I Have Failed

Across the street from where I live there is a little house.  An older lady lives there with what appears to be her teenage son.  I sometimes see a girl but mostly just the mother and son.

Keeping Afloat

I can't say I'm the most positive person around, my wife likes calling me a debbie downer.  It's funny because, despite her accusation, I make great efforts to stay positive and not dwell on myself.  But right now I need to vent a little.  Maybe a l not.  I'm only human, I have feelings and emotions and pains.

For the past two or three weeks... maybe a month, I've not been well and the only thing keeping me going forward is knowing it could be worse.  And it looks like life is on a mission to make that as painfully obvious as possible right now.  I have two friends that have lost husbands, one with a daughter the same age as Nicholas.  One friend who was in the hospital for almost a week due to strong contractions and, basically, premature labour.  She's only 26 weeks along and very young and scared.  Someone who miscarried at 30 weeks due to shitty doctors (not in the US, no possibility for suing).  I could go on with what is going on around me and I do feel for these people and I know full well their situations are far worse than mine.

But I still have mine.

Pictures of Nicholas

When Nicholas was born we used to take him to Kiddie Kandids every month to get monthly, professional pictures of him.  Our goal was to get yearly pictures after that.  Well, things didn't quite work out and my next experience at a photo studio (Target) was a pretty bad one.  It has always been really hard for him to focus and follow directions and look where you are trying to get him to look.  We now know why but at the time it just felt like studio pictures were out of the question.  Ever since then I have wanted to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of him outdoors, where he is the most comfortable and the most himself.  With the wedding in December we hired a photographer to do some engagement/family photos as well as the ceremony.  They got some amazing pictures of him!  Here are some of my favourites:

Potty Training: A Year Later

As the Fourth of July passed I realised it had been a year since I started the potty training journey.  Lots has happened in one year and I can say with confidence that he is fully potty trained.  He has the errant accident but our dry days largely outnumber the wet undies.  He sleeps in underwear and I've had less than a handful of night accidents.

So all is great, right?  Gotta love this diaper free life like everyone said I would... NOT!

Teen Suicide: A Little Close to Home

It's been too long, a lot has happened, and the truth is I've been lazy.  Catch up may come later...

A little less than a year ago someone shared a video somewhere, I'm not really sure where, called "60 Days Later..." which was made by the parents of a teenager who committed suicide and how they were doing 60 days later.  Through this video I found their Facebook page and have been following them since. 

Yesterday, this page posted a link to a page recently created to keep people updated on a teenage girl who attempted suicide this past weekend.  Apparently she shot herself in the head and, as of this point, looks like she may recover (though with many problems).  As I was reading through the page and the comments I was overwhelmed by how many people were posting that they lost children to suicide.  I couldn't keep count!  I knew it was a problem and in recent years bullying has been highlighted as a major cause but I just hadn't been forced to see so many actual accounts.

Potty Training - First Two Weeks In Review

Tomorrow (today, I guess, judging by the time) will be the first day of the third week of potty training.  While I have been making regular posts on how we are doing (click 'Potty Training' under labels to the right for the play-by-play), they have been focused on the details of actual potty training and not on how this is affecting us overall.

Painting Fun!

The latest creations from my little artiste!  Don't look too hard, it's abstract art :P

This started as the Island of Sodor.  The green is the island

and the blue is the water.

I'm Selfish

The post that got lost is not coming for a while.  It was full of pictures and I just can't do that right now since I need to re-select those pictures and with my computer going in for repair tomorrow I rather just wait until I get it back.  Anyway...

There is a daycare in my apartment complex.  All the apartments are like mine, one bedroom apartments.  Someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to rent three of them and run them as a daycare.  I guess it works.  I see these kids, mostly preschool aged and younger, all the time and I often see them being dropped off or picked up as we go in and out.  I have yet to see one kid be left in tears and have seen several leave crying not wanting to go home.  Whenever I see that I get a pain in my stomach.