Categories: Top :: Family Tech :: Health :: Medical :: Moving :: Parenting

Parenting: Rules to parent by
Tue, 17 Jun 2008

A friend of mine pointed me to this instructional article for new fathers; read with the utmost of concentration!

Hit up Skepchick

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FamilyTech: Review: Wee Ride bicycle seat for kids
Thu, 12 Jun 2008

(Aside; I just described something to someone and liked the analogy, so thought I would repeat it here. Maybe its wanking but here goes -- I was describing one of the reasons I like to code so much, and so many free games and tools and so on; I compared myself to a 'chef' - as someone who likes to code "for other people", as a chef likes to cook for other people. There is a pleasure in the act itself, to seeing life come from nothing, to achieving the desired goal and all that.. but there is a joy also in making something from nothing and giving it to other people to also enjoy. So there you have it, at heart I'm an entertainer of the geek sort. A techsihibitionist?)

I'd like write up a full and lengthy review of the Wee Ride bicycle seat but let me be a little brief; essentially though it is a 'front mount' seat, which is to say it sits in your lap as you bicycle, so that a small child (40 pounds and less it suggests) can go biking with you, relatively safely. For this sort of device there are a few main options -- the common rear mount seat, the bicycle trailer/chariot, and the front mount seat.

At first I wanted to narrow down and the front mount appeals to me much more than the others -- the rear seat is traditional around North America but means the poor child is stuck looking at your back or side to side the whole trip (which seems dangerous to me with the child wanting to tip themselves over to see!), and of course you cannot much see the child should they cry out. (They are on the other hand protected from anything you might bike into such as tree branches or bugs in the air and so on.); the trailer can be cute (certainly everyone loves to wave at them as you go by right?) but shares similar issues as the rear mount seat.. it worries me that you cannot directly see the child, that something might run into the trailer behind you, or that you drag it into something :) Still, those are low chances, so trailers are a good option I believe.. and further, the better ones can double as pushcarts with an extendible handle at the back. Still, for my goal of just hopping on the bike and getting around, heading to the park or even to do small chores, the front mount seems ideal.

As to which brand, there seem to be a half dozen various seats that can be found; in my immediate area there are only a couple available, mostly at expensive bike shops. So while I did various reviews online and decided I liked the Wee Ride, it turned out to be readily available at Toys-R-Us and Canadian Tire, so that made the brand decision easier.

The price on Wee Ride is very good, certainly a very good value IMHO -- for a little plastic seat and mounting bar they're making some $$$ -- but for all the enjoyment we get out of it, $69.95 CDN seems a very good price. (Factor in you must buy a toddler friendly helment for about $25 CDN.. a helmet that is slightly different than a small child helmet.) (The seat was $69.95 at TrUs while being $89.95 at CanTire, fwiw.)

Installation really was quite simple -- theres a bar that you bolt on under your handle bars on the post, and onto your seat post. The bar extends as needed to fit various bike sizes (male or female styled), and bolts on using O-clamps so should fit on pretty much any bike; the construction of the bar is very good. The seat itself just has a single thumbscrew to attach it to the bar, which seems a little weaksauce to me .. but the advantage is the seat can be removed in one minute, should you wish to bike without the child carrier in place, which seems a good feature.

My only real complaint then is the buckles on the seat .. I need to adjust them tighter perhaps, but while looking around or fidgeting my 15 month old daughter can wriggle out of half the harness, though the waste belt stays good and tight on her. Furthermore, while in motion the drivers arms are cuddling around the seat, so theres minimal chance she could possible slip out.

As to seat positioning -- you might worry having an extra 25 pound child monted on the bar would raise the center of gravity and unbalance the cycle, but it seems not a problem; they suggest carrying a bag of flour around for a minute to get used to the weight, but in pratice it took me all of 5 seconds to be peddling around, no problem, turning and braking on hills and such. No problem whatsoever with balance (and I've not biked in years!) Furthermore the seat is not uncomfortable -- your arms go arond the sides to the handle bars no problem (though it might be weird on a 'road bike' with curled horn handlebars, but on my T-bar mountain bike, no problem. You do peddle a little wide, so your knees aren't near the seat.. so you lose a little power. Better exercise, and practice for when you want to waddle..... All told, fine!

Summary - the Wee Ride might not be absolutely perfect, but it is a Very Good value for the money, and is extremely fun to have. Did 10km or more last night to the park and back, and tootled around the area to explore. With my daughter. How awesome is that? And everyone you pass waves and giggles since it is so adorable.

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Moving: Sentimental Old Fool. SOF. Thats me.
Thu, 29 May 2008

So today is it -- the last day I own my old house. Thats cool, I'm with that now, and the new folks are pretty decent people. A couple last things to pick up there so I guess my wife and I can do a pop bye to say goodbye to the bushes and whatnot.. that might be hard in a way to admit to myself I'll never see it again, cept as I peek around the corner when picking up my old misaddressed mail. Maybe we'll have a house warming here and have the new residents and the old neighbours over .. everyone was pretty cool and could be nice to keep up with them.

I had to go meet the new folks at my old place, and it made me realize something though --

Its not that I'm selling my house, abandoning it to the vultures; oh no, it is still my house and always will be. Its just the house has adopted a new family, new pets for it to take care of and raise. Right? I'm proud of our old house.. it grew up pretty responsible didn't it?

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Moving: Inching closer..
Tue, 27 May 2008

The process is being dragged out a bit, but we inch closer. I'm feeling better about things.. turning back to my normal self; the world is sunny and bright and I'm happy with my life. I will always miss the old place, but thats okay now. Growing up a little, I guess. (Always figured you did your growing up as a kid, but I guess once in awhile you grow up again, much later :P)

When I look at the empty old place (I keep being made to go back for various sundry reasons :/), it reminds me of good times -- when we moved in. We took possession just before we got married .. we were young, the world was open in front of us, we got our first house .. very good, very exciting times. I suppose thats why I've been melancholy, right there -- it is hard for times now to compete with such powerful moments as those. But then, birthday party for my daughter will be cool in a year too, right? :)

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Moving: Almost the end..
Mon, 26 May 2008

(The end of the move, the end of the old place, the begin of the new one.. not really sure how to title this one.)

OKay, so I'm feeling a little better about it today, hopefully be my old self again soon. Today is Monday and we spent the weekend doing some important things.. Saturday my wife cleaned the old place, which was a cleansing experience for her .. to remove the 'us' from the old place and make it fresh for the new people. Yesterday I had some simple wiring to do there (swap a light fixture we wanted to keep and so on) and we ended up there as a family and watched my daughter wander around the old place a bit. That choked me up of course, since really she is a big part of my attachment/fixation I think .. she seemed confused a little at first, but then crawled up the stairs and stood up and wandered straight into her old room, then into the old office beside it, and then into our room and the bathroom .. very purposeful it seemed to me. Like she was noticing the differences.. it being familiar, but all the furniture missing. Or perhaps she wondered if it was just a similar place to the one in her memories. But she did remember, a week past .. but I wonder how long until she just forgets the place entirely? We videotaped her wandering, which was nice .. yet another short video for me to pine over in my mind, and have to look at some day down the road.

And yet today, here I feel better; perhaps it helped to see her happy in the new place, and not crying or anything at the old.

Or that in my head I'm rolling around the idea that yes, I really do think it was a wise move.. that this is a better area to raise a little girl in. (It was the right thing to do, wasn't it? *Sigh*) I still cling to a few things ... I'm waiting for the video tour guys to get me a DVD of the old place, and I did asked my agent to put a watch on MLS for the old place, so that if it ever goes up for sale again we might actually find out.. twould be nice to buy and then rent the place out... (Or is that creepy of me?) Anyway, all part of the minutia my brain comes up with to torture itself.

Anyway, the big night of handing over the key to the lawyer is Wednesday, which I'm sure will freak me out a bit; the new folks actually take over on Friday, so I'm sure Thursday will be annoying, and Friday will piss me off knowing they will be in my house. But then the weekend will be over.. I think all these times I've had to revisit the old place to move this or that, or perform some duty or another, has kept it a fresh wound.

Anyway, last week a friend of mine mentioned something which was well observed .. that when you buy bigger properties and homes there is a simple truth that there is always more to do; more land and space is more chores .. more yard work, more cleaning. Perhaps some of my melancholy from last week was due to the worry of all that maintenenace when we are already strapped for time. Perhaps we need minions.. a maid or yardbuoy to take care of things once in awhile. (Myself, I would just slash and burn .. remove most of the bushes and plants and trees, and just have simple grass with a nice tree in it the middle .. keep it low maintenance. Our neighbours all have amazing yards.. let them do the work, and we can sit and admire from our step. Perfect!)

I also had the thought.. that since I am generally always happy, laid back, and good at managing anything that arises (few things tend to really excite me) .. perhaps these times where there is an overwhelming assault of things going on (not to mention the sleep dep etc), perhaps I'm not so good at dealing with things (or suppressing things if thats what I normally do?) .. ie: If I'm so good at always being together, maybe I get a little screwy when things finally break over the wall? At least this week of melancholy seems to be receeding.. I will love my old place, but pining over it sure doesn't get me anywhere and I'm sort of angry with myself over my bout of weakness.

Perhaps we bought too big .. we'll find out down the road; perhaps we needed something bigger than we had, but not _this_ big... but then if we have another little one someday, we will need the space? (Then again, my brother and I were raised in a house smaller than the one we just sold... hmm.)

I told my wife (who is very excited about the new place, and bummed out by my melancholy.. but its not "just a house" I insist!) that perhaps .. althought I did the gab all the time of 'we can't do this or that, since we plan to move someday', perhaps in my heart I really never did think we would ever move. Perhaps we just stayed too long and I got too attached. Who knows?

Anyway, my parents sold their first places. My in-laws sold theirs. Pretty much everyone sells their first place, right?

And we're in a better area for my daughter to grow up in.

This week, if things get weird in my heart, I will tell myself those things. But for now ..

They're nice people moving in, but it will always be my house, bitches.

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Moving: You are in a maze of twisty little boxes, all alike.
Fri, 23 May 2008

This post has no editing and is a total mess, and is some inner thoughts, paranoia, conceits about the simple act of moving. From one house to another you insensitive clods ;) I'm nearly 100% sure it will not come out right and no one will be able to pick up on what I'm trying to say, and I'll sound like a total immature dork for saying it. But I'm noting it down anyway, for posterity and maybe someday I'll read it again, and maybe _I_ will glean from it whatever it was I intended to be... gleant.

In essence, I miss my old place, these few days after moving. Its not to say I dislike my new place -- it is gorgeous and I'm sure we'll be 'at home' in the new home soon enough. Its just I feel like I'm in a mourning period for the old place.. it was biult, shiny new, just for us. My family started there, the house and us grew up together. Leaving it behind somehow feals like we're abandoning something.. that period of time. That mode of life. With a home and life being so intertwined, it feels like a small piece of myself, is left behind. Hopefully my baby girl won't notice or care.. naturally she won't, as we've all moved before and we know.. but hopefully it doesn't impact her in some subtle way. Anyway, just like dumping or being dumped, I feel entitled to a few days or a week or transition where I mull things over, roll it around in my head, and have occasional guilty or sad impulses. I know, I'm weird.

Anyway, a few days have already passed now, so some of these thoughts are stale from a few days back, and thus cannot be expressed. Heisenberg and all that, too. I'm writing them down anyway, and in a few days they will be forgotten. (And yet my first house, my baby house.. will never be forgotten, though the details in memories always fade..

--

It was a lot of work and planning and so forth, but we've made it - to our new house! Maybe its my reminiscent personality, but I find it a bit of a melancholy surreal experience -- exciting, but also weird. We went from a warm cozy little house (with an annoying kitchen, and that we resisted upgrading knowing we planned to move 'someday'), through a period of packing and crazyness and teething with the baby, to renovations after we took possession of the new place, and finally the move out of the old place. To come yet is actually handing over the keys of the old place, and that will hurt.

Our old place is not actually 'gone' just yet .. that will be in a week, but today I'm intending to write up a 'Welcome to your new home..' letter for the folks who'll be moving in - a nice little gesture and to document a few things they might want to know about the place - and writing such a thing is just a little strange to me. I made a quick video of the place after the main move (wish I'd done it during the pre-sale week so I could have it recorded with all its furniture!) and opened that 5 minute video with a statement that keeps penetrating my mind -- "This is the house where I carried my new wife over the threshold, and later my newborn baby girl." This old place was my first real move, my first real home (after my parents of course), and a vital one. It'll take time for the new house to replace it and there will always be a place in my heart for the place my family started. I will miss it. It held the very best of times I've ever had. That one sentence packs a lot of emotion for me, and hence this whole posting. If I hadn't thought of the house in that context maybe it would not have bothered me so much.. but this home was important for some 30% of my life, and the best 90% of it. I will never forget that drive home from the hospital with my wife and newborn in the car, but we came 'here', to the old house.

In my mind, the house will always remember that. It will remember us as its one true owners and family. Right? For some reasonm the day after the move, I felt some guilt there, leaving that poor house behind. If only we could afford to keep it and rent it out.

Anyway, permit me to meander and whine like a little kid ;) A little while back I looked over the virtual tour the agent made to help promote the sale, and its cool to see what the house looked like 'staged' -- nice and clean and minimal, but still very distinctly 'us' with our paintings and pictures and furniture and so forth. This is that scene I would have liked to videotape, but at least we have the virtual tour (I've since recorded it to avi files so could maybe burn a DVD video of it, if onyl a few minutes long. Likewise, the virtual tour company suggests they can make me a short DVD too, so thats nice.) Anyway, viewing the virtual tour seems a little surreal but 'homey', as we spent the last month or two living in a mass of boxes as we packed for the big move. I'd almost forgotten what it really looked like.. never really thought about it I mean.. the boxes were some common they became part of the reality that it was. That itself was fine, but it did really make me look forward to the move and 'getting it all done'.. living with boxes around is pretty silly. The old place was small and carpetted (thought that was a bad thing at the time) and had a few annoying features (a terrible kitchen, and being a semi had an attached neighbour), but was really a good place. That made it hard to shop for a new place (we spent some 3 or 4 years doing that I think, on and off) since it was hard to find a good place that was clearly superior and yet did not cost an enormous fortune. When you really liked your place and got it for a good price (before the boom as it were), it is hard to replace.

My daughter (shes just a baby now) loved to run around on that carpet (she slides like on ice in the new place with its hardwood floors.. something for us to adjust to.) I joked often how she spent the last few weeks climing over boxes, trying to push them around, or pulling things out of them.. but she also played in her normal way. She seems happy in the new place (kids adapt so quickly!), but her playing habits immediately changed, which sort of makes me sad. She doesn't care I'm sure, but now she spends her time looking around the new exotic locale rather than carrying over her alphabet toy to read off. Shes happy, but flexed so quickly. We had our routines.. she/we would play on the floor (soft and carpetted), chase around the pole at the kitchen, and she would carry things over to the couch. At the new place she has new routines, pushing a glass door closed or open over and over, and she hasn't really carried anything around. She's far too interested in the new stuff. So thats all fine of course, but I will miss that older way too, and the instant transition.

I'm way too much a creature of habit, I have observed. I think I am flexible in other ways, adjusting to new coding techniques and so forth.. but I do miss the way I drove home, the superior pressure in the old shower (I will fix the new one eventually!), the location of the gas bar and the various stores around. Without knowing the new area, it puts on the front how I don't know the new area, and so it creates that temporary "the old place was better in this or that way" mentality, when these are trivial things. Anyway, in a subtle and stupid way for some reason I will miss (for a short while) the old neighbours I didn't talk to, the places I used to stop at to buy computer games, and so on.

But only with the house of course; Its not like I've not bought and re-sold hundreds of things in the past. Why is it the house makes it so tramautic?

Well, it was my home. But I suppose it could also be that life has been so hectic the last year or so with the baby around, and super hectic with the move tasks and busy workplace and home work that I overburden myself with. Maybe I'm just so pumped up on go-go-go that coming to an end means I'm coming 'down' from the busyness, and that adjustment is screwing with my system? So many things I could and have come up with, but whatever. It'll all pass soon enough... but I still love that old little house.

Another thought was that.. well, with having a wife, a nice big house that we cna stay in forever if we like, and a baby .. am I 'done'? That sort of scares me.. always plugged forward, working toward svarious goals ( not forcefully, but always wanted to move forward and rather aimed that general way.) But with the big things 'done', now its just.. upgrades, and helping my daughter grow up. Thats super important to but I mean.. it just seems like so much is 'done' now. I wondered if that was part of my weird 'down' of the last few days.. worry of not knowing what is next on the radar.

Like other men I will have to make up new goals. Big damned TV. Motorcycle. Yeah, maybe. Never cared before, but maybe someone like me needs concrete goals to function normally?

My daughter will never remember it, and she will not care to be told about it of course, but I will fondly look at those baby pictures so many years from now...

Anyway I will adjust, just not quite so quick as her (or my wife who just takes everything in stride; she'll feel it the day we hand our keys over, but she's just so happy about the new place. I admire her for that.) Our new place is beautiful (and I have a little guilt over that too... who are we to have such a nice big place? Did we over-do it? All told we just wanted detached, and a nice place for the little one to run around and be safe in, and a place as-good-or-better than our current place. Weird how growing up and being successful seems to give me some guilt. Lets not analyze that. Always thought I was a simple and pragmatic man, but here I ambeing a sop once in awhile :P) but I find myself still muscle reflex driving towards the old place (heck, it's only been a few days after all), or reaching to drop the keys in the old place. Change is weird and scary in a way, since it seems I've managed to be so... sedentiary I suppose in this context. I think that in other contexts I've been pretty flexible and creative, but I guess I've only really lived in a couple of places so use them as a foundation, and altering it creeps me out. I'm fine of course, and life in the new place is fine. Just I have these 5 minutes each day of .. something feeling like regret. But I don't regret the choice, and we needed to move on really (we'd have been happy there, of course, but we shoudl be happy here too.) And then there are those whove had a dozen apartments, who just don't get this :) And my poor wife who thought it was sweet when I was sad at first, and now a few days later shes sick of it.

Hell, I'm sick of it. I hate being a softy once in awhile. It was so much easier when I was always a robot inside.. damn my wife for making me a family man with fealings ;)

It is nice not to have so many tasks left; the move was extremely busy with tracking down contractors for any number of a myriad things and managing each step of the process (lawyers, banking, renovations, etc etc), along with having the little baby around and the common sleep deprivation as she teeths and such. Finally we're nearing the end of the current assault of tasks and I'm running out of minutia that must be managed.. about time, as it has been so busy the last year, and so extremely busy the last two months, that I worry a piece of my Calm has been damaged. Need to get my cool back. I've always been pretty laid back .. in control but rarely 'excited' but I've been so utterly wound up lately.. terrible. Its not me. I'm still trying to micromanage things when I should be able to let them slide around a bit now.. I find myself looking for new things to attack, too quickly.. we've not even unpacked yet. (Wife.. check! New big house.. check! Baby... check! Whats left for the big changes in life? Crap, nothing big to plan for.. damn! Find something else to attack..)

In the night I woke up, wondering to myself.. when you change your home, does it change you? Having a baby certainly did.. so many things that were vitally important to me almost instantly became uninteresting (which did have a certain adjustment stress for a couple weeks). With changing location, do you also change? I think I really liked where I 'was' (time/space/social etc context), so this change in location and changes in me to match seem a little weird. The new place is a grown ups house with new challenges .. somehow, over the space of one day, it seems in a way a new me. A new rut, a new me, grown up a little more. Weird. The old routines seem surreal and different now .. the bed in the old place faced one way, and its a different direction now, so even the old routines seem somewhat surreal and new now. So it feels like we've brought some subtle change to our day, which changes how we are, which changes us. I dunno how to say that right in this stream of consiousness posting, but there you go.

Ah well, in a couple days we'll all be normal (maybe a slightly new form of normal), and will be having fun buying new knobs for the cabinetry, new faucets for the bathrooms, new rugs, and new appliances and furniture.. this will take years I'm sure. Oh, maybe thats part of the stress of it all.. I like new things (and intensely dislike other peoples used appliances and things.. yucky, grosse!), but I really dislike the whole buying process. Maybe I will enjoy it this round (hope so!), but maybe that stress wore on me this last few days. *shrug*

Still, though I liked my 'old life' and self and family, there is so much to look forward to.. the new place is not far from the old (so I can be a weird voyeur and drive by the old place once in awhile to see if the plants _we_ planted are still there .. some had just now started to take purchase, so a shame we won't get to enjoy the climbing roswe bush.. but I hope the new people do and not kill it!), but is a better and safe neighbourhood, and nearer to some large parks and bike trails. Hell the neighbours might even be _too_ friendly if such a thing can be .. weird eh? Time to get a baby seat for the bike so I can drive around with the little one in tow or on the handle bars maybe? Find new places to see and not cling to seeing the same old ones. Get past those subtle mental shocks and stresses you can barely perceive but effect you.

I hope I didn't just 'grow up', since I like how I am/was. But its time to _explore_, not just _find_. The cup should be half full. I've always been super positive, always happy, always motivated, always self assurred, always on the go and doing, attacking, winning.

Where the hell did this melancholia come from? I hope it goes away. I don't need this hanging over me.

I am the new me. I need to be the old me.

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Health: Healthy by Default?
Mon, 22 Oct 2007

That phrase has popped into my mind a few times over the last couple weeks. I suppose I've been revisiting old vices to work out if I want to attempt to discard them or not, but its tough -- vices are vices because they're just so darned lovable. Consider caffeine -- I don't drink coffee (its disgusting) or tea (too lazy), but imbibe cola by the truckload. (I'm trying to work the word 'imbible' into this somehow, but its just not going to fit.) Anyway, I don't drink the cola for the caffeine -- its a nice little boost (and yes, all you coffee drinkers will note how patheticly small a boost it is while you gag on your vile bean) but I just dig the taste. Of late I'm hooked on the Dr. Pepper, much as I was as a child when they ran a contest whereby cans would have a Space Invader printed on the bottom.

Now that was something. Hell, I can blame them right -- who can refuse a delicious beverage with a giant pixelated monster on the bottom?

Still by the by, we all know cola (diet or otherwise) is really bad for us. I've given it up before a few times and endured crippling headaches for a few days to emerge the better man, only to decide wholeheartedly I'd rather be on the sauce than not.

Another vice (I prefer 'feature') is a certain piece of jewellery embedded in my person. In my tongue, you perves. Its pretty happy in there, and that location is relatively private .. so I've never been worried about the job interviews or the like. My daughter seems fascinated by it, too. But really, my teeth have been severely damaged by it over the long years I've been sporting it (probably 15 or so now!) As my brother would put it - "Its harder than you". The partial solution is to pick up plastic studs for the bar instead of the usual stainless steel ones -- plastic should wear on the goods so much more less.

But the question that has entered my mind so many times the last few weeks -- to be an example for my child, should I be healthy by default? I love my cola and my tonguering. But ditching both would improve my overall health and knocking off a few poounds due to reduced cola consumption would add some time (and isn't _any_ time worth it) to my existance on this terra firma. And cost less to boot.

But damn you Mr. Pepper, you makes a fine bevvy. So many long nights over these few decades have we danced the ends of the candle together..

Hmmmm.

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Medical: Can you be too healthy?
Thu, 14 Jun 2007

(And yes, I'm nearly the least qualified to ask that question.) Still, I called up my family doctor to book an appointment but was lightly scolded (though very politely) for not having come in sometime over the last two years. Without sed attendence my file had been archived and that my next action should be to request admission as a new patient - they'd call me in a week to let me know if they could lower themselves into accepting me. I suppose it should come as no surprise as this office has historically been terrible for its customer service -- it once took me some 30 phone calls over a couple weeks to get a human. The doctor herself has always been very nice so I just blame the help.. but here we have a policy issue.

In this day and age (even with the ineffective new health care levy) doctors are scarce but it is surprising that you can be 'fired' for not wasting their time enough. Apparently my former doctor requires you to pop by for a physical every year, at minimum. Seems silly to me -- perhaps in your earliest and latest years, but I'm still plenty in the middle of my days (hopefully!) If I'm not sick and not at risk for developing a third arm.. why should I waste the systems time?

Ah, right.. teh money. So the doctor requires a levy against my time and our taxpaying wallets to keep me as a patient. One can only imagine that next there will be a fine for not booking the above bogus physical, or for not being sick enough to line anyones pockets.

S'alright though, I went to a walk-in clinic and they asked if I needed a new family doctor. Timing is everything.

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