Family Bonding

Tuesday night we decided to take the girls to the park for some fun family bonding time. We got to the park and set Abby on a blanket to watch the "baseball" played by the rest of the family. (Big red bat... big white ball... you know the drill.) Baseball was all fine and good. Lasted about 5 minutes.

After baseball we busted out the frisbee. That was tons of fun... for about two throws. I have to admit, it was my fault it all ended so horribly. I "gently" "tossed" the frisbee to Leah who was standing about two feet away. The edge caught her in the bridge of the nose. We laughed and kept playing. Even Leah laughed. Until she saw the blood.

Blood started pouring out of her nose. She freaked out. I went into battle mode trying to find wipes or SOMETHING to keep blood from getting everywhere. Leah sensed my panic and started crying even louder. Passersby were trying to ignore us and families were pretending to enjoy their picnics in spite of the loud bloody mess happening just yards away.

To calm Leah down, I sent Lenny on a mission for ice cream. Not far away an ice cream truck was blaring its tinkley music and I expected a speedy rescue from the tears. Not so. Apparently there was a long line at the truck and Lenny happened to run into an old friend and needed to make small talk. (Sorry, babe, but this is MY story. You can rebut in the comments.)

In the meantime, Leah is STILL crying; Abby is trying to eat the blood-covered frisbee; I'm trying to keep Abby away from the frisbee and minimize the blood getting on me, Leah, and the blanket; and Lenny abandoned me for the ice cream man.

Finally, Dad showed up with the ice cream and Leah calmed down enough to eat it (and eventually calmed down enough to stop the bleeding, as well).

No more frisbee. Once the trauma was over we tried the playground but it didn't take long for the bleeding to start up again. And we only had one wipe left.

So we went home.

Family bonding.

The Rise of Pooka and Goomba

No, Lauren and I have never blogged anywhere on the web, but with the influence of Leah and Abigail in our lives, it seems like a fun way to record some of our family moments. As this will be my first post here, I'll keep it short for introduction's sake.

Leah will be 3 in December and Abigail 1 in October. To give a little more perspective on these 2 facts, note that Leah can say the Pledge of Allegiance, write here name, create sentences that contain about 3 to 4 more independant or dependant clauses than I could creat at her age. Abigail is mimicking many of our actions (some of my favorite being the slow-blink and the double-handed point-to-the-sky move) and can lift herself to standing if she has something to hold on to.

I love my wife for setting this up, and I love my kids.

I'll say more later because it's time to help with dinner.

THE Blog

I feel like I have to write something amazing for the first blog post EVER but I've got nothin'. So I'll just post SOMETHING and then the pressure will be relieved and the brain juice will start flowing. I invited my husband, Lenny, to contribute to the blog as well so I suppose this will become The Family Blog. You know, the kind where you send an email to everyone in your contacts list saying "Check out our new blog!", the contacts who truly love you visit once, and then all the people who supposedly love you forget about it forever. Until, of course, you bring it up again in your Christmas letter ("Here's our blog address, everybody!") and score a few sympathy visits. Whatever floats.

And now, having stated my opinion of blogs in general and predicting the imminent doom of our own, here it is...........Our Family Blog!