Seisenta

It sounds so much nicer in Spanish, doesn't it?


Today, my mother turns 60. And just as she always tells me, "I'm not old enough to have a son that's ____ (whatever age I happen to be at the time)," today, I'm thinking, I'm not old enough to have a mom that's 60!


Since my sister already beat me to saying all of the lovely, sentimental things, I'll just say this:


I couldn't have asked for a better mom, a better Nana for our daughter (soon to be daughters), or a better family to have been a part of.


We love you, and miss you down here deep in the heart of Texas.

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's wishing a very happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there, but especially to my two favorite moms.

Like a good neighbor...or not.

Maybe State Farm should be paying attention to Twitter.

Just in case you're keeping track, the car caught fire 12:30ish Friday morning. Monica was on the phone with State Farm by 1:15, who told her that they couldn't give her a claim number at that time because their computers go down at midnight. Really?! Because accidents stop after midnight?

Gets a claim number by 9 AM, talks to "total loss" at 10 AM (Friday still), which means that the department dealing with this burned out hunk of metal that's still sitting on our driveway has had well over 24 hours to get it removed.

If, by chance, this car had caught fire on the highway, it would have been removed within the hour. Since it's sitting in our driveway, they take their sweet time.

The company who is supposed to tow it called yesterday from a Dallas area code which makes me wonder...isn't there anyone in San Antonio that can tow this car? And the lady tells me that they will "be there by 5, and if not today (Friday) then tomorrow."

It's currently 9 PM Saturday and the car is still sitting on our driveway, and I don't think they're coming to pick it up today. And I'm betting money they won't come get it tomorrow, either. Happy Mother's Day!

Let me just say this: State Farm, you've really FUBARed this one.

Burn, baby, burn

I wrote this as an email to some family members and people I work with early this morning

So yes, I'm up at 2 AM. The fire department left our house about 45 minutes ago, and we're just letting everything settle in.


Monica's car caught on fire around 12:30 this morning.


It was parked in front of the garage, and miraculously, the house was not damaged. In fact, our garbage can was sitting less than 5 feet from the car, and it was only a little melted on one side. You can see in the pictures just how close it was to the house.


It was a total fluke...Monica wasn't feeling well, and was in bed at 7. I felt her get out of bed just after midnight, then felt her return a short while later. I heard her say something about "what's that noise?" and felt her get out of bed again, then seconds later, heard her yelling for me. I got up, and all I could see was orange outside of our dining room window. "My car in on fire!" she said. I remember looking out the window, then running to the front door. I felt it, it wasn't hot, so I opened it. The heat was intense. No way was I getting out the front. But it looked like nothing else was burning.


My car was sitting nearby, so I grabbed my keys and ran around the side of the house to move it out of the way while Monica called 911. I came back in and told her to get Rachel and get out of the house. I was worried with as high as the flames were, that it would catch the front of the house on fire.


While she got Rachel out, I grabbed the garden hose and started spraying the front of the house while trying to hide behind the corner in case anything exploded.


Luckily, we live less than a mile from the fire station, and they were at our house within minutes of Monica calling.


Her car had been sitting in the driveway for over 6 hours, but the fire department said that it looked mechanical...they did not suspect arson. We're still a little bit in shock, and just grateful at all of the random events (Monica waking up, hearing the noise) that allowed us to call the fire department quickly, have no damage to our house, and have everyone in our family safe this morning.

It's been a little busy around here

In case you've been living under a rock for the past week, the H1N1 (swine flu) virus has taken over our area. The school district I work for was the first in the state, and the country, to shut down because of the virus.

You would think I'd be relaxing poolside with a cold one in my hand, but you'd be thinking wrong.

Being part of the tech staff means that you get to help in spreading the word when there's an emergency. I have become, in this past week, part of the PR team for our district.

Now understand, I'm not complaining one bit. I'm actually enjoying the challenge this change in routine has brought on. I'm able to use my understanding of the tools out there to help our district spread the word about anything and everything related to this closure.

It started on Sunday, when I got a call from my boss. "The Superintendent wants to do a podcast," he said, "and was wondering if you could come up and help her do it."

I had heard Saturday that we'd be closing one high school, but on Sunday, it all changed when the Department of State Health Services shut down our entire district. Word needed to get out quickly, and in as many ways as possible. We'd updated the web site, and put out an auto-call, but there were more ways to get the message out, so I opened up my arsenal and started asking permission.

The two things that we've done this week, based on my suggestion, was to start a Twitter account for the district, and to live stream the Superintendent's daily press briefings on UStream. Sunday and early Monday, I was tweeting district updates on my own twitter account and on Facebook, but it got to be a bit much, and I didn't want "official" word coming from me. I wanted it to be something that people could look at and say, "Yes, this belongs to the district." So up went the district's twitter account. In just over 48 hours, we've gained almost 100 followers, including several of the local news outlets and reporters. Several of the names I recognized as district teachers (and I was surprised by how many of them are on twitter), and several more are students - it's easy to tell the students by their user names or profiles.

The UStream of the press briefing got its first trial today. While the audio was off a bit, I think if the Superintendent just speaks up a little it will be fine. Unfortunately, UStream is having recording issues, so there was no way for us to have it available for playback. We embedded the stream on the district home page for the duration of the press briefing, and I also put the URL for the UStream page on Twitter. At one point, we had about 20 people watching, which was way more than I expected. Only one question came in via Twitter, although I expect more tomorrow.

Every evening, I get the audio for the podcast from the Superintendent, edit for about 20-30 minutes and post it to the district home page, as well as her podcast page. If she sends me the transcript of the podcast, I post that to her blog page as well.

Luckily, our web site has been holding up incredibly well under the strain. Before this week, our normal, weekday average was 2500 hits per day, and that's with students in the district opening the web page any time they open a browser.

On Saturday, we had almost 4000 hits. Sunday, we broke 10,000. We had another 10,000 Monday, and dipped to 7300 yesterday, but as of this posting, we're at 11,500 and will probably hit 12,000 before midnight this evening.

Our district has gotten national attention because of this outbreak, and I hope that the information we're putting out has been able to keep people informed. We're doing as much as we can, as best as we can. Our Superintendent has been doing an outstanding job, and has been interviewed by major news outlets all over the country, from the Wall Street Journal to NPR. And every night, before she goes home for the day, she sits down and records audio for me to edit for the podcast. With everything else on her plate, I'm proud of her for sticking with it.

Hopefully, when all of this is over with, we'll continue to put our information out there using Web 2.0 tools. Hopefully, this this a turning point for our district in information distribution!

A little break

So, in case you haven't heard, there has been a little outbreak of swine flu here in Texas. The two confirmed cases were both at one of the high schools in the district where I work.

Since nobody knows exactly how far this is going to go, the Texas Department of State Health has decided to close down our district for the week. Which means, I get a little unplanned vacation.

Maybe I'll get some things done around the house.

Two years, ten months

Dear Rachel,

This week, you turned 34 months old. This past month could be described as the "Month of a Million Questions." You've hit that questioning phase in your life, where you want to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how of everything. "Daddy, where are we going? Are we going to turn left? Is Mama's school that way? What's it doing there? Why is it just sitting there?" The only time we got a reprieve from the questioning the entire month was when you were sick.


You got really sick for the first time in your life this month. We've had little bouts of diarrhea, a little food poisoning, but nothing like this. You were out for the count for almost a week. I couldn't believe that this vibrant, talkative little girl had turned into this quiet, tired little thing that could barely sit up to watch TV. You ate almost nothing for three days. The first day, you couldn't even hold down water, but you got really good at throwing up in the toilet and waste basket. We were very worried about you. Luckily, after 4 days, you finally were able to hold some food down. Now, a week later, your appetite is voracious, like you're trying to make up for lost time. I don't know if that has anything to do with you being sick, or if you're just going through another growth spurt (and God help us if that's the case!)


You decided this month that we should call the baby "Mater" after Tow Mater from Cars, but you also understand that we're going to name your baby sister something different when she comes out. You're still sort of hot and cold about the whole baby thing, but you did decide that she could have your room, and you'd take "Nana and Dod's woom!" I think it's going to be very interesting to see how you react to having a baby in the house.


You are struggling with growing up a bit. At one moment, you are a very stubbornly independent little girl. Two seconds later, you're wanting us to pick you up, or help you put on your shoes, or brush your teeth for you. Again, it will be interesting to see what happens with this behavior when the new baby arrives.


We've been practicing with you writing you letters, and you do OK with a few of them, but you already know how to find all of them on a keyboard. You spend a lot of time "typing yike Nana" on Mama's computer, and you really love to make smiley faces. Mama's word processor will change :) into a smiley face. Sometimes I wonder if you'll learn to touch type before you can write.


You have really gotten into watching videos of yourself this past month. You will ask us all the time if you can watch the one with Mommy eating "bef-kest," which is the video of your first week in the world, of which 1/2 second is your Mommy eating breakfast, but that's how you identify it. Any video of yourself is accompanied by the barrage of questions (see the first paragraph).


We've been skyping with your grandparents a couple of times each week, so you get to see them and talk to them, which is really cool for all of us. You like to have them hide from you (leave the view of the camera) and you always want to see Rhett and his medicine. I have no idea why. I'm glad that your grandparents have a computer that can handle the video now!


As always, we can't wait to see what the next month will bring (hopefully less of the terrible twos!). We love you very much.

Love,
Daddy

Note to self...(and to you too, Internet)

When fixing the bathtub faucet, removing the C clip that holds the cartridge in place without first turning off the water is a BAD idea.

In case you can't tell, the front of me is completely soaked because the cartridge for the faucet and who knows how many gallons of water came shooting out ala horizontal geyser, and all over me.

I actually knew to turn the water off, but I couldn't get the C clip back in, so I pulled it back out to try to get a better angle, and, well, you've seen the evidence.

At least I'm man enough to admit when I make a mistake, and can laugh about it.

It's just me and the dog, and he's not even a complete man...

So, in case you're not into Facebook yet, here are the first pictures of the next Laleman girl!

Two Years, nine months

Dear Rachel,

This week, you turned 2 3/4. I've been having a hard time explaining to people how old you are because you're so much more than two, and when you say two, people have this image of a toddler in their mind, and you are so NOT a toddler anymore. You're also not quite three, but you're also too old to refer to your age in months (see the post about the creepy woman I used to work with who still referred to her tweenager in months)


This weekend, your Nana and "Gwompa Wick," as you now call him, will be heading back to Illinois. We will be very sad to see them go. They have done such an amazing job of helping us take care of you, and teaching you new things, I'm sure your IQ will drop the second they walk out the door. We're a little bit nervous about how you're going to take all of this, but short of slashing the tires on their vehicles, there's not much we can do to make them stay. Don't worry too much, though. We will see them again soon - in July at the very latest, and hopefully, they'll be down again for an extended stay in 7 months or so.


Your independence is bubbling to the surface more and more lately. You're a very strong willed little girl, and sometimes that gets you in trouble. OK, more than sometimes. A lot. Some days it feels like there's a fit every couple of hours. We have figured out that a lot of the times it has to do with how hungry you are, so that helps, but not if we don't have any food ready.


You've been learning knock-knock jokes from your grandparents because they needed some entertainment while they were down here. You learned a bunch of them very quickly, and now, when you're ready to tell a knock-knock joke, you'll knock on the table. You're not quite the master joke-teller as you still want to tell all parts of the joke instead of letting the person you're telling it to do part of it. It goes something like this:

You: Knock knock
Me: Who's there?
You: Who's there? Kanga.
Me: Kanga who?
You: Kango who? NOT Kanga who! Kanga-woo! AHAHAHAHAHA!

And then Nana taught you about knee-slappers, so you'll throw your arms in the air and smack your knees all while fake laughing.


We've been trying to prepare you for the new baby that's going to be entering our lives, but you don't really seem all that interested. When we ask you whether you think it's going to be a boy or a girl, you tell us you don't know. When we ask you what we should name the baby you tell us, "Not yet." You will kiss Mama's belly every night, and say goodnight to the baby, but that's about it.


We went to the rodeo again this year, and you loved seeing all of the animals. You played with the baby chicks, touched a cow, and asked all kinds of questions about the horses. In fact, you have just been full of questions the entire month. You're such an inquisitive little girl. You want to know everything about everything, and I fear the day that you get your own phone. We'll have to take out a second mortgage to pay for your minutes.


You also started memorizing books this month. I sat down with you a few weeks ago to read the "Rain Book" to you, and you opened it up and started reciting the whole thing to me. I ran to get the video camera so I could get it on tape. I'll get it up here in a couple of days.


Next week we should know whether you're having a brother or a sister, and I'm sure we'll start making preparation for the baby to come. I hope that you'll help us with decorating the room, and getting the house ready for your sibling to arrive. You've been such a big help in other ways around the house, like cleaning, "making dishes," and picking up your room, I just know you're going to be a great big sister.


We love you very much.

Love,
Daddy

Thumpity bumpity...

I finally got to feel the baby move last night. Little Farfalina or Facuño bumped around a bunch while I was resting my hand on Monica's tummy. She has been feeling the baby flutter around for a few weeks now, but it would become quiet when I tried to feel.

We have a sonogram scheduled for St. Patrick's Day, so hopefully we'll find out then what we're having, and finally be able to settle on a name.

A letter to our dear friend...

Dear Maria,

You see, we had this assignment of sorts to write you a letter for your ACTS retreat this weekend. Well, I was never very good at homework, so of course, I'm doing this last minute, but I'm doing it up big. For the whole world.


You have been such an integral part of our lives since the day we met. You have been there for every step of our relationship, from the starts and stops when we first started dating, to standing in our wedding, and to being a wonderful Godmother to Rachel.


When we first found out about your cancer, we were almost paralyzed. How could someone so vibrant and full of life get a disease that is so terrible? However, though it all, you handled it as you handle everything - with strength and serenity.


I don't know how you do it, how you remain so positive in the face of everything that is so potentially devastating, but you do, and in the process, you make all of us feel like everything is going to be OK.


A couple of months ago, you called us to come over to distract the two of you for a while. I think you and Gregg were going a bit stir crazy, and you needed some different people around besides yourselves. We were more than happy to come over and chat, hang out, whatever we could do to help. Later that evening, your brothers showed up, then your cousin, then Andy and Cindy, and a few more folks, and we ended up having an impromptu party. I told Monica later, "That's exactly what they needed. Their house has always been the place for people to get together, and Maria looked so happy tonight to have all of her friends around her."


I think that is what we love most about you. That you are a friend to so many people. That you always welcome people into your home. That you are such a positive influence on everyone around you.


You bring people together. Your strength and courage has been an inspiration to us all. We love you.


Love,
The Laleman Family

In which my past comes back to haunt me

"Daddy, who is that? Is that you?"

"Yes, Rachel, that's me."

"What's that on your yip?"

"It's a mustache."

"A must-stath? Can you wipe it off?"

"No, you don't wipe off a mustache."

"YES! WIPE IT OFF!"

Two years, eight months

Dear Rachel,

I've been working on this for a couple of days now, so I really didn't forget, I've just been busy. This week you turned 32 months old. You are quickly approaching the big 3, and even more quickly leaving your "toddler" status in the dust.


It has been an incredible journey with you over the past month. You've got some mad language skillz and it's been a lot of fun watching you slog your way through the minefield that is English. You do really well, considering how difficult the language is, and when you get things turned around, we try to help you sort them out.


Your imagination has really taken off this month. When you play you become other people and characters. Your favorites are from "Cars." But your imagination is showing in other ways as well. A few weeks ago, you got up on a Saturday morning, and went to your closet to pull out a diaper. I asked what you were doing, since you were wearing pull ups during the day, and you turned to look at me with a sad expression on your face and said, "Andy peed in his diaper. I need to change him!" We then proceeded to take off Andy's clothes so that you could change his diaper. You also like to play as if you're a dog, making Nana and Dodd put the dog's leash on you to take you for a walk.


Speaking of diapers, the only time you're wearing them now is when you sleep. You wear pull ups almost all day, and haven't had an accident in weeks. You're do a great job of telling us when you have to go potty, and you're even getting into the whole privacy of going to the bathroom now. Most of the time, when you have to go, we'll help you get everything situated, then you'll look at us and say, "Get out, please."


Something else fun this month has been you figuring out relationships. You play with the words and tell us who everyone is now. To Nana: "Dada, is Nana your Mom? Are you Nana? Are you Grandma Connie? Are you Daddy's Mom?" You're getting that each of us has different roles in life, and different names for our roles. You also know what your mother and I do for a living. Mommy teachers the kids at her school and I help teachers fix their computers (if only my job were that easy).


Your Nana and Dodd have become such an important part of your life, I don't know what we, you, or they are going to do when it's time for them to go back to Illinois. We will certainly miss them being around to help out with taking care of you, and I know that you will miss having them around to play with, go for walks, get pushed on the swing, and all of the wonderful things they do with you.


You are so quickly becoming a big girl, and while it's sad for us to see you lose some of your dependency on us, it is also such a joy to watch you learn and play and grown each and every day. We know that you will be a strong, smart, independent little girl, and we can't wait for you to pass on some of those things to your little brother or sister. Things are going to get very interesting in the coming months, but I'm sure that you will adjust like a champ.

We love you very much.

Love,
Daddy