Pumpkinville! We had fun. Nice, long hay ride. Moon bounce. Lots of different slides. Little petting zoo. Hay bale maze. And all of this was free after a reasonable admission fee.

Bill Cosby used to start one of his [many] famous parenting bits with this request: Will all the people in the audience who only have one child please raise their hands? At that point, a certain percentage of the audience raises their hand. He then says You are not parents. You are not a parent until you've had your second child.

Now I'm starting to understand what he means, and my children are not even old enough to do the things he was talking about in that routine. For me, having one kid was like having a mischievous little friend. Once the child reached six months old, my routine went back to something that more closely resembled my pre-kids life. Having two kids, however, is like becoming a ringmaster. And just think, my boys aren't even old enough to bicker yet! Thus begins a long stretch of breaking up fights and trying to figure out who made what mess. Even earlier today, for instance, Stephen was being very good and wanting to read books with me, but Henry had a hurting stomach and screamed bloody murder for about half an hour. As a parent, I am dragged into whoever's situation is worse at any given time.

It also seems like we are more than twice as busy as before.. like it's more than double the work even though it's double the kids. I'm not sure how that is possible, but it seems to be true. And my parents had three kids! My aunt/uncle had five kids! Having kids certainly gives you more respect for your own parents. When my cousin visited for a few days in June, he started off the week saying "You got a pretty good gig, watching the kids." Then by the end of the week he was saying "HOW COULD YOU HAVE FIVE KIDS AT ONCE?" (like his parents did).

It's nice to watch my boys becoming friends already. They are so close in age that it's something different than I had with my brothers. Stephen was trying to teach Henry some letters out of his book yesterday. Not surprisingly, Henry was not very attentive or interested. It's great to know that Stephen is already a pro at sharing.

Today was the first earthquake I've ever felt, and at the time (1:52pm) it was quite scary. The way it slowly and ominously built up. So loud, like the stiffest wind you've ever heard. Windows rattling. Dishes rattling in the kitchen. Books falling off the bookshelf. I think it lasted about 30 seconds. All news reports say everything in this area is fine, and I know everything around here is certainly fine. No sirens. No one out in the street or parking lot.

....Weird.

(An entry about this very site. How boring.)

A while back (over two years ago), I thought that maybe I could/would monetize this blog. I think a lot of people go through this phase when starting a blog. I attempted to write articles, provided tons of links, and installed ads on the site. Remember when I was writing a lot of short biographies for musicians? Basically, if you can be the number one search result for virtually anything in google, then you are able to amass followers and maybe get some revenue from advertisements. For instance, if I could get this site to come up as the number one result for the google search "stay at home dad," then I would get thousands of free visits every month. The more you learn, however, the more you find out that SEO (search engine optimization) is a very tricky game and requires a lot of time. Anyway, that notion has long since left me and I have been attempting to clean up the look and feel of this site. I removed all instances of advertisements. I stopped creating backlinks (what a waste of time). But don't worry, the useless facts aren't going anywhere! I love doing those.

I think I'm going to keep the extremely simple look of this page, but I've been looking through a lot of lists of WordPress plugins. One of the reasons I'm such a fan of WordPress is its unending supply of plugins that can do anything you need. Need to implement a slick-looking slideshow of your images? No problem, there's a plugin for that. And it's free. Same with virtually anything else you could think of. These plugins have allowed me to modify this site well beyond the initial theme, and I don't even know any base-level programming.

I am also in the middle of taking steps to protect the material on this site, even though that most likely won't ever be an issue. I posted a link to a creative commons license and am testing a bunch of watermarks on my pictures. I can't quite get a size/opacity combination that works for me yet. You want the watermark to be legible enough to point people back to your site, but you don't want it to be annoying and take over the image.

Anyway, we are under construction over here, but it's the kind of construction that still leaves one lane open. You can browse, but the experience might be hampered for about a week.

For some reason I have been very motivated to keep posting on here even though we have all been sick, my laptop was doused in water, and my parents&brother visited twice. The last two weeks have been quite... uh... eventful, but thankfully we are on the other side of it now. I couldn't take another day of Stephen's constantly-running nose or Henry's unpredictable sleep schedule while they were sick. There were a few days where Henry wouldn't sleep unless someone was holding him. One day Jaime held him for 7-9 hours throughout the day and then we took turns snuggling him in bed all night so he could sleep. As soon as he started feeling better, we took him to the doctor and he got immunization shots. He spent the rest of Friday acting pathetic.

We went to the Petting Zoo at Frying Pan Park on Saturday. It was a very different experience from the Reston Zoo--mainly because Stephen didn't get bitten. Also, the Frying Pan Park is completely free. You just kind of walk around and see a bunch of animals up-close. Some you can pet, but there is no feed for sale or anything like that. We saw a gigantic horse born in 1983. He was extremely nice and stuck his monstrous head out so we could all pet him. There are also two large playgrounds there and cheap carousel rides. They give horseback riding lessons in plain sight so you can watch more horses that way if you like.

Stephen has finally learned to stop biting people when he gets upset. But it has led to something else: he bites himself... hard! I find this disturbing even though it is a common response to being frustrated. He has come up with a few labels for things (like his favorite TV show), but mostly he just sits in silence and operates all the electronics in the house. He can use the trackpad on a laptop and choose YouTube videos to watch. He can do pretty much anything on the iPod Touch now, including a perfect drag-and-drop. He knows how to pause and play videos on streaming Netflix, and he can play the next video when one of his episodes ends. He can put a movie into his computer DVD-ROM and play it in Linux Mint.

Henry is much bigger and much happier than Stephen was, though he is a bit more high-maintenance. He smiles and laughs often. He can't roll over yet, but he can turn himself around on the floor (meaning if you set him down on his back with his legs facing west, he can orient himself to be lying on his back with his legs facing east). It really sucks that him having a bad day makes everyone have a bad day. Yesterday he ate all day and didn't take one nap. Everyone suffers during a day like that--the dogs don't get any walks, Stephen doesn't get enough attention, and I just plain hate my life.

It'll be a while until we can sort of get our life back in order. It took until Stephen was over a year old before I could start making dinners before Jaime got home from work and do those sorts of everyday activities. Now Jaime gets home from work later and we go to bed earlier. The nights seem like they are five minutes.

I have committed to not produce or record any new music for the rest of 2011. I'm going to use that "free time" to get practiced up on the guitar so I can play out when the opportunity presents itself. I think Steve's band is slowly dissolving so he is looking to get some gigs with me. If he handles all that part of it, I can just show up and sing pretty (hopefully) and put some of the money into the earsauce fund. Speaking of that, we are going to spend the $250 that we already have in the earsauce fund to get some CDs made, get on iTunes, and keep a stock of CDs at CDBaby. Steve thinks he can sell some at the winery where he works and we plan to give a lot away also.

ps--I let my laptop dry out for over a week and it works.

pps--We waited until 2011 to get a HD television and I think we were about 5 years too soon. I hate nearly everything about this TV. I hate how it takes over a minute to turn on. I hate how it ignores every button on the remote for even longer. I hate how non-HD channels look so awful and some channels are not available in HD. Why did we need this, again?

Since introverts are not very good at introducing themselves, I'll do it for them. Carl King has put together a list of ten myths about introverts. The word introvert is misunderstood and thought of as a bad trait. It's often used in retrospect to describe serial killers and closet abusers but it is a character trait that defines about one quarter of the population.

Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.
Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.

Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public.
Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all.

Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun.
Introverts typically relax at home or in nature, not in busy public places. Introverts are not thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. If there is too much talking and noise going on, they shut down. Their brains are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Introverts and Extroverts have different dominant neuro-pathways.

Remind you of anyone? =]

violince by evan valentine (all instruments by me)