I started back to work one Tuesday after a week off and I swear when I got there, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. A week off of work will do that to you. At least I remembered some of my passwords. After about two hours, I remembered what it is that I do: answer the phone, hold people’s hands, and clean up other people’s messes. Oh wait, no, apparently I’m supposed to be creating stuff.

I’ve been back at the low carb for a week and I remember now everything that’s good about low carb: a) it works, and b) I’m not hungry and c) I’m not tired. Everything else about it blows, but at least I’ll be done in a few months. So after the first week I’m down almost ten pounds, which will alarm people from the “anything worth doing is worthy doing slowly” school of thought.

This weekend (wild card weekend, for heaven’s sake!) I have felt like I’m neck-deep in children, for better or mostly worse. Some friends’ kids spent the night on Saturday, but their little one was a little out of sorts, and when one parent has “man coverage” on one of four children, the other parent has to drop back and play zone. Against three kids. End zone dance anyone?

Although Tara was a little touchy today, probably from getting up too early, she’s the most entertaining a person who still soils herself can possibly be (sorry, college buddies!). This morning playing puzzles with her, I could clearly see the influence of her older sister when she successfully inserted a piece into her shape puzzle, then held up her arms and said “Yay trapezoid! I win!” I fully expect to hear her say “In your face, quatrefoil!” before she turns two next month. She doesn’t have the clear speech that Anna had at this age, but she sure knows a lot of words. Also, at some point in the last week Tara successfully peed on the potty. Note that she did not pee entirely in the potty, but she was there, the potty was there, and the pee was definitely there and there and over there too.

Anna has long been inclined to do crafty sort of activities, but she is really starting to express herself in drawings and writing. Since she’s learning to read and write, she likes to make little books with her own text and illustrations. She sometimes asks for help spelling words and sometimes just wings it, and it’s still mostly intelligible. We’re going to have quite a library of her work eventually. Last week she made a bunch of flyers saying “I like egg,” which she rolled up and distributed to the neighbors with the help of her grandmother. They all have children so I assume they’ll understand when a five year old shows up at the door along with a lady they’ve never seen and hands them “I like egg” on a piece of construction paper. Who wouldn’t?

Anna, who has never been able to play a game of Chutes and Ladders without becoming distracted and making up new rules, has taken an interest in chess. She has learned how to set up the board and knows how most of the pieces move, but she’s a little overly focused on capturing pieces rather than developing a workable position. She’s young; I’m sure we fit a few classical openings in before bedtime stories.

Tara is taking advantage of Anna’s focus on chess to take in a few games of Pretty Pretty Princess.

This notion of having a child in school is turning out to be quite the new stage of life. And I’m not talking about Anna–she’s already adjusted to it–I’m talking about Jen and I. First of all, it’s a new thing that our child has to be somewhere every weekday at a given time. We’re just not used to that sort of rigidity. Further, there are all sorts of school-related activities–PTA, volunteering, fundraising… all the stuff that my schools used to burden my parents with. I suppose I should be thankful that the fundraising consists of writing a check and sending it to school. I’ve always thought the selling of candy bars/magazine subscriptions/gift-wrapping paper was a big waste of time and money, not to mention being a burden on one’s friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I remember going door-to-door selling greeting cards; cute as a button though I was, I don’t remember raising enough money to offset to the amount of humiliation and rejection I endured. I suspect it was all a ploy to build character.

Anna continues to love kindergarten and her teacher, and she’s been excited about becoming friends with the other kids in school. Most of all, she’s very anxious to learn how to read.

Tara continues to love reading as well. At bedtime, we read Goodnight Moon as well as Mercer Mayer’s “All By Myself”. Both books have mice on just about every page, which Tara points out at the turn of each page by pointing and saying “Mou.” The pages of Goodnight Moon which do not have the young mouse pictured she quickly assists to turn the page. No time to waste, there are mice to point out.

Thursday was Anna’s first day of kindergarten, and as with all change, there was some drama involved. She started out being excited, right up until the part that she realized that we were going to leave her new classroom without her. Most of the kids were patiently seated criss-cross-applesauce on the carpet waiting for class to start while the parents hovered and chit-chatted and took pictures. I needed to sit down next to Anna for her to sit in her spot. When the teacher sat down and began class, I could only inch away from Anna little by little. The teacher began reading a story about a raccoon’s first day of school and transitioned from the story into saying goodbye to the hovering parents. Anna was the only child crying when we left, but one of the teachers was comforting her and we knew she would recover quickly enough.

Today, dropping off at school was much less dramatic, and although she still needed some coaxing, there weren’t any tears shed. I went directly from school to Mission Beach to spend an hour with my brother and his family before zooming back to school to pick up Anna (kindergarten is scarely two hours on Fridays). When I picked her up, she didn’t want to leave. She really likes being with other kids and she adores her teacher.

I remember that Anna slept poorly for a good two weeks before she started preschool. Thinking back, I’m wondering why I remember this as an unusual circumstance, because she was always sleeping poorly for some reason or another. Anyway, Anna has difficulty with change, and the switch from preschool to ESS (extended student services) has been no different in this regard.

ESS is essentially a before- and after-school program in which young folk keep an eye on younger folk. I’m not sure how old the ESS people are–I’m getting increasingly bad at guessing people’s ages, especially those of Generation iPod. Anyway, during the summer, ESS kids go on a couple field trips each week; parks, movies, the beach, etc. You’d think this would be cool enough to entice Anna to go, and in fact she was excited at the prospect during the couple weeks after preschool and before returning from vacation. Nevertheless, dropping off Anna at ESS has been very rough each day, and I’m hoping it gets better soon. I’ve never been into soap operas, and I don’t intend to start now.

Hopefully Anna will adjust soon and make friends with her fellow students.

Since arriving at Auntie K.’s house, we’ve manage to do a lot of work and a lot of play. They just moved in a few weeks ago and there has been a lot of work to do on the house. Much has been done before we got here, and it’s certainly looking good now; we spent most of yesterday fixing up the front yard to the point that it puts our landscaping to shame, even though we’ve lived there for years. Tara and Anna helped in their own way, then got some serious sprinkler time.

Today was a day of recreation; golf for the guys and shopping for the girls. My game was about as good as one could expect considering that I had not swung a driver since before Tara was born. I tried it exactly once, resulting in the ball going almost totally sideways from the direction I was swinging. I then tee’d up another ball and hit it with my 5-iron nearly 200 yards straight down the middle. I could have saved a lot of weight if I would have left those darn woods out of my bag.

Jennifer and the rest of the girls managed to go about halfway through the world’s busiest Ikea before the children imploded. I’m very proud that Jennifer was able to come away empty handed. That’s self-control right there, folks.

Anna has been making great strides in escaping her fear of dogs. At this point we no longer have to keep Augie penned up, and Anna is getting pretty close to being able to play with her.

After a week in residence, we bid farewell to the lake house, the lake, the fish, and the worms. It was a very relaxing week, and we really enjoyed seeing family, and eating way too much of my grandmother’s cooking. Anna had to bring a bag of tortillas along for the road.

We are now situated in Auntie K. and Uncle T.’s house, and actually have a proper broadband connection! All hail the Internet. Moreso, I no longer have to enter my blog posts on a 12-key phone keypad. All hail the proper Keyboard. Grandpa K. and S. have also arrived, so I’m sure there are some sort of family-oriented things going down in the next week. I just don’t know what they are.

We also had yet another celebration for my birthday. I haven’t made a big deal about my birthday, either as a event to be mourned or celebrated. Auntie K. seems more affected by it than I am, since she is a number of years younger than Jen and I, but close enough that the fact of our aging makes the fact of her aging all the more imminent. It is what it is.

This being the Vacation of Personal Growth for Anna, in which she has expanded her glittery pink Princess World to include things like swimming in the same water with fish and touching worms, she has continued to petting dogs. Anna is very afraid of dogs, but has now spent a full day in the same house with Augie, who is like a dog, only much smaller. Augie is a very affectionate, active little doglet with a penchant for licking faces. Anna still can’t be in the same room with an unfettered Augie, but she is warming up to the idea. Note that the photo of Augie to the right is actual size.

This morning the weather was looking pretty ugly and both girls were showing signs of wear from lack of sleep, so we punted on going into the park, opting for breakfast and the drive home. Tara slept in the car on the way, while Anna watched a video and Jen and I listened to our favorite podcast. Though things started out well on Saturday and early Sunday, it became clear that as far as Anna is concerned, the whole Disney empire amounts to the necessary evils of the princess lifestyle. She’d much rather cut to the chase. This is similar to my own view, only I have less appreciation for the princess lifestyle. Rather than try to put together something cohesive–I’m far too tired–I’ll merely sum up in a thumb-oriented manner:

• Thumbs up for the Princesses. They were all lovely and charming and Anna absolutely ate them up.

• Thumbs down for all else Disney.

• Thumbs up for the Hyatt Regency Orange County. The room was quite nice and not unreasonably priced.

• Thumbs down for the California Grill at the Hyatt. Breakfast was way more expensive considering the quality of the food.

• Thumbs up for Outback Steakhouse’s curbside take-away.

• Thumbs down for the parking attendant who took my two-day self-parking ticket, and after deciding the scanner couldn’t read it, tossed it into a garbage can with hundreds of other parking tickets. I made him sort through the whole can to fish it back out.

• Thumbs up for Allyn’s helpful tips which were much aid to the planning process.

• Thumbs down for the massive crowds at Disneyland.

• Thumbs up for my kickass cell phone and ShoZu, which allowed me to easily upload photos to Flickr.

I will relate one story about the video on the right: as we were waiting in line to visit Ariel in her grotto, Anna asked why she had legs when we saw her on Saturday, but a day later, she had a fish tail. I had just been thinking the day before about how Ariel didn’t speak at the restaurant, and since I hadn’t seen the movie since shortly after it came out, it took me a while to make the connection on the whole legs-for-voice trade with the sea witch¹. Anyway, I explained the situation as I new it, and Anna immediately gasped and turned white. “That means the sea witch is alive! Mom said all the witches were dead!” Oh boy. I tried to stammer out some other possible explanations, but ultimately told her to ask Ariel. Thankfully, Ariel didn’t miss a beat and explain that her father uses his magic trident to change her back and forth, apparently it helps with the commute from California Adventure.

• Thumbs up for being home, the true happiest place on earth.

¹ Note to Disney: this is taking things too far; unless the girl playing Ariel has laryngitis, she should abandon technical accuracy and talk to the princess-seekers. This is not a Star Trek convention.

Anna had a blast at California Adventure on Saturday. Actually, as soon as we got into the hotel, she was so enthralled by the idea of being on vacation, and being in a hotel room that she didn’t want to go into the park at first. Tara was all ready to go, grabbing her shoes and standing by the door. By the time we finally had everyone ready to move out, we could tell it was going to be a short day. Tara slept 20 minutes in the car and would not nap in the room, and Anna went without a nap entirely, but our one objective was dinner with the Princesses. We had time for one short ride before dinner. Anna was very excited about seeing all the princesses at dinner; as we sat down she could see them roaming around and talking to people.

Our first visit was from Ariel, who didn’t talk (in character) and only stopped for a short while, but left Tara with a lipstick smooch on her forehead. Snow White was very friendly and chatty, and got Anna to open up a little bit. Cinderella was very charmed by Tara, who started waving to her immediately, and when asked if she was having a good time, started nodding emphatically. Dinner was good, so for the entertainment value I consider it money well spent.

Today, Anna and Jennifer are at Disneyland, and Tara just woke up from her morning nap, so I’ll be going over to meet them shortly.

Update: Shortly after I arrived at the park and met up with Jennifer and Anna, they went off to hear storytime while Tara and I walked around in a zigzag-like manner for many minutes before a ride in the stroller followed. We met up again, and Anna started to feel a little nauseous, probably as a result of her diet of juice and goldfish crackers. We all went back to the hotel for lunch and Tara’s nap. Anna still doesn’t seem to be inclined to nap, and one of us will likely head back to the park shortly.

The hotel seems to have T-Mo wireless broadband, which is working pretty well, so I’ll start processing and uploading the rest of the photos from this morning.

Today we’re taking Anna to Disneyland. She has never been, which is quite amazing considering the fact that Anna at this points considers being a princess as a legitimate career path. Tara picked up a cold this week just in time for the trip, but we’re going to brave it anyway because the timing is only going to get worse from here on out. Anna already has her bags all packed up. She’s terribly excited. If you’re in the Anaheim area, listen very closely around dinnertime, as there’s a good chance Anna’s just going to explode with delight when the princesses start coming around to our table at Ariel’s Grotto. We will certainly have camphone/blog updates over the weekend.

My new job is really kicking into gear, as I’m finding myself owning risk mitigation among a group of people who starting throwing caution to the wind at least a year ago. Thus, I’ll be bringing in my laptop and making the Happiest Code Check-ins on Earth. Yay.