Baby Ditch Bird #4

In the past three and a half weeks, the baby ditch bird has gone from a slightly fuzzy green squishy ball with a beak, to an actual bird. It still sleeps in the house at night and gets it's breakfast and bedtime meal in the kitchen, but other than that it's outside. It's learned to walk in and out of it's cage. It takes walks around the yard and bites at sticks and leaves. When it's time to eat, I call it and it just walks over to eat. Simple, but amazing. I'm starting to have high hopes that it will live long enough to rejoin the rest of the birds in the yard, and there are a LOT of birds in the yard now.
Last week another bird fell out of the nest and survived. It was not unscathed though, and it has what looks like a broken leg. It's bigger than the the baby bird that I have, and won't let you get near it. It's just too big and too far along to try and capture and feed and rehabilitate. I figured it would be dead by the end of the day, two days at the most, and I contemplated finishing it off so it didn't have to suffer. I spent some serious emotional energy contemplating bird murder. I'm glad I didn't though, because amazingly, it's still with us. It can't walk well, standing on only one foot and using it's wings to help, but it makes it way around. During the day we can watch it poke around and preen itself. There must be an adult that's feeding it at night in order for it to be alive still. Even with that, I'm less sure about it's long term chance of survival than of the other bird, and I still worry.
Having more than one bird around posed a bit of a communication problem in the house. I've been calling the bird that I've been raising in the kitchen Baby Bird. It's a descriptive name, and easy to remember, pretty much everything you could want in a name. Of course the name has mutated a bit, as names have a tendency to, and it's I now call it Baby Burr. What of the other bird? We bounced a few terms around like Other Baby Bird, Injured Bird, and Probably Going To Die Bird. We ended up with Hurt Bird. That quickly, almost instantly, mutated into Herbert and that seems to have stuck. So now I have two named birds around, Baby Burr, and Herbert. Just to confuse things further, a bunch of the other birds in the yard have gotten big enough to leave their nests. It's become common to look out the widow and see two or even three adolescent ditch birds standing in the lawn. I have to look carefully to figure out who they are. There are at least nine chicks that are being raised by their parents just in our yard, and several nests in the neighbor's yard. In the next two weeks it's going to look like a ditch bird elementary school out there. We're hoping that Baby Burr will recognize the other birds as his own kind and befriend and learn from them. I'll keep feeding it as long as it wants to eat, but I'm hoping that I'm starting to see the very start of it's independence.

Macaroni May #5

As May draws to a close, so does soccer, and so too does Macaroni May. We started with traditional mac -n- cheese, ham steak and mixed veggies.  We moved on from that an made better food in sausage spaghetti with broccoli, pesto shrimp and mushroom pasta with peas, and chicken alfredo with green beans. Every meal has been tasty and has taken less time to cook than a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese we started with. This week we're going to step way outside the box, and head to the far east, the home of the noodle.

Shrimp Stir Fry with Chow Mein Noodles

This is basic cheap and easy stir fry. I use frozen stir fry vegetables from the frozen food section. I add a meat of my choice and packets of stir fry sauce mix. This week I used a pound of shrimp because they cook so fast. I also switched out my usual rice for chow mein noodles. Rice takes about half an hour to cook, the noodles take 3 minutes once the water is boiling, that's a serious time savings. I started by turning the heat on three pans, one for the veggies, one for the shrimp, and one for the noodles. About all you're doing is making things hot here, so turn the heat up high and follow the directions on the package. Make up the sauce mix while everything is cooking and add it to the veggies once they're heated through. Add the now cooked shrimp and finally add the drained and rinsed noodles. It literally took me more time to write and organize this post than the 14:55 it took to make this meal. It's nicely balanced with a lot of veggies, a bit of meat, and some noodles. Additionally, if you keep a package of shrimp and a package of veggies in the freezer, along with some chow mein and sauce mix in the pantry, this meal can be right at your fingertips any evening you need it in an emergency. We all have those days where things go all pear shaped and we don't get home until 2 hours after the roast was supposed to go in the oven. A meal like this in your back pocket is better than macaroni and cheese and beats the hell out of the fast food you might be tempted to get instead. That whole 'be prepared' thing that you thought only applied to jumper cables and boy scouts can work in the kitchen too.
I hope you enjoyed Macaroni May and managed to get an idea or two out of it. Very few, if any, of my recipes are ground breaking, and I know that. I'm not trying to teach anyone how to be a gourmet chef, just how to cook good nutritious food that will keep your kids happy and growing. Food that you can fit into the life of a stay at home dad.

In the Woods

Happy Memorial day everyone. Just hanging out and relaxing with everyone. We drove to the national forest and took a walk and a bunch of pictures. Nothing to say really other than to have a wonderful day and hug someone you love, just because.  

Click through the jump to see the rest of the pictures

Agitator Dogs

"You overfilled the washer!"
I hear this a lot, because it's true.
"And it's not working!"

Broken Agitator Dogs. Sweet band.

What? Like I said, I overfill the washer pretty much all of the time. My theory is that more clothes take up more space and that leaves less room for water. Less water used is a form of conservation, so I'm really saving the world and stuff. There's a rational thought process behind this, even if it is sort of idiotic. Broken though? That can't be right, I've never broken anything doing this, let me check. A quick look reveals that the agitator on the bottom is going back and forth like it's supposed to, but the one in the middle with the corkscrew thingy on it is just siting still. In fact, if I grab it I can spin it both ways. I know from staring at laundry swishing around with my kids, that the tall agitator in the middle only spins one way. Or it's supposed to anyway. It really is broken. Damn.
Once the laundry was done I started poking at things and eventually pried the cap off the upper agitator. I bunch of broken plastic chunks that used to be part of some sort of clutch mechanism met my gaze. Problem identified. I just need more of those..... thingies. Off to the internet with the model number of my washing machine to find an exploded view parts diagram. Just in case you're wondering, everything is on the internet. Everything. 10 minutes later and I've identified the shattered remnants as agitator dogs. That would be a great band name by the way, feel free to use it, I'll buy an album. Five minutes and $10 later and I've got a new pack of agitator dogs headed to my door. They arrive a week later, and half an hour after that, I put them in. One bolt and a bunch of plastic tabs that didn't really want to line up, no problem. Back together and my agitator works again. Awesome.
What's the moral of this story? Is it not to overload the washer? Of course not. It's that you can consistently do something moronic like overloading the washer if you have the skills to fix things when you break them. If you can do that, you too can end up a hyper masculine super fix it guy, loved and admired by your wife, even though you probably created the problem in the first place. The world is a just and kind place.

Busy Days

Busy Days.

I've been very busy lately. Between soccer and preschool and regular school and people visiting and visiting people and taking care of baby birds, I've just been busy. Lots of time has been away from home too. Driving kids to school, then off to preschool, stopping at the store, back to school for a PTO thing, home to lunch and nap, back to pick up kids from school, off to soccer. I spend more time in the car than at home some days. All of that has me wishing for a couple of days at home where I've got nothing to do and nowhere to go.
It was just a few years ago though, that I really had nothing to do outside the house and nowhere to go. I was at home with two kids, a baby and a toddler. No school, needing to stay close to the freezer and the source of breast milk, just stuck. Wishing I had some reasonable excuse to load the kids up and go do something, anything! I had to pretend that I was going to work again to justify taking classes at night so I had something to look forward to doing. Things change.
So now I'm busy. Before you know it I'll drop the kids off at school and have half a day to kill before I pick them up again. and I'll be back here complaining about how bored I am. When that happens, remind me to come back here and read this. Also remind me to clean the bathroom, that will probably still need to be done before I can really complain about having nothing to do.

ETC: Water Balloons

Water balloons need no explanation. You just don't get permission to throw things at people very often when you're a kid, and when you do, you're usually supposed to throw it so they can catch it. There are two notable exceptions to that rule. 1. Snowballs, which is sort of a terrible exception here in Texas. It's like telling kids in Alberta that it's ok to play with jellyfish. 2. Water balloons. The batch you see in the picture is for my second water balloon fight today. The first was with 40 preschoolers. Somehow I was the only parent that got right into the middle of it. Just a note about water balloon fights with preschoolers, you can't throw them at them. They're too little, you just can't. What you can do it catch them and then pop them over their little heads. It's good to be tall. The second fight is this evening at soccer practice. These are kids from 10-13, so I'm thinking that I can hurl a few. My wife will be there too, so I might still pop a few over a head. Maybe.
They take forever to fill, the action lasts mere minutes, and it takes forever to pick up the pieces, but water balloons are fun. Just plain fun.

Baby Ditch Bird #3

Raising a wild animal in your house is a little like visiting a foreign country. Talking to the guy working at the gas station isn't like visiting Pakistan. (I'm not being a generalist here, the gas station up the road really is run by a very nice family from Pakistan) You learn about their behaviors, their mannerisms, their sounds and movements, in a way that you can't when you observe them in the wild. When I walk outside I can tell if the ditch birds in the nests are hungry or content just by listening to them. I can see them flip their wings forward in a defensive posture and know that their parent must have just hurled up a treat in the nest and they're boxing out their siblings. I know that they flare their bottom jaw when they're really mad, right before they strike. I also know about how far they can reach. So does the dog. They also show affection with gently bites, very soft, almost playful. They're not super social, but they don't like being alone either. When out of the nest they'll skootch across the lawn to get next to me or the dog or anyone familiar. Between me and the nest though, they always choose the nest, coming out just to eat and then hustling back in to a place of safety. There's no reason to lock or even close the cage that the bird calls home, it won't leave.

Stay

I was discussing that fact with my sister the other day. That little bird won't leave it's nest except to eat, and only then because I don't feed it inside to avoid the mess. This makes sense, if you wander, you fall out of the nest and die. Wandering is bad. I've been taking advantage of this instinct during the day when I need to clean things up or just when I think the bird needs to be outside. I take it out and set it on the cross brace of our swing set and I never have to worry. Twenty minutes? Still there. Two hours? Still there. Five hours? Yup, still there. It will not move. Oh, it sits up and sits down and preens itself and watches the world go by, but it never ever goes any where. This is amazingly convenient and is something that I think we might need to genetically engineer into human children. When they're toddlers we need to give them the instinct to stay in one spot if they're more than about 2 feet off the ground. Then we can build concrete stumps into convenient locations and we won't have to worry about them. Have to use the bathroom? Set them on the stump. Changing room? Stump. Need to talk to the mechanic and not have to worry about anyone falling into the oil change pit? That's why they installed the stump. It would be perfect. Of course, we'd have to figure out some way to guarantee that only a parent could pick them up from the stump, so the plan's not perfect, but it has promise. We'd have to be careful and not accidentally engineer in any traits that we didn't want. Things like feathers and beaks are obvious, but I'm thinking more about chewing. I don't mind preparing mushy food and spoon feeding a baby, but I have to think that masticating a hot dog for your teenager and spitting it on his plate to eat would cancel out that whole stump thing.

Macaroni May #4

This week I'm continuing on with the theme of very quick pasta based meals. Meals you can cook in less than 20 minutes that taste good, are balanced, and you can feel good about feeding your kids.

Chicken Alfredo and Green Beans

The key to this meal is to cut the chicken thin, and cook it hot. Start your pasta at the beginning because, as usual, it's what's holding up the show. Cut the chicken thin and cook it hot in a pan with a bit of olive oil and some garlic salt. You want it to be hot enough that the oil is not quite smoking. It only took me about 5 minutes to cook three sliced chicken breasts in a pan once it was hot. Nice, cooked through, and browned. Perfect. While that's cooking start a big pot of water to boiling to blanch the beans. Blanching is simply cooking them for just a short time in boiling water, and then cooling them with cold water. If you did it really properly you'd cool them all the way down to stop any cooking action and then heat them gently right before eating. Cooking them like this gives them great color and keeps them crisp, sort of half way between raw and cooked as far as texture goes. When doing very quick cooking like this, I boil them for 1-2 minutes and them cool them to just warm and serve, it's fast and is my kids favorite way to eat beans. Top with butter or Parmesan cheese and they're perfect. I always snip the ends off the beans, I'm not even sure why, but it's the way I've done it since I was a kid and I sometimes wonder if the beans will explode if I don't. I'm not willing to take that chance, so I snip, and that's the hardest work for this whole meal. The last thing to get ready is the alfredo sauce. As usual I use sauce mix from a packet and I add a dash of liquid smoke to it and one tsp of lemon juice per packet of sauce. It makes all the difference in the world. Two sauce packets work well for our family of 6. Finish up by adding the chicken to the sauce, drain the noodles, add them, and plate everything. It's a crazy few minutes in the kitchen, and a little slower than last week at 18:43, but still fast enough to get us all out the door for soccer. This is another meal that my kids eat fast, and that's always a plus.
We've got one more week in macaroni May, and I've got something completely different, and even faster, in mind.

Social Life

My idea of a great party.

They all said that any social life you want to have, you should get out of your system before you have kids. Why is that? I spend way more time in social situations now that I have kids than I ever did before. Evenings and weekends were time to put my feet up and relax. Watch some TV, read a book. Yes I went out, but once a week at the most. 
Last week I had evening soccer practice Thursday and Friday where parents wanted to talk to me the whole time. Then Saturday was a soccer game, then a trip out to the mall to see the new Lego store and mingle with way too many people, and then a nice quiet evening with two other couples and our combined eight children. Sunday was 6 hours of hanging out with a bunch of car guys autocrossing then right back to the soccer fields for make-up games that were missed last weekend. Before I had kids I would never ever ever have spent this much time out and about being social. Not that I didn't enjoy it, I certainly did. In fact, I enjoy the social activities I have as a parent more than I ever liked going out to loud bars and shouting hellos at strangers.
Sure, there's stuff you can't do as easily when you have kids, no one will deny that. Wishing you can have that back though is like my four year old wishing he was an adult so he can buy stuff. He tells me that nearly every time we're at the store. I tried explaining to him that he'll also have to work and pay taxes and take care of his own kids but he's convinced that being able to buy stuff will outweigh all of that. We'll revisit this in twenty years and I'm curious what he'll say about it then. 
Like all aspects of life, things being better or worse is usually a matter of outlook, and the change in social activities is right in line with that. I'm happy with the business and chaos and confusion that comes with a big family. I'm even happy with my social life.

Sorry about missing my Saturday post. As you read above, I was all busy and stuff. These things happen.

Sensation

When I'm running barefoot I'm very aware that the world has texture and feel and huge variety. Other than that, my interaction with the world through touch is pretty sterile. My feet are separated from the world by shoes. Most of the rest of my body is always on the other side of clothes. My hands reach out, but even they are limited to tasks that they've done time and time again. Food is eaten with silverware, cleaning done with washcloths, everything I touch is familiar. Even though I have five senses, I really only explore the world with my hearing, sight, smell and to a lesser extent taste. I've done about all I'm going to do with touch.
Not kids though. They're still feeling things out. From the time they can grab things, they grab. They move things and throw things and smush things. Food is as much tactile as it is about eating. Sand between fingers and toes and on their head. Mud. So much mud. Sticks and sticky things alike. All of those things that I've played with and checked out in my life, they need to try too. It's not enough to tell them not to play in the dirt, they need to feel it, they need to actually get dirty to put things in their proper place in the world. And so it goes with bugs, and jello, and frost on the grass. Seeing it isn't enough. Having someone tell you about it isn't enough. When you're a kid, you need to get in there and experience it to really learn about the world.
I know these things and think about them in relation to my kids and parenting all the time. They still sneak up on me. The way that kids view and experiment with the world still surprises me. My six year old is still learning to write. She can write letters and words and stories, and she's been handling crayons longer than she can remember, but she's still learning. She loves to write and draw on a dry erase board that we gave her. Write, erase. Write, erase. Over and over. She has a great time. Somehow it occurred to her to combine the fun of gloves with the joy of writing on her dry erase board. I asked her how it felt and she said it was weird, but fun. She wrote and drew for about 20 minutes, and then she went on her merry way. Bouncing through life, giving it a go, just to see how it feels.

ETC: The Complete Adventures of Curious George

Where it all begins.

We all know Curious George. He's the creation of Margret and H. A. Rey and has been loved since the first book was published in 1941. Along with that first book, the couple wrote many other adventures for the curious little monkey, and there are seven of them in this volume. 
Curious George
Curious George Takes a Job
Curious George Rides a Bike
Curious George Gets a Medal
Curious George Flies a Kite
Curious George Learns the Alphabet
Curious George Goes to the Hospital.
All of the stories are good and all have been read many times at our house. I find it interesting how much certain things have changed since the books are written. In the first story George settles down for a nice pipe smoke after dinner and later on moves into the Zoo, which is assumed to be about the happiest place a monkey can live. In the second one George's curiosity leads him to experiment with Ether and end up passed out on the floor. At that end of that book the man in the yellow hat celebrates with a cigar as he profits from George's blossoming acting career. In fact, all of the first five stories have someone smoking in them, usually a pipe. I can't imagine submitting a book today where the main character, one that children are supposed to love, sits down for a nice smoke before bed. Older books are fun.
The book also contains an introduction that tells about the Rey's life as German Jew's who managed to leave Germany in the 30's and then to escape France just ahead of the German army on June 14, 1940. They led a fascinating life of travel and art and literature and periodically writing stories of their most popular legacy, Curious George.

Baby Ditch Bird #2

It still looks like it wants to kill me.

Well, the baby ditch bird is still alive. In fact, it's thriving, or at least getting a lot bigger. I feed it four times a day and it gets a chance to eat it's fill every time, which is likely more than it would get to eat if it was battling for food back in the nest. Watching it eat is truly terrifying and confirms any theories that you may have heard about birds being related to dinosaurs. Watch this video of it eating if you want to be scared. It recognizes me and hops out of the cage to eat when it sees a plate of food. When it's done, sometimes it even hops back into the cage, which it recognizes as it's nest. For a test I left the door of the cage open all afternoon and it didn't even try to come out until I showed up with food. It responds to my voice and looks at me when I'm in the kitchen, which is about as much affection as I expect to see from this vile creature. And speaking of vile, the bigger it gets the more it poops. Right out the side of the cage. It's lovely. My life has once again become about preparing special food for scheduled feedings and cleaning up poop. Around the house it's been suggested that this might be a sign that my life's calling is preparing special meals and cleaning up poop. I've checked into it, and I'm not particularly excited about any of the jobs that are described in those terms.
The bird has grown at a truly staggering rate in the last 10 days. It's probably tripled in weight. At this rate it will be as big as a chicken in another 10 days and as big as a turkey 10 days after that. Looking at the size of the adult birds that are still hanging around my yard, there might be a slight flaw in my growth extrapolation. The promising thing is that this rapid growth will hopefully lead to a rapid desire for the baby bird to walk around and become an outside bird. Right now it's working on the basic instinctual premise that if it moves much, it will fall out of the nest. Considering its past, that's probably a valid point, but it's got to get up and move eventually. It needs to learn to walk around, to fly, and to hunt for food. I know I can keep it alive as a baby, but do I have the ability to teach it to be a real functioning member of bird society? I guess we'll see.

Macaroni May #3

Middle of the month and I'm working on knocking some serious time off dinner. There are days when an extra five minutes can make a difference. With that in mind, I switched pasta type this week to a thin spaghetti. I personally don't like the texture quite as well as macaroni and it doesn't hold the sauce as well, but due to it's very thin dimensions, it cooks quicker.

Pesto, Pasta, Prawns, Portabellos, and Peas

The meal this week looks and sounds fancy, and it sort of is, but it's also very easy and super quick. The pasta is self explanatory, start it first. The peas are boiled in water in the microwave. The pesto sauce comes from a jar which is probably cheating on some level, but not really. While all of that is going on, take one pound of the smallest thawed raw shrimp you can buy, and cook them in a hot pan with olive oil and a little garlic salt. It only takes a few minutes to turn them pink and when they're pink, they're done, don't over cook them. Pop them out of the pan and while it's still hot, put in the mushrooms. Use fresh ones, sliced. If they're holding a lot of moisture then they'll cook in their own juices, if they're dry then add a little olive oil to the pan. Again, they cook very fast, so pay attention. Toss the shrimp, mushrooms and finished pasta with as much pesto as you like. I only use 3-4 tbs for the whole recipe for the kids because their gentle little taste buds get overwhelmed. For me, I use more. Serve with peas on the side and you have a quick alliterative meal. This cooked up in 16 minutes and 42 seconds and I was so happy with myself that I had to give me a high five.

Life is Funny

Life is funny.

Logs and chainsaws and stuff.

Growing up I had the same dreams as all the boys. Fireman, astronaut, race car driver. I probably did play with dolls more than some boys, but I also built forts in the woods and played football and went hunting at an early age. I taught myself to fix cars and motorcycles. I learned to rock and ice climb, including a roped solo climb of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. I earned two bachelors degrees, one in Geological Engineering, one in Applied Geophysics. I've shot, butchered and eaten countless deer and two elk. I can weld. I can play the violin.  I built the second story on my house with my own two hands. I mow my own lawn. Man stuff.
With that significant background, do you want to know what the most important thing that I did this weekend was? I remembered that my wife had a big meeting this week and that she would probably want to wear a certain pair of pants. I checked to see if they had been washed. They hadn't, so I fixed that. When my wife was getting her clothes ready last night she was very excited to see that special pair of pants, washed, folded, and in their place. I don't think I could have ever looked forward into my future and predicted that laundry would ever be my significant contribution, to anything, even to just one person on one day.
Life is funny.

Mother's Day Breakfast

Happy Mother's Day!

Very short post today because we're having fun hanging out.
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. My kids have all made presents for my wife in school. They're also planning on making breakfast for my wife. It's taken all of my diplomatic powers to convince them that they don't need to make her breakfast in bed as soon as they wake up. They all want to wake up just as dawn breaks, get something together in a bowl, and bring it up the stairs. As sweet as this is, I've talked them in to waiting until I get up, then waiting a little longer while mommy sleeps, and then we'll make something and bring it to her.
That's my dad hint for the day. Breakfast in bed is awesome, but it's much better if it's breakfast in bed after a long sleep in. The details here are important.
Have a happy mother's day.

Good Mom, or Best Mom Ever?

#2 Mom, but #1 this.

When I was little, I thought my mom was the best mom in the world. She loved me and took care of me and was clearly the Best Mom Ever. Then the world got a little bigger and slivers of doubt began to creep in. Sure, my mom was wonderful, but my friends had Rice Krispie treats in their lunch, and Rice Krispie treats are awesome. Wouldn't the Best Mom Ever provide you with Rice Krispie treats? Then I learned that bed times had worldwide variation, and even variation within my own community. Wouldn't the Best Mom Ever let you stay up late? Maybe let you watch more TV? More things to ponder.
Of course I grew into being a teen and even though I loved my mom, she was clearly not the Best Mom Ever. The Best Mom Ever would understand better. She would buy me cooler clothes. She would let me stay up even later because I was the only one in the whole school who wasn't staying up to watch the cool TV shows. I had a mom who loved me, and I loved her, but come on, Best Mom Ever? Not hardly.
College, work, that time when you're not parented but not a parent yet yourself and you don't give things like Best Mom Ever much thought. She's there when you need her, but if she's done her job well, and my mom did, you just don't need her very much. You're successful and independent and you don't have problems that require a mom. You can handle the world, thanks in part, to someone who you realize in the back of your head might be climbing the ranks back toward Best Mom Ever.
Then the world changes, because you when you become a dad, there is a new mom in your life. Not your mom, but the mother of your children. Sorry mom, but this beautiful wonderful lady who just spent nine months making my baby, she's the Best Mom Ever. She loves my babies and takes care of them. She doesn't put Rice Krispie treats in their lunch (very often) because those kids end up with a head full of cavities and the Best Mom Ever knows that. She puts them to bed early so they can get their sleep and go to school rested, and so that she can spend time talking to me. She doesn't let them watch too much TV. She makes sure they know that it's not the clothes that make the person, but the person that makes the clothes. She tries very hard to understand the things that are happening now, even though she's slightly terrified of the upcoming teen years. My wife is clearly the Best Mom Ever.

Sorry mom, you're not the Best Mom Ever, but you are #2 on the list.

ETC: Up

Up is a Disney Pixar movie that came out in 2009, and as with most movies made by that corporate duo, it was pretty darn good. My kids liked the story, liked the dogs, liked the ending, liked the movie. I don't know how much to say about it and not give the story away, so I won't say much about the main story line. What I will discuss is the first 10 minutes of the movie.
In that first 10 minutes, one of the best love stories ever told in cinema is shown. It's told almost purely in images, there is little speaking. It is joyful and heatbreaking in a way that's hard to describe. Two people meet, they share dreams, and they fall in love with the intention of fulfilling those dreams together. As so often happens in real life, dreams get pushed back a little here, and a little there. As quickly as you are sucked in and have tears streaming down your cheeks, their story ends, and the real movie begins. If that was it, if all you ever saw of Up was the first 10 minutes, you would be a better person for it.
I know it's mother's day this weekend and you should really be letting mom pick any movies you watch, but if you can nudge her in a certain direction, Up would be a good one. Snuggle close, hold hands, cry a little together, and then have fun with the rest of the movie. It's a good one.

Baby Ditch Bird

Adorable? Nope.

A while ago I wrote a brief post about the Yellow Crowned Night Herons that have built a nesting colony in our yard. They moved in and built their nests and pooped on my truck. Charming. Recently egg shells started dropping from their nests, indicating that something must be hatching. We thought we might be seeing movement in the nests, which we pointed out to the kids and all thought was pretty neat. Then, on Friday, we received confirmation that there were indeed chicks that had hatched, and that ditch birds are terrible terrible parents.
The little guy you see in the picture had either fallen, or been pitched out of the nest. Either way, he was laying on the ground thirty feet below his parents and they didn't care. There were other chicks in the nest and they seemed quite content with that. I, however, was not. I just don't have it in me to let a baby anything lay there and die. I just can't. No matter how idiotic it was to pick up the ailing chick and bring it inside, there really wasn't anything else I could do. Just to be clear, the world doesn't need another ditch bird. They're not endangered or threatened or uncommon in any way. Other than being terrible parents, they're doing quite well as a species. In fact, if the baby was pitched out of the nest for being small, I might even be going against natural selection here and be raising a chick that will be a detriment to the species. I still can't just let it die. I am not a smart man.
I may not be smart, but I do know how to raise baby birds. A quick search showed that Yellow Crested Night Herons eat crayfish, frogs, bugs, fish and just about anything aquatic or semi aquatic that they can catch. Ok, meat. They eat it, lug it back to the nest in their bellies and then puke it into the waiting mouths of their chicks. Ok, meat vomit. What very common product looks, and pretty much is, meat vomit? Canned dog food. Think about it for just a second, you know I'm right.
The baby bird is a little older than is ideal for trying to hand raise. It's already imprinted on it's parents, so initially it really just wanted to poke my eyes out. It certainly didn't want me to feed it. I had to hold it's beak and poke little bits of food to the back of it's throat for the first few days. Sounds horrible, my wife says it looks horrible, but it's really not so bad. My older daughter could even do it. By yesterday, which was day four, he was starting to pick up and eat the food by himself. This morning he ate his own breakfast without any help at all. It was pretty awesome. Then he vomited it up, looked at it, and ate it again. I guess I should be twice as happy?
Even though I set out with the intention of saving this bird and raising him until he can go out into the wild by himself, there's no guarantee that it will work. I was quite shocked that he even lived through the first two days. He seems to be doing quite well and is clearly growing, but there is still a lot that can go wrong between now and when he's big enough to be able to fly and hunt for himself. He's the current project around here so I'll be giving updates as things progress. Follow along as I either hand raise a bird that should never be hand raised, or experience a minor family tragedy as the ugliest, orneriest, and newest member of the family fails to make it. Could go either way.

Macaroni May #2

Last week I set the bar at 20:55 for preparing a quick meal. This week I made a better meal and I beat that time, barely.

Sausage Spaghetti and Broccoli
One jar spaghetti sauce
Some sort of pasta
One pound of sausage
Broccoli
I won't insult anyone's cooking ability by explaining how to cook this meal. If you've managed to keep your kids alive then you can handle it without my help. 
Simple spaghetti is nothing more than noodles and a jar of sauce. It's not bad, but adding meat to it makes it taste better and it makes it a more complete meal by adding a protein source. Ground beef is traditional, but sausage is better. I use a turkey breakfast sausage because my kids don't like things that are too spicy, but I think Italian sausage is best. You can brown it in a pan in less time than it takes to cook noodles. For veggies, I steamed broccoli. You can cut the heads up while the water heats and it too is done before the noodles. In fact, the noodles are the slowest part of this whole operation and nearly caused me to miss my mark. I finished the meal in a terrifyingly close 20:44. I think I need to switch pasta types next week if I really want to bring my times down. Some sort of thin spaghetti perhaps. 
Anyway, the point is that in a shade over twenty minutes I was able to cook up a meal that had a protein, a starch, and two vegetables (sort of) one of them fresh. It was a meal that was eaten fast and everyone made it to soccer on time. We were actually a few minutes early. I'm really enjoying the process of optimizing meals for cook time. Wait until you see what I have on tap for next week.

Distractions

This little guy? I wouldn't worry about this little guy.

Just two days ago I wrote this post talking about paying attention and making sure that things are done when they should be. Then today, I'm a complete flake. I'm outside messing with that thing you see in the picture when I have a sudden moment of clarity and realize that I'm supposed to be on my way to the orthodontist! Right now! Gah!
A quick call to my wife to tell her what was going on while I was on the way to school to pick up my son. She called the orthodontist to let them know what we were going to be 10 minutes late while I snagged him from school. We ended up only being 8 minutes late and they already had him checked in thanks to the phone call. We (barely) didn't mess up their scheduling for the day and all is well (barely). Team work and a little luck saves the day again.
Every now and again I read parenting books or articles, and it always sounds like the authors really have their sh*t together. Now I'm wondering if they're really knocking out another chapter while the roast is burning. Watch who you take advice from, especially me.

Just Parenting

Not much stay at home dad stuff to say today. My wife is spending 6 hours at the soccer fields between team pictures and games. My son was the one kid who wiped out playing before pictures, so he was the one dripping fresh blood out of his band aids in the team picture. Lovely.
A lot of time spent parenting is just making sure things happen the way they are supposed to. Be there when you say you will, do the things you said you would, be a good example for your kids. That kind of stuff eats up whole days and weeks and years. Keep yourself in the right frame of mind and it's a good time, otherwise it can be a burden. Be careful.
Just sifting through old pictures to put something entertaining up, and I found one of my older son when he was young. Naps would often sneak up on him and we'd find him keeled over in the oddest of places. This nap destroyed the farm yard. The sheep made a full recovery.

Why I'm Snipped

This would be awesome! No it wouldn't. Yes!

I find it surprising that when I'm hanging out with my four kids, people ask me if my wife and I are going to have more. More? Really? No, we're done, I'm out of the game. That simple phrase, "I'm out of the game", lets people know that I'm not having any more kids, that I can't. It's a simple, yet discreet, way to let people know that all of the proper tubes have been disconnected. 
I probably had the shortest consultation in the history of vasectomies. The doctor was being harassed by a drug rep so I was waiting in the waiting room longer than I should have. In the waiting room with me was my wife and four kids and they weren't waiting as well as they should have been. When I finally got back to the room, the doctor asked my why. I pointed to his waiting room as said, "That noise, that's my four kids." Consult over, appointment scheduled. It was easy because he thought I was telling him that I had four kids and I didn't want any more, and that's a darn good reason to have things disconnected. What he didn't know is that I was getting snipped because having more kids actually sounded like a great idea.
For example, my wife went out with friends the other night for dinner. One of her friends is getting close to the 11th hour with her first pregnancy. My wife came home all lovey eyed and said that she'd totally love to have another baby. As for me, there are three new babies that moms have had at preschool in the last few months and quite frankly, another baby sounds awesome! We're both idiots of course. We have four wonderful children and four is quite enough for us and having more would not be a smart thing to do. But every now and again, every year or so, the stars align and we have both been around babies recently and one of us says something and before you know it both of us are saying that it would be awesome to have another baby! We're both idiots. We simply can't be trusted.
So that's why I'm snipped, not because I don't want more kids, but because I do, and I can't count on either my wife or myself to always think clearly when we've been around babies.

ETC: Dick and Jane

The Dick and Jane series of books have been a staple of children's literature since the 1930's when they were used to teach reading to kids in school. They've been undated and revised and they were re-issued in 2003. Though they were once the standard for teaching kids to read, but they've fallen way out of favor for that task. They were originally very homogenous in there depictions of race and culture. This made them hard to relate too if you weren't white and middle class, and it's hard to learn to read things that you don't understand. They've also been criticized for poorly focusing on the basics of reading and just not doing a good job of what they are supposed to do. Despite all of that, we have a bunch of them, and our kids have indeed used them to learn to read. First I want to say that these aren't kids books like you are probably used to. They are not books to read to your kids. They suck for that. They are books for your kids to read to you. They are very simple, they are very repetitive and they should be tossed aside once they've been mastered. Used like that, they're a great tool and I don't hesitate to recommend them. The kids are able to read them not too long after learning letter sounds, they seem to enjoy them, and they get a real sense of accomplishment when they finish a chapter. They can get done with a book and know that they can read, and that makes them quite happy with themselves and with reading. They're not perfect, but they have value. We like them.
Of course, if you find Dick and Jane too pedestrian, and what to spice things up, you can always try Dick and Jane and Vampires.

Box Turtle

I was walking around killing time while my son was in preschool last week, and I came upon a mother and her son trying to coax a turtle off of the sidewalk. They were gently nudging it with a stick and it just wasn't working. It was a small box turtle, so I calmly picked it up and showed it to the boy (about 3) and set the turtle back in the woods. They walked away, and I walked away, and it took every ounce of will that I had to not go back and pick the turtle up and put him in my bag and carry him home with me. I was lost in my thoughts about that turtle when, "what's there in the road I'm about to cross?" "Another turtle!" This one got to take a ride. 
I brought him back to the school, and showed him to a couple of the preschool classes, and then took him home. I didn't know that much about box turtles so I got out an old aquarium and put some dirt in it and got him settled in. The problem was that he really didn't calm down. He was going this way and that and generally freaking out. Off to the internet to learn about box turtles. It turns out he's a three toed box turtle, the official reptile of the state of Missouri. It's called a three toed box turtle because they usually only have three toes on their back feet. Pretty cool. This particular type of box turtle lives in the woods and fields of the southeastern U.S. and migrates depending on where it can find the moisture it needs. They're most comfortable if they have a place to burrow in leaf litter and really don't like to be exposed, which is why he was freaking out. I dumped a pile of leaves in with him and within a few moments he was buried and much happier. Through more reading I learned that he was an omnivore, eating worms and slugs and whatever creatures are slower than him, as well as fruits, mushrooms and a variety of plants. They also do best in captivity when kept outside in a pen. Off to the garage I went to get some old fencing and I put a pen up for him in a part of the yard that was shaded and had a lot of leaves on the ground. He wandered around for a bit, decided he couldn't escape, and then burrowed down in a nice little hidey hole. Since then I've been giving him apple slices, which he seems to love every day. He comes out and grabs them and drags them back to the hole to eat. My boys also found a bunch of worms while digging out back this weekend and threw them in to him. If they got close to him, his head would reach out and grab the worm and gobble it down. He's shy, but not shy about eating. 
He's been fun to have around for a few days and I learned a lot that I didn't know about box turtles. One of the things I learned is that wild box turtles do very poorly in captivity over the long term. In the wild they can live for 30 years or more, but seldom make it more than 12 months as pets. Tomorrow I'll load him back into my bag and take him back to the woods where I found him. He seems to be well fed and none the worse for the wear, receiving only an incredible tale to tell his turtle friends. You'd think that at some point I'd outgrow this sort of thing. It doesn't appear that's the case.

Macaroni May #1

May is here and with it comes sports and cramped schedules. If you've got practice in the evening then there is precious little time between when the kids get home and when they go out again and it's hard to find the time to cook food that doesn't suck. One of the great fall back foods is macaroni and cheese. You keep in in the cupboard, it's always there to be ready to eat in 20 minutes, the kids always eat it fast. The only problem is that it sucks. It's not good nutritionally, it has way too much artificial stuff in it, and it's hard to feel like you're doing good parenting when you make it. At least for me.
What to do?

It's ok, but I can do better. Much better.

I'm convinced that macaroni isn't the cure all that it seems to be. In the same 20ish minutes that it takes to make a box, you could actually make a good dinner with better food, or at the very least, supplement the macaroni so it's only a minor player in the meal. The first order of business in Macaroni May is to set a cooking standard. How much time does it really take me to make macaroni and cheese, from pot on the stove to macaroni on the plate. In that time can I prepare add on's that make the meal not suck so much? In that time can I make whole other noodle based meals that are awesome? Nutritious and delicious? 
For a calibration meal I made a box of macaroni and cheese and added ham steak and frozen mixed veggies. On my sucky electric stove it took 20:55 from the time I turned the water on to when I started scooping the macaroni out. A gas stove would be faster, but I don't have a gas stove, I have a sucky electric stove, so that's my calibration time. The veggies I boiled in water in the microwave and that only took 8 minutes. The ham steak took about 10. If you haven't had ham steak, look around your store and find it. Instead of buying a whole ham, you're essentially just buying a thick slice off the big end of the ham. It's cheap and you don't have a whole ham to deal with. Fry it in a pan in it's own juices until it's warm. Done. It's not the best meat in the world, but it's quick, it's protein, and pretty much all kids will eat ham fast enough to get out the door for soccer. With this meal I had a big pile of veggies, a protein source, and a smaller pile of macaroni and cheese. Nutritionally it's so much better than just making a couple of boxes of macaroni and it doesn't take any longer. It's not the best meal in the world, but it gets us out the door on time and it's fairly well balanced. It's also a great baseline. I've got four more Tuesdays in May to write about food. Can I make better, tastier, more nutritious meals, that are still based around cheap pasta in less than 20:55? I think I can. I think I can pretty much kick macaroni's ass. Stay tuned.