Football Weekend

Go Wolves!

Craig's first game of the season was Friday night at Duchesne. And they pulled off a nice win to kick off the year!

Camryn couldn’t stand the wait until “daddy’s ball game” last night. Craig's been gone a lot lately and I've been telling her he's at football practice, working with the football players. Earlier in the week we started talking about the football game on Friday. So when I woke her up Friday morning, it was the first thing she mentioned when she woke up. “I go ball game mommy.” We got her all decked out in Timberland duds, and she kept telling me she had her “ball game” shirt on and her “ball game” barrettes.

We got there early and she was able to watch the cheerleaders practice and Craig had a few seconds to come over and give her a quick hug.

We stayed until the end. Final score was 41-14. Camryn did pretty good. We had both sets of grandparents, Aunt Linda and me to play defense if she tried anything crazy. She was great about clapping when the crowd or cheerleaders clapped. She even got to run out onto the field afterwards. Very sweet.

Here's where she spent a majority of the game. Playing with her pa-pas. She did the same thing last year. Carl even took her for a half-time walk just like last year.

Go Tigers!
Becky, a college girlfriend scored tickets (well, actually, her husband Chris did, who says he pukes a little each time he hears M-I-Z...Z-O-U, but I'm not so sure because he subjects himself to a lot of Tiger sports). They gave us four and also invited our other friend Emily and her husband Jeremy. I have not seen Emily since about 2 weeks before Camryn was born so I was so eager to see her! Becky has moved to town this summer and it's been great to see her more often. We met near the dome before the game to tailgate a bit.

With our four tickets, Chris and Jessie came along. Chris missed his connecting flight coming home from Alabama, so Carl was Jessie's date. They came with us to tailgate.

Jeff popped over from where he was tailgating to say hello.

View from our seats. Ha, ha! We knew we were in nose bleed seats, but we were in the very last row. The very top. We were above the lights for the dome. And yes, we were technically on the Illinois side, but our section was about half and half so thankfully we weren't the only fans rooting for the winning team. Walking into the dome was absolutely amazing. It was so deafening to hear the crowd yell M-I-Z...Z-O-U. You could look straight up and see people taking escalators up to their seats. They were looking down at the crowd still coming in and yelling the M-I-Z part. Really amazing!

Here's Chris, Becky's husband. So, he's a big KU fan. He and Becky get tickets for every MU/KU contest they can. So, he was kind of rooting for Illinois since he doesn't like MU. So why is he wearing yellow, you might ask? According to him it's not MU yellow. Whatever. He just can't make up his mind. Here's proof positive. He's wearing a Budweiser necklace, and drinking Miller Lite. (OK, that's a coincidence, but thought it was ironic how he can't pick a team. Ha, ha!)

Hula hoopin' fool!

I don't know if I've picked up a hula hoop since Play Day in elementary school. I was the three time 1st place winner in the event, thank you very much. Anyway, we had an End of Summer Luau at work to lift up everyone's mood, and I thought I'd give it a whirl. Guess who won the hula hoop contest? There were a lot of jealous watchers as they all witnessed my unknown talent.

Personality traits

Personality traits are so interesting to me. I've heard on multiple occassions how they differ from from first born and middle children to youngest. It can impact your job, your earning power, who you marry, etc. Here's a recent list I've seen.

First borns: Smarter (Sorry Jon & Jeff, but you know it's true!), better educated, parental favorites, conformists, hard working, bossy
Middle children: Less decisive, peacekeeprs, less connected to family, more mysterious
Youngest children: More adventurous, more agreeable, funnier, pampered, spoiled

One thing I think is missing from the first-born's list is attention to detail (or anal retentive). I'm that way, although have slacked off more since Cam's been around. But Camryn. Wow! She's so detailed. If a door or drawer is open, it must be closed. When she covers up her dollies, the blanket must be smoothed out just so. When she plays with a toy, it's always the same way. I'll try to mix things up a bit just to keep her creative juices flowing, but she doesn't care for that much.

She has this toy that's like paper dolls, but you dress them up in the bath and they stick to the wall. They have a variety of outfits and she likes to display them all. Not one piece must be missing from her display and if one does happen to be gone, she knows exactly which piece is missing. Yikes! She may be worse than I am.


The sad thing is, I'm her worst enemy and she doesn't even know why yet. While I've become a lot more laid back than I used to be I still have a need to check things off my list and she does to. Many times we're just not working from the same list!

Since this is a family blog, I don't want to forget about Craig. One that immediately comes to mind is his procrastination (not typical of a first born, by the way). I'll admit that I've always had a bit of that in me too, but he was finally busted by the law the other day for procrastinating too long. His license plates were due in January. The funniest part is he works 2 miles from home, and the officer that pulled him over was on the school campus. He had actually put the renewal papers in his car, and planned to go that day, which is the one and only reason he was let go with a warning. The new plates were on his car that night.

by the way...

If you're reading this please say a little prayer for me. For the last 2 months I've known there's a possibility that my job could be eliminated. The company is going through a reorganization and the chief marketing officer and other senior executives have been trying to determine how best to structure the marketing folks. They can't seem to make up their mind, and so we've been waiting to find out if we have jobs or not. Mine is in jeapordy just due to the fact that if we organize a certain way, I'm in a redundant position. The crappiest part of all is that while we wait, these senior people are taking a trip to Hawaii for a week. It's an annual trip given to the top sales people, so this decision gets placed on hold. It's just crappy timing. We're supposed to find out in early September.

Lack of posting

So, I've been a slacker on posting. Any spare time we've had has been on the couch watching the Olympics. Probably another reason I'm tired every day. We stay up watching these events and look at the clock and think "oh crap! it's 11:00 already". Ah well. It only comes around every 4 years.

In the absence of photos, I thought I'd share a funny story. (Yes, mom, it is funny.) So, one day earlier this summer we were at the neighborhood swimming pool and Cam had come out of the water for a snack. I was sitting on a lawn chair next to a couple of neighbors where Camryn joined us. As with many 2 year olds, she has developed a magnet in her finger that goes straight to her nose.

I read in one of the many parenting magazines a long time ago that there are multiple ways to handle this, but when push came to shove I needed to pick my battles. This is a habit that is gross, I'll give you that. But there are worst things she could do, like strip down in public, scream at the top of her lungs in a restaurant, throw food on the floor, rub poop on the wall, etc. No, she doesn't do these things, but prevention is key. She does have a whining problem. I'd rather focus on nipping that in the bud and worry about the nose picking later.

Back to the story and the finger in the nose...so my neighbor, Julie looked at Cam and told her that a snail was going to bite her finger off if she wasn't careful. Camryn's finger immediately came down and she stared at Julie trying to figure out if this was real. This is one of the most random things I've heard, but I jumped on that puppy. In fact she asks about the snail at least once a day. I catch her occassionally with the finger hunting around her nostrils, but tell her "you never know when the snail is going to bite. Do you want this to be the time? Be careful!"

Fast forward to this past Friday when we went shopping with mom and dad. Mom and Camryn were looking at a mannequin, and all of a sudden Camryn tells me the lady is missing a finger. I didn't think anything of it until the next morning when that was the first thing she mentioned when she woke up. She was concerned about this poor, faceless, woman without her index finger. I had an "ah-ha!" moment on Saturday morning. "Cam, you know why her finger is missing, don't you?" She didn't, but had been searching for a logical answer. "She was picking her nose and the snail got her." And that was it. That's all I heard this past weekend. "Mommy, that lady!" or "Snail bite lady finger off?" This morning she placed her finger right next to her nose and looked at me with a goofy smirk. It didn't go in her nose, so I know what she was thinking. I just wander what she tells the other kids at school. If her teacher hears it, she might blow my cover. Maybe I'll clue her in too. :)

That's all for now.

For anyone keeping track, here is a potty training update, nearly 2 months in: Camryn is back in pull ups (sorry Dr. Polito!) because she hasn't learned to tell us when she needs to go. It seems to bother her that she can't wear her big girl panties, so hoping that will be her something to work toward. Stay tuned...

Lights, Camera, Action...Wiggles!

We took Camryn out of school early and changed into her fancy dress and pig tails for her first concert...The Wiggles! They only come through St. Louis every so often on tour, so when mom told me they were coming to town, we grabbed tickets. We met mom and Linda early and had a fun dinner at Hard Rock Cafe downtown before we walked over to the concert.

When we got there, mom was asking Cam where the Wiggles were and Camryn kept yelling "Where are you Wiggles?" (the movie is a bit dark, but you can hear what she's saying)

Mom said I bet Jeff (the Wiggle dressed in a purple shirt) will fall asleep sometime during the show. And this dad in front of us, without turning around, just said "You can count on it! There's no way we can get through the show without having to yell 'Wake up Jeff!' " (I've always wondered why they have a narcoleptic character in the group, and laugh at all ridiculous songs about Jeff being asleep, so this was funny to me.) Later the same dad bought his son a plush red guitar (like the one Murray, the red Wiggle uses) and figuring he spent a small fortune on it told him he had to wear it all night. Halfway through the show, mom and I glanced over and the kid had put it around the dad's neck! Ha, ha! Guess he needed to get his money's worth out of it somehow.

Anyway, if I can take a moment to critique the performances. Stink-o-rama! Yet, completely entertaining. Especially with Camryn doing her thing. But I just sat there and laughed to myself thinking how much money these people must make for not having to be perfect at their performance. If they screwed up their choreography, the kids won't know. And who cares what the parent's think? They're just there for the smiles on their kids faces.

And that's the truth! I would have paid $1000 to see that look on Camryn's face when The Wiggles came out on stage. I was almost in tears just watching how excited she was. It was a 90 minute show and she danced almost all of it. They sang her favorites "Rock-a-bye Your Bear" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." And lots more. She did all of the motions to the songs she knew. So cute! On the way home she told us that was "fun." She also got a Big Red Car wand that lights up and she wanted to make sure we all had a chance to hold it during the performance. She held that thing all the way home, and all the way up to bed.

This morning when we got to school, her teacher asked her how she liked seeing The Wiggles and Camryn just turned around to me and smiled. I'm guessing that means she had a good time.