Les Singes: The Life of Monkey Boy

Crib Notes

I have a daughter, she likes things. She enjoys learning and making up stories with her stuffed animals. I'm not so sure she likes napping though. I dread the day when she stops napping because it gives us a chance to nap as well. Yep, I'm a vicarious parent.

Last weekend we had a busy Saturday visiting friends. Baby Singe almost fell asleep in the car on the way home for lunch and her nap. I carried her inside, read her a few books, and then put her in her overpopulated crib. She plays and chats with the stuffed animals as I imagine most girls her age do.

Mrs. Lessinge and I go down to the basement to relax in front of the TV. An hour later our daughter is still awake in her crib. She's not winding down at all. I decide to wander upstairs and take a peek on her. I open the door and started laughing because Baby Singe was completely naked. She removed all her clothes and was just playing in her crib. I was very impressed and highly amused. "Mrs. Lessinges, you need to come up here and see why our daughter isn't sleeping".

Last night I was just about to hit the sack when the little one wakes up. She immediately says "I want to sleep in mommy and daddy's bed". I scurry up the stairs and notice she's fully clothed, meaning her pajamas were still in place. Unfortunately her sheets were wet. We had our first full on bed wetting incident. This would probably happen every night... if every night she took off her diaper in the middle of the night.

Baby Singe took off her pajama bottoms, then took off her dry overnight diaper, and slyly pulled her pajama bottoms back up. Not sure why she did this, but it's not the best way to stay dry overnight. It does get daddy to read a few more Care Bear books though in the middle of the night.

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Since we're talking about plumbing issues, we had to spend $1500 to fix our pipes after a wash cloth slipped down the drain again. We've lost at least two down the drain that I know of. I once snaked our bathtub drain and found lots of hair and a shampoo cap. 80 year old houses aren't known for their equisite plumbing, but they do have fantastic charm.

It Rhymes with Mulva

I'm not stellar with first names. I've been on a mission as of late to improve this skill, especially at our daughter's daycare where parents are understandably linked to their offspring. Such as Colin's mom or Audrey's dad. The kids in my daughter's class see me and immediately say "Anna's daddy". Very cute I must say, yet it does not help me to achieve my Q4 goal.

About six weeks ago we had a daycare picnic. At the weekend gathering, I made it a point to memorize some new names. I learned a few and probably only remember two of them six weeks later. One I do recall is Conrad's mom, Angela. To reinforce her name we shared her name with Baby Singe. I didn't really expect her to learn the name or memorize it a full month later either.

A couple weeks ago I went to pickup of Baby Singe from daycare and Conrad's mom, Angela, surprisingly declares "Anna knows my name. My own son doesn't know my name". Huh, biting my lip trying desperately to recall Angela's name.

"wow, that's remarkable", I state. [still not fully remembering her name... got it Angela]

She proceeds to tell me a quick story about how Anna used her name over and over again in class. Personally, I've tried the entering names in my BlackBerry trick. That does a pretty decent job, but can be challenging when face-to-face with someone. I use the BlackBerry trick most often when I see someone in the distance who I anticipate will want to chat. It works pretty alright, but does have some drawbacks.

There's also the word association trick which can work if the name is fairly unique. (Phoebe, Foebe, Feebe... gave me a freebie... got it. Free coffee folks). I think I know about 27 Jennifers and 6 Meg(h)ans so that makes this trick not as successful.

I have four more Q4 goals to set and accomplish before December 31st. I wonder if using my daughter to accomplish MY goal truly qualifies as accomplishing the task? What's your trick to learning someone's name?

My Back Shouldn't Ache

• Some days I wish I could simply remember to zip my pants instead of the alternative.


• I'm still not sure if curly hair is a blessing or not.


• I wish we had one piece of truly comfortable furniture in our house, just one. Our couches are just alright and our chairs, not so relaxing for the body.


• Thinks we have the best babysitter ever.


• I enjoy this time of year because of apples, leaves, fog, rain, wind, decorations, candy, and peppermint mochas.


• Can't wait for my buddy Tod to get back from his two year stint in the Peace Corps November 20th.


• Loves the clothes my mom marks for Baby Singe and this would be the only reason I approve of stunting.


• I have absolutely no clue what I will be for Halloween, but cheerleader is out of the running

Nothing to Eat

I owe you this. I owe you many things, but I need to get this off my chest. A week ago Mrs. Lessinges had sharp abdominal pains. She took last Friday off work hoping a little down time would ease the pain. Not the case. Friday morning we visit the doctor's office for some blood work, poking, and prodding.

I get back from work Friday night and learn via her doctor her white blood cell count was very high. The doctor suggests she go to the emergency room because of the discovery. Later Friday night we go to the ER after securing a babysitter for the evening. She spends all weekend in the ER and does get discharged Sunday afternoon.

At one point in time it seemed she was destined to go under the knife for her appendix, but they ruled that out. She's currently on antibiotics and we're hopeful the many pills will temper her inflamed colon/appendix. The source of the abdominal pain isn't known and that is perhaps the tough part about all of this. You see a similar event happened in April of last year while she was in Japan. Talk about horrible, but she made it through and hoped to not deal with the associated pain again.

I'm just going to throw this out here since October is almost complete. 2009, not going down as one of my favorite years in recent memory. My job has been more stressful than I'd like. Mrs. Lessinges work has been much more insane than mine. My work, aww I can't go there as I'd like to on my blog. I've lost touch with my blog and most of what's happening in your lives. I'm more out of shape than I'd like to be.

Our daughter has been great, but don't let any parent tell you otherwise... this parenthood gig is a lot of work. Having a verbal daughter who likes to assert her presence is fabulous, except when it comes to the bedtime routine.

Anyways, my wife is okay. Her health could be better, but I'm optimistic surgery or anything as invasive can be avoided. One more week of antibiotics and then she can put her mind at ease for a bit. Take care everyone and no, we're not moving to Europe.

Ebb and Flow Emotions

We did it. We took our first family vacation since Baby Singe was born in 2007. We've had other "vacations" since, but they were to visit family. Last week we drove down to the Oregon Coast to spend five nights away from Seattle. We booked this vacation about two months ago and a variety of emotions have swept through my head during these past eight weeks.

Let me start by saying our trip, which concluded Tuesday afternoon, was splendid. We spent five nights in Manzanita, Oregon, renting a vacation house on the outskirts of the sleepy beach town. We made sure each day to visit the beach and take in the local sites. We are from Seattle so of course this means we found a local coffee shop and enjoyed their brew and baked goods and awesome grocery store. Note, I love finding great grocery stores while traveling. It wasn't all about the grocery store discovery though. We saw seals, a deer, kite boarders, deserted storefronts, spiders, chipmunks, tsunami evacuation signs, fishermen, and many other things.

What I didn't expect was the wonderful weather. We took many trips to the Oregon Coast when I was a fragile teen. My mom took us to the coast since it was rather inexpensive compared to air travel and only a four hour drive. The three youngest children would pile in the car and head to the scenic Oregon Coast. She'd get a motel room and we'd sneak in after hours as to not pay extra child feees. Normally our visits happened in the fall when the fog was thick and the rain was heavy.

Both these weather elements were lacking, but the memories were a plenty. I could picture places I visited twenty years ago. I could vaguely recall the parking lots of various state parks and craft stores. I remember the restaurants where we ate as a family. About 23 years ago my parents wrapped up their divorce and my mom did what she could to treat her youngest three boys. The first trip to the coast we all piled in my mom's brand spanking new Hyundai Excel hatchback. Why do I remember this? Every single person asked my mom about her sparkly new car. I distinctly recall a man asking about the car as we were overlooking the ocean from the Yaquina Head Lighthouse.

Those were painful times in my life, but much of the pain was swept away with the riptides. There's something so calming about sitting on the beach and watching the world unfold. That was true as a teen and still remains the same as a parent. Watching my daughter discover new things during our trip was fascinating. Hearing her say "Haystack Rock is a monolith" was enough to make me melt.

All this being said, Thursday is back to work day. The last 7 days have been about unwinding and catching up with memories and forging new ones. As I alluded to in this post, those were difficult times made better by time spent communing with nature. It works every time for me whether I'm climbing trees as an adult or holding hands with my wife while taking in a West Seattle sunset. Nature is where I'm most at ease.