A Glorious Weekend

An Obligatory Elliot Update:
Dear reader. Since Elliot's arrival, I have taken up the blogging responsibility. At first, it was to me like taking a dog for a walk. A necessity. I now find that I enjoy it. Unfortunately, for Anna, the dog analogy stops here since I have never enjoyed walking a dog and I don't want her to get any ideas. Because, she has ideas about dogs.



Power Play
Since Anna arrived home from the hospital on Monday we have enjoyed Nana's company. She has been a tremendously helpful presence in the house while we transition from an overpowering 2-to-1 child-care to man-to-man defense. Yes, it was she who came to my rescue on Thursday morning at 3:30 a.m. with a crying Elliot in my arms, an out of sorts Oliver going "poo poo" on the toilet (when did he start waking up to do this?) and my sleeping eyes barely open while I was slumped on the bathroom floor.

On Saturday we added Abby to the team, who flew in from NYC. This has been an ideal situation. It's like being on a hockey team with a 2 man advantage.
- Nana has dinner
- Abby has Oliver
- Anna has Elliot
- Ryan has the remote. On the couch. Watching the Celtics.
I became accustomed to this situation almost immediately, except that I was completely weirded out by it, like I was breathing underwater or resistant to gravitational forces. Yet, I have given into to all weekend. And all I can say is: Blissful. I rue Wednesday when all help is gone and we go back to the man-to-man defense, and if you promise not tell the boys, I will admit it is quite porous as neither Anna nor I have perfected it.

The Screen Door
Because I have all this time on my hand I decided to install a screen door. With Oliver's love of the great outdoors -- he calls our postage stamp size backyard the "field" even though I could cut the entire lawn with a pair of nail clippers in about 15 minutes -- the backdoor is always open, inviting flies into the house.

A screen door installation is a rather benign undertaking if you are a real man. I, unfortunately, am not that kind of man. Note that I am very comfortable in my own manliness. I work in HR, a heavily female-dominated profession, ask for directions the first hint of being lost, enjoy photography and read books in my spare time. This makes me uniquely challenged and underqualified for installing a screen door. It required my going over to a real man's house for his help to make sure I did it right. He's got a man's garage with drills, saws, nails, and a panapoly of man tools the likes of which I can barely even fathom the purpose. I got drill-bit envy. In fact, I realize, though do not admit aloud, that I do not even own drill-bits. I spent about an hour sawing and drilling. He, as a real man, ensured the installation was perfect. However, he could not save me from myself. So, after returning with my real man's door, this slightly-less-than-a real-man realized he hadn't bothered -- even though Anna nagged me -- to check to make sure I had measured correctly.

11 holes on the wrong side of the door and a quick trip to white-putty-put-your-mistakes-away-to-the-noticeable-eye store we have a newly minted screen door on our house. You can come over and see it anytime... AND the new Dewalt drill-bits I purchased on Saturday. I have no idea if I'll ever use them... but now maybe you'll have drill-bit envy.