phillbecker

Been working on the house a little while Allison is away with the kids on vacation.
Finished the bathroom, kitchen and stairs. Yay.
Sold the coal stove and most of the coal. hmm. well she wanted it done.
Cleaned out the basement/family room. Yay.
Decided to leave the library/closet/shit room. Didn’t want to mess with it. One section of the finished basement room was walled off into a biggish closet. So I put some shelves up and made it the library and extra clothes closet. Then shit just got piled up in there because you can shut the door and forget about it. Well I decided to move the cheap cabinet units out because they were empty anyway. Then I moved out the empty dresser in the corner, and discovered green stuff all over the just-a-minute-ago-white blanket. Mold. The ENTIRE corner is full of mold and the carpet is damp. Now I’m fixinta wash all the cloth stuff that was in there and decide what books to keep. The books touching the carpet show/feel damp, but the shelves look okay so far. I can’t decide what’s worse: the cat used the pile of clothes as a piss-pot when his box wasn’t clean enough, or there’s water seeping in somewhere. I kinda hope it’s the cat cause he just ran away (I let him out while the stairs were wet and he hasn’t come back) and won’t piss in there again. But it doesn’t smell as bad as it should if it were piss, so I think there’s a seep somewhere.

sigh. I was going to go back up to the family vacation tomorrow, but between getting called back to work (at least tomorrow) and this it might be a couple more days.

!beer

edit0
Thought I’d post this to facebook to see what would happen. Haven’t posted on my wall yet. It’s too long. How can “What’s on your mind” be limited to 420 characters or whatever? Do most people have small thoughts that aren’t worth getting all out at once? Or are people’s attention spans shorter than 420 characters?

edit1
Yes this is cross-posted. Deal.

My almost 7 y.o. is in first grade. At the parent/teacher conference, my wife told the teacher that bribes and potential consequences don’t really affect Eddy. He won’t perform better just to get a reward. He’ll act the way HE wants to. And the THREAT of losing something doesn’t work unless it’s something really important. So my wife said “go ahead, try another sticker chart (for good behavior) or your reward system, but you have our permission to put him in time out if you need to.”

The class gets “pennies” for good behavior. Every friday they can buy little prizes for at least 10, or save them up for an auction with bigger prizes. We called them “bonus cards” when I was in school. Same idea. Good behavior +points. Bad -points/pennies. She has another system where students can reward each other for good deeds witnessed. ie. Johnny sees Kimmy do something nice for someone, so Johnny puts Kimmy’s name in the good deed jar. Names are drawn every so often and they get prized too.

so, where do you think this is going?

Teacher: Eddy had a good day monday. 2 stickers. Tuesday morning was good, but that afternoon he offered another classmate reward pennies to put his name in the good deed jar.”

HA HA. He was following her example of bribery. Now, he never broke a rule. She never said you couldn’t do it. I can’t get mad at him for testing a flawed system and checking for loopholes and weaknesses. I did say “If you knew it was wrong and did it anyway, that’s not good. But if you were just pushing boundaries … I can’t get mad for that.” He ended up losing the pennies and the nomination.

Obviously it’s been a little while since I’ve updated this. Sorry. Tim has grown up a lot, topping 25 pounds at 9 months. Eddy and Ruth are brilliant and beautiful.

And dangerous when armed…

(I’ll get that video up soonish. Too big right now.)

being chased out the door. update later

Timothy Craig Becker
Born 11/02/08 8:06pm
Weight: 7 lb 15.5 oz
Length: 22 in

Everyone is well and fine, thanks. He’s eating fine and getting a routine… mostly nurse, sleep, scream, nurse, scream, nurse, sleep repeat.
Both Ruth & Eddy are adjusting well and treat him very carefully and are super sweet with him. The pets didn’t blink.

I tried to register a domain name for him, but apparently “Timothy Craig” is a country singer and already has the domain. I’ll figure something out.

More pictures will come as I get the photo gallery program working again, and upload them to the right place.

Now, to plan Eddy’s birthday party…

We all sat down to figure out what Ruth can say.

At 19 months, Ruth can say (pretty closely anyhow) the following:

Mom, Dad, Eddy, “Owie”, stuck, butt, asleep, red, fish, eat, “B” (for Ernie), “B” (for bird), mine, please, thank you, me, no shoes, toes, down, help, woof-woof, meow, wet, poop, hop, oops, wow, ear, noes, eyes, soup, shirt, juice, bottle, book, read, hi, bye-bye, moo, ball, hello, push, pull, hot, “ah-ah” (for count), fall, snow, nope, teeth, beautiful, back pack, pea, bite, food, stop, go, share, Here you go, hat, baby, frog, swing, uh-huh, boy, “elephant noise”, “rooster noise”, duck, “peek a boo”, peekaboo, doll, tickle, boo boo, up, choo choo, sit, outside, feet, sick, …

She can sign:
Owie (hurt), asleep, red, fish, eat, bird, Please, thank you, shoes, food, stop, share, hat, baby, frog, boy, blanket, sorry, blocks, more, build, bear, car, paper, draw, bunny, cracker, potty, brush teeth, sad, awake, grumpy, bath, “StarWars (made up sign), “bottle” (her own sign), cheese, apple, candy, cold, milk, cookie, caterpillar, monkey, gorilla, tiger, train, popcorn, dirty, pig, surprised, all-done, school, play, penguin, stinky, cereal, owl, thirsty,

that we can remember.