Say It Isn't So Tommy!

Well, the football season as we know and love it lasted a whole 20 minutes before our beloved Tom Brady left the field with a horrifying knee injury. It's not looking good. There are unconfirmed reports that he is out for the season with a torn ACL. We are doomed for a season of Matt Cassel (sounds like Castle). I think Ricky says it all when he was talking to me about Matt Ca-Sell. Clearly, he isn't someone we've thought a whole lot about. But, Shawn is quick to remind me that Brady himself replaced Bledsoe when he went out with an injury and besides, this makes it a lot more exciting for the rest of the year. Yeah, I guess if you consider a lot of close games exciting compared to having the best offense of all time. The sad thing is that we were teaching Calleigh how to put her arms up and yell "Touchdown." Somehow teaching her to put her arms up and yelling "Field Goal" isn't quite as exciting but could prove to be more useful. Actually, Calleigh's nap time is coinciding perfectly with a 1 o'clock kickoff so I can't complain about that. She slept from 1:15 to 4:15 today so I didn't miss one lousy minute of the game.

There's been a lot going on down here in O-Town. On Friday, Calleigh and I were scheduled to go visit Aunt Shirley but it had to be postponed. Instead, we hit up Walmart. For supper, we headed over to the roomies' apartment where Shannon and Megan served a lovely stir-fry. That was the option since Duncan is basically boycotting waffles.Since they now have some lights in the main room, I was able to take video which you can see here. After supper, we hightailed it home so I could nurse Calleigh, change, and then I headed to the Markham Woods Church where I met up with Shannon and Megan for a young adults Vespers (is it still okay to call myself a "young adult?" Not sure when that ends...). Anywho, the ladies wanted to meet some new single people (okay, guys) and I do think the mission was accomplished. Please contact them personally for further details. Incidentally, I did enjoy the Vespers which was given by Luis Gracia who is formerly from AUC and knows my Dad.

We had a couple of repeatable anecdotes from Church this week. When we were in the sanctuary (before Calleigh got unmanageable) someone made a statement up front which warranted a bunch of "Amens" from the congregation. A second after their "Amens" Calleigh yells "Amen." A bunch of people in front of us turned around to look and couldn't help but smile when they saw Calleigh standing there on Duncan's lap. The other anecdote wasn't so happy. We were in Sabbath School and Calleigh was sitting in her little chair, paying attention for once. Everything was going smoothly and then suddenly, it was birthday time and out came the cake. Within a second, Calleigh was bawling and Duncan had to take her out of the room. So the birthday cake phobia lives on. Poor little bugger.

Last night we watched the movie "The Notebook." Somehow it came up that neither Duncan nor I had seen it and Shannon was completely appalled and immediately decided it would be our Saturday night activity. There is no movie that has had a bigger buildup from the Copsey girls. I did enjoy the movie but I'm not sure it's going to the top of my all time favorite list. But it's definitely worthy. We enjoyed some fresh salsa and chips during the movie. I made Alison's recipe that she made in Nova Scotia. It has several jalapenos in it. Al told me that I should wear gloves because it can be really bad if you get it on your face or worse, in your eyes. I was a little freaked out (we had no gloves) so I had Duncan handle it. We were going to make some homemade gloves but he said we were being babies and just went right at it. He didn't seem to suffer any ill effects.

Earlier today, when our world was still intact, Duncan, Calleigh, and I went to Old Navy to spend the rest of a gift card Duncan had. We got some cute things for Calleigh. We then headed for First Watch but made sure we were back home in time for kickoff. It was just Duncan, Megan, and I here for the game since Shannon had to work (and David is still in Vermont). We taped the game for Shannon and it was quite something watching her reaction to what happened. It was also ironic because when we watched it the second time, you knew it was coming and I heard the things that the Dierdorf was saying just beforehand - - "Brady's foot is great and he's feeling 100%." And then this one referring to Maroney "It's good to see him go since I don't think the Patriots can count on another 50 touchdowns from Brady."

So in other news, I've made some changes with my diet and excercise (well, check that. To say changes with exercise sortof infers that there was some to change in the first place!). On Friday night I started feeling really fat and decided I needed to do something about it. Ron and Elaine have an old exercise bike from Ron's Dad so we went and picked it up and put it in our guest room. I also borrowed another little machine and a hula hoop from them. I'm determined to use them! And I have today - 20 minutes on the bike and 5 minutes (without stopping) with the hula hoop. But the other big thing is that I'm logging everything I eat. There is this really awesome tool from Prevention where you enter what you eat and it tracks the calories, fat, etc and adds it all up for you. You also put in your activities so that you can do a comparison of what you ate to what you burned. I can honestly say that when you know you have to enter every bite and drink, it makes you think twice about what you put in your mouth. I don't want to see all the calories from a cookie! So we'll see how long my health kick lasts. Hopefully I can keep at it for awhile.

In Calleigh news, she's suffering from some sort of rash around her mouth which has actually been going on for almost two weeks now but seemed to get worse a few days ago. The pediatrician, when I asked her about it at our appointment back on the 27th, said that it happens because of the moisture that gets trapped from using a pacifier. There's probably extra moisture there now because she could be teething - - although I haven't seen any signs of that. Obviously a solution could be to just take the binky away but I just don't think I'm ready for that. She loves her "Ming Ying" as she calls it when she's going to bed. I've thought if we could just hold off until we could reason with her or something when she's older, it would be easier. I've read that some parents will tell their kids that they have to take the binkys away because there are a bunch of little newborn babies that need them. I don't know about this strategy - - Isn't that lying to your child? I've read a lot of things in Parenting books and magazines that will tell you to say little things such as this to kids in certain situations. Sure, they're untruths, but they aren't hurting anybody and you're telling kids these things to actually help them. But I don't know if I'm comfortable with it. I would love some feedback on it. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Okie, dokie. I'm going to sign off here. The only thing that would partially salvage this day is if Peyton Manning lost, Roger Clemens admitted he did steroids and didn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, and the Yankees fell eight games behind us in the standings and virtually out of the playoffs. Hey, two out of three isn't bad. Go Bear!