benton has found a good friend who is in his class at school and lives in the neighborhood (close enough that Julie and the kids rode their bikes over one afternoon). Conveniently, Colin has a younger brother, Evan, who is in kindergarten — not in Carson’s class, but same school and same afternoon schedule. They also have a sister who has dance lessons on Thursday afternoons, so it’s looking like a regular occurrence will be for the boys to get off at our bus stop and play for an hour or so — saves their mother a bunch of shuttling around, and keeps our kids happy!

Benton is struggling with some of his on-going homework assignments. He has to keep a “math log” and log 80 minutes of math work that he does in his everyday life. The rules are pretty loose — making a batch of cookies counts because of the measuring out of the ingredients, counting how many seconds he can balance on a big green exercise ball in the back yard (a game invented in conjunction with his cousins) counts because it’s counting. You get the idea. Benton-the-anal-rules-interpreter, though, struggles. For instance, if he’s counting how long people are staying on the green exercise ball, he says he can’t count the 15 solid minutes they were playing the game — he feels like he can only count the time where he was counting seconds. In other words, Benton could spend 3 hours scoring a baseball game and insist that it was only 10 minutes of math, because that was the amount of time he spent recording balls and strikes.

This doesn’t stop him from pitching a fit when it’s 15 minutes past his bedtime and he hasn’t done his math yet. Julie’s been turning this back to him — making suggestions during the day, and when Benton balks at them, saying, “Well, fine, but you’re not staying up late tonight to do something. You can take an incomplete.”

"Yeah, Tim, so how’s that working out for ya’?”

Alana: Alana is, of course, still cute as a button. We’ve now made our second father-daughter trip to Walgreen’s for her to pick out new nail polish. She is an incredibly decisive shopper. And she knows where the nail polish is. Fortunately, Walgreen’s doesn’t have the pricey stuff down at 2-year-old level. We also moved on from painting just her toenails to also painting her fingernails. She sits surprisingly still for the exercise. Her collection now includes: red, purple, and blue. We haven’t applied the blue yet

Sadly, Alana has pretty much given up giving me hugs on demand. Or giving me hugs at all. I’m pretty sure she’s just a burgeoning economist, and she’s exploring the demand curve for her affections. I still get high fives from her fairly consistently on demand at no charge, but I have a sneaking suspicion she may be the first 2-year-old with her own credit card within a few months.

Alana has also semi-officially given up her afternoon naps (“semi-“ because neither Julie nor I want to completely give up hope just yet). This is not a great thing for 2-year-old, but she seems to hold up okay, and is starting to go down fairly well in the evenings. She also sleeps in in the mornings so, hopefully, is getting enough sleep. She is prone to busting out the ABCs song (all the way through, “…next time won’t you sing with me?!”), and she has taken to wanting to read books to herself. Her current favorite is A Good Night Walk (“by Elisha Cooper!” Alana always says), but she is also fond of a book about a pig who walks around to different farm animals asking if they like her. They all rattle off different things about the pig they like. Alana “reads” that book out loud cover to cover and does a pretty good job of sticking to the correct narrative. It’s a stitch.

We’ll try to get some updated pictures up one of these days. Again, the technology (or the technology that we have) isn’t quite to the point of making that seamless. Yet.