One more blog for 2008!  I am on a roll.

Since we are staying away from home to what will be 6 weeks, one can expect the kids to go awry.  For Lucas, it is his pooping.  He held his poop for 5 DAYS.  Yeah.  I was so pissed on that 5th day out of frustration for sitting hours on end with him waiting for this poop to come, and also scared that this was getting dangerous and some part of his digestion would rupture from holding in all this crap.  Well the day came, and all were happy once again.  Apparently though, mom kept slipping him the medicine unbeknownst to me.  So the following day, I get a "Dad, I just pooped my pants."  Awesome.  I am glad that he pooped, and glad that he at least had the decency to poop his pants at a place where I could handle the situation, not like say in a McDonald's play structure.  So the next day, I am thinking I had better be on top of making him go to the bathroom since he is free flowing now.  We pull up to a McDonald's and I think, I had better make him go- it has been awhile.  Yet fast food restaurants are incredibly sloppy to begin with, and when you have a 3 year old in there that doesn't fully grasp the rule of touch as little as possible when in there, I decide to skip it until after dinner.  My mistake.  So sure enough, Lucas is up in the play structure like a hamster in a tube and starts crying.  I think, "OH CRAP" or something similar to that, and sure enough- "Daddy I peed and I pooped in my pants!"  Sweet.  "Lucas, go down the slide you are standing right next to." "NO, I CAN'T"  His 4 year old cousin goes in to help him- but Lucas just flips out and wants nothing to do with it.  So after 5 min of coercing him to come down, I just have to go retrieve him.  So my petite body starts to make its way up the tube slide.  After a sweet climb up the slide, I get to the top mad as hell and demand that Lucas come over to the slide.  Still, no.  So I go out and get him.  His pants are soaked and it smells RIPE.  So I throw him down the slide and realize that my only route of escape is the pee streaked poop scented slide.  AWESOME!  So after that delightful trip I am faced with the hope that there is another pair of underwear in the diaper bag.  I then realize that the thing I wanted to avoid, the fast food restaurant bathroom, was now going to be a lot nastier to deal with.  I reject that notion and head out to the parking lot with Lucas.  I strip him down outside (thank goodness we are not in South Dakota) and remove his pee soaked pants, and his loaded up Thomas the Train underwear.  After cleaning him up, I just throw the underwear in the trash.  Not worth trying to save.  I throw on his pajamas, and our dinner is finished.  I cannot wait to do all this again soon...

Christmas Gifts

So Lucas is still a bit inexperienced with the Christmas gift thing.  He asked Santa for a Wall-E toy that turns into a box, apparently the remote controlled $60 Wall-E my dad bought him earlier just wasn't cool enough.  So we are opening gifts at 

Rachel's house, and Lucas has the expectation that the present he opens is going to be this Wall-E.  I have this all on video- so I'll have to post it.  But he tears through the gift and opens the box to find... a shirt!  "Dad!  A shirt?!  This is not a Wall-E!!!"  Looks like Aunt Rebecca failed on that gift.  He turns to the next present which was a sweet monster Doctor's kit- 

which actually is a great gift because he plays with his cousins kit EVERY time he goes over there.  BUT- it's not a WALL-E!  So he clips that gift too and actually turns to his broth

er Ben's singing spiderman.  So I pull out the gift that might save Christmas (also from Aunt Rebecca) a box of "reject bots" from the Wall-E movie.  He is ecstatic!  Finally.  Of course, Santa should have dropped off the Wall-E that turns into a box at this grandma's house, because he had to wait until morning to get that.  So fast forward to Christmas morning at my parents house.  Lucas is happy because he opens like 6 different Wall-Es, Jake is happy because he got a Blu-Ray player, Ben is just always happy, but Rachel is NOT HAPPY.  I imagine Rachel will tell her side of the story on her blog-  but here is how I saw it.  

As a promotion to one of my massive lab equipment orders, they threw in a free Wii video game system.  Not too shabby eh?  Truth is, I got a sweet deal on the bundle as it was, but that definately sealed the deal.  Now, I think Wii's are cool, but no way I'd spend $250 on that when I could be that much closer to a PS3.  But, I admit they are fun for the whole fam

ily so we will have fun with this free one.  Now, since we are in CA for forever- the Wii was not going to show up before we left.  So, I think, this will be a fun surprise to present on Christmas instead of just going home and telling Rachel about it.  After ordering it, I see that there is a Wii fit apparatus I am pretty sure that Rachel would enjoy it- particularly since we are walled up in the single digit weather for months at a time.  So I buy it on black Friday and then decide I had better tell her I got her a gift because we originally were not going to buy each other Christmas gifts.  So, it probably would have been 

best if I just wrapped up the Wii fit and taped the promotional ad to it so she could see that I didn't spend money on it.  Sadly though, I did not take that route.  I had her open up a controller first- to which she would realize that I had got a wii.  Then she opened up a second part to the controller (the nunchuk)- to which she said and I quote "A numchuk?!  Whatever that is, thanks a lot."  She was pissed.  Lucas opened up a Wii Cars Movie game, I opened up a Wii Star Wars game and lightsaber attachments, she opens up a Dancing with the Stars game, and then thinking it is the actual Wii- opens up a Wii fit.  She is totally flipping out at this point thinking that I have pissed all this money away on a Wii and is especially mad because while she will enjoy it, there are so many other things she 

would have spent that mone

y on first.  Finally, after torturing her for 15 min and even having my dad tease her by quoting Lucas from the previous night "This is NOT A WALL-E!" I pull out the ad.  She realizes that it was free and suddenly changes her entire countenance.  She now realizes that it is pretty  cool, but is still not cool with the what I pulled on fooling her.  I do regret it now, because I didn't think she would react to that degree, but on the other hand it was pretty funny.  I only wish her dad could have seen it- because he is the king of those types of pranks, and once I told him my plan I just couldn't go back...  

So much to say...  Life has been crazy and I really do need to be better at updating this blog, but if I can do it once a month, I'll consider it a success. 

So we left Vermillion, SD the week before Thanksgiving.  I gave a seminar at my old alma mater Pepperdine University and met to talk over a paper I am writing with my old advisor.  Once that was done it was fun with Thanksgiving.  The big fun was watching my laptop die a few days previous to my trip to Mexico.  I had yet to finish my 30 min talk for the conference I was attending when suddenly I just could not get it to start.  Nothing.  Awesome.  Luckily, I had access to the hard drive, and I am a big time prof with a research budget- so I just went to Best Buy and bought a "netbook."  It is a laptop that wieghs only 3 lbs.  It is not high powered and would probably melt if I tried to run statistics on it- but it is the perfect little thing to throw on your lap and finish your presentation on.  It is also sweet in that it is small enough to use on the plane without tilting your screen completely forward because of the seat in f

ront of you.  I am sure I'll have to deal with folks from purchasing for not going through them, but that is old hat for me now.

The conference was great.  I met some people, hung out with others I knew, but most of all- I was able to travel with just my wife!  We left the kids at her parent's house, and Rachel sat poolside reading while I went to talks.  Then in the evening we toured  around the old city of Merida.  It was great.  We took an evening trip to see the ruins at Uxmal, which were really cool- 

we stayed for the "lights and sounds" show there though- which was really lame. 

We then returned and have been bouncing back and forth between my parents house and hers.  I haven't done nearly the amount of work that I had hoped to do, but about the amount I expected to get done...  It's all good though, because I got to sit in the Premier seats at Staples Center t

wice.  Once for a Lakers game, the other for a Kings game.  Also took the kids to the Long Beach aquarium- that was pretty cool as well.

  Unfortunately, I had scarred Lucas for life on entering small dark places with lines of people.  Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  My aunt Jackie was gracious enough to take us all to Disneyland once 

again.  We started off well with Dumbo, but then I thought Mr. Toad would be fun.  Nope.  It basically ruined Lucas for the entire day.  Any ride after that he pretty much flipped out on.  It was a miracle to get him onto It's a Small World.  When he saw the boats outside going he was ok with it, but once he saw the boat go INSIDE- nope.  I did what any good dad does and forced him onto the boat kicking and screaming.  Luckily it worked this time, because even though that ride is a little scary to me (lots of dolls

 singing gives me Chucky nightmares) Lucas thought it was ok.  

Christmas was great... but I am going to save that special story for after lunch... Yes two blogs in one day!