Mommy Needs Breaks Too

My lovely wife recently bought me a GPS watch (Garmin Forerunner 410) with heart-rate monitor (HRM) to keep track of my running workouts. On Saturday morning, I decided to ramp up my Warrior Dash training by running my normal course twice for a total of 4 miles (or only 3.79 mi as my watch accurately informed me). What's great about this watch is you can upload your workout data to a website and view the data visually in various charts and tables. You can see the data from my previous workout here.

Tary was set to leave the house for a girls-night-out but she was very upset when her cousins weren't ready to leave on time. I felt bad because she doesn't get to go out that often to relax and de-stress so I think it gets bottled up inside. The last thing she needed was to squander this free time waiting for others. I also need to be more helpful around the house so I can lessen some of the burden from her shoulders.

So Daniel, when you are old enough to read and understand this, please give your Mommy a big hug and a kiss and tell her that you love her. She spends hours pumping, cleaning bottles, doing laundry, cooking meals, changing diapers, and many other miscellaneous Mommy-tasks each week because she loves us. We just need to tell her that we love her too!

After a while Tary was able to get out of the house and do whatever girls do when they're out. I called my BFF (who I affectionately call "Uncle Jesse" from the sitcom Full House) to come over and help me watch Daniel. Things started off pretty well. I was able to clean up around the house while Daniel took a nap. I fed him an early dinner and gave him his bath. Then we started to fade...

Daniel is like an energizer bunny. He never stops playing and simply wore us out. Uncle Jesse fell asleep on the sofa. I started to drift in and out on the living room floor. Daniel took liberties to climb all over and around my corpse.

Mercifully another friend texted me while returning from Boston. She came bearing gifts of Korean fried chicken from Bon Chon and some Dunkins iced coffee. It was like sipping liquid energy! Ahhh!!!

More friends came by to visit and Tary returned from her night out. We sat around and hung out. There's nothing like having good fried chicken in the company of great friends.

Weekend Recap - Part 1

Another weekend has passed and I've finally gotten some time to kind of jot some notes about it. It's kind of nice to recap what happened because one day, I'm gonna look back on these posts and wonder what I was up to. Hopefully this will be some good reading. Too bad it was so long so I broke up this post into three parts. Let's start with Friday.

After work, Tary and I were on our way to get some soft-serve chocolate ice cream (for the 3rd time this week) when one of my best buds A.D. aka "Deabo" called and let us know that our other good friends P.N. and L.N. were having hot pot, dry style (i.e., food cooked over a skillet served family style) at their place. I had never been to their place before so I was excited for a change of scenery. A.D. then mentioned though that they (P.N. and L.N.) were a little hesitant of having too many people there because of a lack of space. He briefly talked about the possibility of having it at our house but he didn't want to impose. Tary and I didn't mind having everyone over so we agreed to host the hot pot. How can we say no to good food in the company of great friends?

So the usual cast of friends came over. We had an assortment of thinly sliced rib-eye, various greens and vegetables, and even some shrimp that was cooked with butter over an electric skillet. The kitchen table was full of food, people, and of course laughter. It was tough cooking everything so a second skillet was added to the mix. I was excited because that meant the meat would get cooked faster and more importantly, closer to my plate.

After dinner, most of our friends went back home. Some had stayed to continue just chatting. Most of the conversation was about helping our friend A.D. let his inner "Deabo" out at PAX (the upcoming nerd convention). We had so much fun chatting that we lost all track of time. I think the guys stayed over until about 4:30 AM! Oh, I would pay for that the next day...

A Productive Weekend

Wow, that was some weekend! We had friends over Friday night for some Popeye's fried chicken and video games. I can't believe the only place that sells that stuff is in Boston. Oh why did you ever have to leave Nashua, NH?!

Saturday was even more eventful and just as tiring. My brother-in-law B.K. came by with his van and helped us pick up the new crib and dresser from Babies"R"Us. He helped me bring everything into the house which included carrying the 100+ lbs box for the crib up the stairs to what would be the baby's nursery.

Tary and I were excited to start putting things together so we started cutting open the boxes. Just as disappointing as this year's football season was, our hearts sank when we saw that the crib pieces were white and not chocolate like the dresser and changing table. This is insanity to OCD people like us.

We were really upset so Tary called Babies"R"Us to straighten them out things out. They refused to admit that they made a mistake so I had to step in. We had ordered the crib about 2 weeks ago and the correct model was in stock at the time. Supposedly they reserved it for us while we waited for the dresser to arrive.

So I was talking to the person on the phone and she was not apologetic at all. She didn't care that we had to ask my brother-in-law to take time off of work just to come and help us. She didn't care that we drove all the way to Salem, NH to pick up the wrong colored crib. She didn't care that we lugged that incredibly heavy box up the stairs, or that we cut it open to find the wrong color, or that we had to repack everything to exchange it.

After all of that, she still didn't want to take any accountability for their mistake. First she tried to say that we ordered the wrong model or something but we ordered the model that was already in stock. Next she tried to blame it on the manufacturer and claim that they may have mislabeled the outside of the box. I quickly dismissed that notion by pointing out that the model number on the box was xxxxxx-21 which corresponds to "white" and that was what was inside of it. We had ordered model xxxxxx-81. Sigh.

After speaking to a manager, he agreed to refund 20% for our troubles and that seemed like a fair compromise. My brother-in-law was gracious enough to come back the next day to help us bring back the wrong crib to the store to exchange it for the correct one.

So anyways, back to Saturday night. Tary and I put together the dresser and changing table. The dresser had a lot of pieces so it took us a while to put together. The changing table was much easier. Ah, the fruits of our labor. :)

After all of our hard work on Saturday, we had our friends over again that night for more food and games. One of my best friends A.D. bought most of the food so he put us to work in the kitchen preparing the meats, vegetables, and sauces.  He clearly had a game plan for the kind of meal he wanted us to have so we didn't dare venture too far from his vision. We ended up having an awesome family-style meal with thinly sliced beef and assorted vegetables cooked in butter over an electric skillet and dipped in a delicious but very spicy "prahok" sauce.

As I mentioned earlier, we exchanged the crib on Sunday. After B.K. helped me get the new box upstairs, Tary and I started getting to work. The crib was by far the easiest to put together of the 3 pieces of baby's furniture. After some reshuffling, the nursery was pretty much ready to be decorated. Tary quickly went to work and threw on a sheet over the baby's bed, a turtle bed skirt, baby bumpers with turtles on the side, and a turtle mobile. Do you sense a common theme? Tary knows how much I love turtles and now our little man will be able to match his Daddy. The final touches were some aquatic themed decals which went on the walls.

After all of that, since we had so much leftover meat from the night before, we had our friends over yet again for some homemade steak and cheese subs. Of course we had to make it buff-er so our friends brought various sliced meats (e.g., prosciutto, pepperoni, etc) and cheeses to add to the steak bombs. Mmm. I think I need to use the next notch on my belt. After dinner, we watched the end of the Saints/Vikings game and then played some Worms on the Xbox 360. That was a fun night.

So I guess some football was played this weekend. Meh. The Saints go marching on while Favre cost his team again (and again). Let's see how long Favre strings us along this off season before he tells his team family us his plans for next season. Manning and the Colts sent Cryin' Ryan and the J-E-S-T-S (not a typo) back home. Meh. Well, I'm glad the Jets are finally eliminated.

Whew. What a weekend. Tary and I are exhausted. I'm glad the nursery is starting to take shape and it's even more enjoyable seeing how excited Tary is getting. As always, it was great spending time with our friends too. Too bad I can't have another weekend to recover from this one.