Critical Beatdown

Alright, the title has nothing to do with anything, just happens to be the name of the song I'm listening to.

Well, the whole family's asleep after a busy night visiting my wife's older daughter, her husband and the two grandchildren, my step-grandchildren if it were. And you know, to be a step-grandfather at 28 isn't all that bad. They seem to really like me a lot, just coming up to me and letting me truck them around on top of my shoulders. It's odd that even Alex doesn't really do that all that much, but I suppose he just doesn't like heights. Dunno.

We did notice tonight that his hitting tendency probably has to be curbed a little more. Whenever he gets upset or even excited, he'll hit. It stopped being funny after a while because whenever he got picked up, he would smack me in the face and then laugh about it. At one time, it was funny because he was still little and it didn't hurt that much. But now he's gotten punchier and his hits actually hurt, it does matter, especially since his little sister's too little to defend herself.

But overall, tonight the little boy had lots of fun chasing and screaming with the other two kids. There was even a time when Alex and Joseph was just cracking up, laughing at each other. Joseph would shake like a maniac, and Alex would laugh like one. It was the cutest comedy team ever.

So we got the calendars from Officemax and I was quite disappointed. They did screw up one page (though they were all labeled) but most of all, I was really dissatisfied with the quality of the calendar. It was basically color photocopies binded together, whereas I would expect that for 20 bucks and my own photos, that I would get photo quality prints. I guess it did slip my mind that they call their printing "Copymax" and not "Photomax." They'll pass as okay calendars, but no, I'm not very happy about them and 100 bucks is an expensive way to find out that they're not up to standards.

Zoe is slowly getting bigger on us, because she's already reaching for the toys that are dangling above her when we put her on the playmat. It's pretty amazing how much easier she picks up on these things. On the flip side, she's gotten hard to put to bed the last two days. I was up till almost two in the morning last night trying to get her to fall asleep. I said a lot of bad words and fumed, but finally she did surrender to her fatigue. It's been a while since I've had to deal with a non-sleeping tired baby, and I can honestly say that I won't miss it one bit.

Even if she's as cute as Zoe.