Kali 0.3's buddy is soon to arrive........

My sister is currently in labor and will have her first child either tonight or tomorrow. It's going to be a girl. Kali will soon have a new friend to play with that is her age.

Obviously, every one's very excited to see the new arrival. I think the new parents are just as unprepared as we were for what's about to happen, but I know that new parents also often surprise themselves by how well they end up handling the chaos. They'll be surprised how much they actually inherently know about parenting. I'm sure they'll be great parents for their new baby and our new niece.

So she IS paying attention.......

Yes, Kali 0.3 decided to finally show off that she's actually paying attention to what her daddy is teaching her. I've been working on trying to get Kali to pull a handle dangling from her chair which causes music to play. Two nights ago, I held the handle still so she could grab it. She did that and was able to pull it down, so I was pretty happy with that.

I noticed later that she was playing with another toy that has stuff hanging down. Usually, she would take her arms and whack the hanging toys around. However, I noticed that she was grabbing and pulling the toys much like she had done with the handle on the musical toy earlier.

Today, Mrs. Lime gave me a call. She was taking a shower and Kali was in the chair with the musical toy. As Mrs. Lime stepped out of the shower, the music toy starting playing and Mrs. Lime looked over to see Kali pulling down on the handle to play the music.

Ah.........positive reinforcement. Time to move on to another lesson.

Another on the way.......

Well, it appears that tomorrow or Friday we'll have another 0.1 in the family. My sister is supposed to be induced tonight if she doesn't go into labor by then. Kali 0.3 will soon have a girl her age to play with on a regular basis. Hopefully my sister and brother-in-law enjoyed their last night of sleep for awhile.

Lots of rain is moving through this week again. It seems like we have chances for rain just about every day this spring. It just keeps raining. I have a sprinkler system built into my yard, but I haven't even bothered turning it on yet. There's really no need. The grass is about as lush as it could be. It looks like a forest after a week or so. My neighbor across the street runs a landscaping business. He mows his yard every 3 days or so. He must be showing his landscape off to potential customers or something. I don't mow mine unless I can actually get some hay off the cuttings. Obviously, it's the farmer coming out in me.

New tricks........

Playing in her chair.......







She's learning to use her hands and arms a lot. Here she's reaching up to play with the dragonflies hanging on her chair.......







Finally, here's what happens when Kali wears out while playing with her toys. She was literally smiling at one point and then I turned back 30 seconds later to see this.........



Notice that her hand is still on her toy. That's how quickly it happened. She was playing with the toy as she fell asleep......

The performance to end all performances.........

Kali 0.3 and I were on our own last night. We were invited to come to a preschool graduation. They were basically having a performance by the kids for the parents, grandparents and friends. The theme was a play on the old 'Petticoat Junction' show. It was called 'Blue Jay Junction'. The boys were all dressed in overalls and were wearing train conductor hats. The girls were all wearing dresses with flowers on the front that were created by hand by an advanced sewing class of high school kids.

My friend and his wife were there as were all the grandparents. All of them were excited about the big performance. Kali momentarily stole the show as they hadn't seen her for a couple of months, so they all wanted to see her and see how much she had grown. But soon after, the lights quickly dimmed and it was showtime.

I've honestly never been to a preschool show like this, but it was certainly interesting to watch. The main teacher started off the show and was crying as she looked over the graduates. She obviously has seen them grow up quite a bit before her eyes, so she was emotional about them moving on. She finally managed to forge through and finish up her comments and the show started.

They started with a song about Blue Jay Junction. The teacher was in front of the stage leading the kids. The funny part about the songs was that all the kids knew the chorus or the lines where the big dance moves were and would scream out the lyrics in those parts. However, the verses were evidently not as exciting for the kids, so they didn't remember most of them and so they just mumbled through those parts while looking around and waiving at family and friends as 4 and 5 year old kids do so well.

In another part of the show, they had 4 boys and 4 girls do a square dance. They actually did it surprisingly well. By surprisingly well, I mean that I actually could make out some of the square dance moves that they were performing. I was pretty impressed.

There was one moment in the show that will likely be sent in to America's Funniest Home Videos. One of the kids in between songs noticed that there was a bug of some type on the stage (I was in the back and couldn't see exactly what it was) and stood there watching the bug rather than going back to his assigned seat. Of course, since there were around 20 4 or 5 year-olds on stage, some of the other kids started running over from their assigned seats to check out the bug. The kids totally forgot about the fact that there were around 150 people in the audience watching them and were solely focused on running over to see the bug. Eventually, the teacher jumped onto the stage, picked up the bug, and tossed it off the side of the stage. The bug intermission was complete and the show continued.

They had another song that was like a hoe-down song where several of the kids had instruments and just started playing them once the song started. There were two drummers, a girl with a washboard, a girl with a flute of some type, and a couple of girls using hula-hoops on the sides.

After a few bars, the crowd started clapping in time to the music. The kids really got into it at that point. The drummers smiled and banged the drums even harder. The hula-hoops were spun even faster than they were before. The flute (which was being played horribly out of tune, but no one even cared) was being blown with increased vigor. However, the girl with the washboard did not change a thing. Before the crowd started clapping, she scratched the washboard very gently. It was like she didn't want to hurt it or something. After the crowd started clapping, her demeanor didn't change a bit. She scratched that washboard just as gently as she had before. That girl is obviously going to be the level-headed one of the group. A rocking crowd couldn't distract this girl from what her task was in the show. Good for her.

My friend's daughter (Macy) participated in the 'Freight Train Boogie'. They were actually just as good as the square dancers. They had a routine all set up and they performed it well. I will say that I was awfully proud of her dance moves. She was able to do her kicks and dance moves actually in time with the beat of the music. Most of the other girls were just as cute, but Macy was the only one who actually did the dance on the beats of the music. Very impressive. There's likely some dance recitals in this girl's future.

Kali started to get fussy, so I had to leave just as the last song was performed. I'm glad I did as she had a complete meltdown just as we got to the car. But that's part of parenting. I'm just glad she behaved long enough for us to see the performance. They were handing out the awards to the kids as we left. I'm sure all of the kids got awards and were very proud of them. In a few years, I'll likely be watching Kali get an award. But I think I can wait on that. She's got some growing to do before that happens.

Parenting tip #4123.......

If you're sitting on a couch playing with a baby on your lap and you suddenly feel a wet spot near your groin and know for a fact that you aren't wetting your pants, it's pretty likely that the baby's diaper has sprung a leak and she's actively wetting herself.

Solution: Make a face indicating your dislike of the situation, lift up the baby and run to the nearest diaper changing table in the house.

The boys in blue are on fire.........

It's a good time to be a Royals fan. No, seriously.

The Royals have racked up 8 wins in their last 10 games and have gone from being the worst team in baseball to putting several teams behind them and having a chance tonight to sweep the division-leading Cleveland Indians.

For those that were able to watch the team earlier in the season, this shouldn't come as a terrible surprise. The Royals' pitching has improved drastically this season. Last year they had the worst ERA in the major leagues. This year, the team ERA is over one run lower and they sit in the middle of the league in ERA.

The problem earlier in the year was that the team wasn't hitting. That's not a problem right now. Our can't-miss rookie who couldn't hit the side of a barn now has a 6 game hitting streak. Our catcher who wasn't expected to contribute anything offensively is leading the team in homeruns and is batting .310 through the first 1/3 of the season. Our veteran hitters like Sweeney are coming alive as well after a miserable slump.

Hell, it may not last, but tonight we go for the sweep. The only thing that may keep us from that is the 100% chance of rain that is forecast for today. Hopefully, the heavens clear for a couple of hours this evening so we can chalk up a sweep and make it 9 wins in 11 games. After that, it can rain all it wants.

Everything checks out.......

Kali 0.3 got a check-up yesterday. No problems at all, which is always what you want to hear as a parent. She measured in at about the 75% growth level on height, weight and head circumference (I think that's a way to measure how smart she is). Mrs. Lime said Kali took the shots like a champ. She didn't fuss at all through the first two shots, but the last two were a bit more than she could handle. She started crying after the third shot. I'm pretty sure I would have done the same. 4 shots in one sitting is a lot more than I'd want to deal with.

Kali was pretty grumpy last night. I guess I should rephrase and say that she was grumpier than she usually is, since she's generally a really good baby. She fought sleep for quite awhile, taking her dad through the paces. I just tried to keep her as happy as I could for a couple of hours before she finally crashed. She took a decent nap and then woke up for her late feeding. She then had some issues going back to sleep, but I managed to get her to go to sleep eventually. I then followed her lead and crashed for the night.

Kali 0.3 picture party!!!!!

I was even fussed at by Kali 0.3's aunt and uncle today. They wanted less stories about Lime and more about Kali. Well, I don't know if that will ever be the case (she can start her own blog if she wants the attention!), but they are in luck today as I have a big Kali post all queued up and ready to go.

Posing on the changing table.....









Time in the bouncy chair.....



Daddy tells Kali a joke......



If this was in 3-D, you'd be getting kicked in the face right now......



Who's this guy taking all these pictures????







Checking out the new toys......











Who you looking at??????

It's called the PASSING lane......

I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but it's one of my pet peeves, so I'll talk about it regardless of whether I have before.

Is there a greater demonstration of what is wrong in this world than people who drive in the passing lane of a highway and are oblivious to all that is going on around them?


Case #1:

I'm driving on a 4 lane divided highway where the speed limit is 55 MPH. There is a van in the right hand lane. Directly to the left of the van is a car. The lady is talking on the phone, smoking, and has two large dogs galloping around her back seat. The van in the right lane is going the speed limit and the lady in the car is going..........the speed limit.

Not just for a moment, but she drove the same speed as the van in the left lane for over 10 miles! Meanwhile, no less than 15-20 cars are piling up behind this 'rolling roadblock'. You could see the anger just in the way some of these people were weaving to the shoulder to see why the traffic was slow and in the way they were darting back and forth between lanes. They were obviously hoping to 'jockey' their way to the front of the pack.

After some time, the van on the left realized the lady wasn't going to correct the issue. He moved up a bit in the right lane to allow room for people to pass her on the right. This made it even worse as people were flying by on the right and then angrily cutting her off and honking the horn. It was just absolute chaos.


Case #2:

I was on a 6 lane divided highway. There was no one in the right two lanes, yet a van for a basement repair company was driving a couple of MPH over the speed limit in the left lane. He was obviously totally oblivious to the fact that there was no one on his right and that the law actually states you're not supposed to use that lane for anything more than passing.

It wasn't that big of an issue to me overall because I had two wide open lanes on the right to pass him, but what possesses people to drive in that left lane like they own it? Even if we assume that he's trying to avoid any conflict with merging traffic on the exits, that still doesn't explain why he wasn't in the middle lane where merging traffic is not an issue.

Also, note to business owners in the KC area. If I see one of your business vehicles driving in the left-lane with a clearly visable business name on the vehicle, you can be sure that I will put that business name in my mental Rolodex and will never use your business for anything. If you (or one of your employees) is dumb enough to drive along in the left lane without moving over after passing other cars, you're likely not smart enough to do your job well. Thanks for making my decision to select a company to do business with that much easier.

The dreaded 'thump'........

It's bound to happen sooner or later. All is blissful and quiet and then you hear it: the dreaded 'thump'.

When Kali 0.3 gets tired during the day, I usually rock her a bit or walk around with her to relax her and put her to sleep. Once she's asleep or pretty close, I'll set her down in her cradle in the living room to take a nap. After that, I end up taking that time to take care of some things that I need to do.

Last night, I was sitting on the couch doing some stuff on the computer. Kali was taking a nap in the crib. I heard a noise that sounded like a hand hitting a sofa cushion. I shook it off as being a figment of my imagination. After a minute or two, I heard another 'thump'. OK, that was real.

I sat there for a minute to see if I would hear it again. Didn't hear it, so I stood up and started towards the kitchen. Just as I did, I notices the legs of my sleeping baby rise up as they often do when she has gas and quickly 'thump' back down on the mattress. After a couple more thumps, Kali woke up and was wide awake. So now I know two things if I ever hear the 'thump' again:

1) My daughter has gas.
2) It won't be long before she wakes up.

Duly noted.

Premature knock-out.......

Bad mistake by me last night. I took care of Kali 0.3 from about 6 PM on last night. Around 10 PM, it was time for Kali's bedtime feeding. So I gave Mrs. Lime advanced notice and kept Kali busy for a bit.

After Mrs. Lime took over, I headed into the kitchen for a nightly cocktail of drugs as I've been having some congestion from allergies. One of the things I took was a night-time cold relief drug. So after a few minutes, I'm starting to feel sleepy when Mrs. Lime mentions that Kali isn't all that interested in eating or sleeping.

ALERT!!!!!!

This is an obvious issue because I'm about to fall asleep due to the cold relief drug I just took and Mrs. Lime has to get back to work. Thankfully, after several minutes, my favorite daughter had second thoughts and decided to take it easy on her dad. She filled up on milk and headed off to Dreamland. Moments later, her dad did the same and all was peaceful in the house. Crisis averted.

New day, new tricks.......

Kali 0.3 has an all-new trick up her sleeve. This isn't too much of a surprise as it seems like she's figuring out new stuff on a weekly, if not daily basis at this point.

Mrs. Lime and I have been blowing on her tummy and making noises. She found it pretty amusing and would always laugh at it. She's now started to mimic the noise that she hears. It's not exactly the same noise, but it's pretty obvious what she's trying to do. Mrs. Lime and I have been praising her for it. She's quickly caught on to the fact that we're happy with it. So now, she's doing it all the time just to get more attention. I'm sure this won't be the last time that an action is repeated numerous times after Mrs. Lime or I give the baby praise for doing something.

Also, Kali has now figured out that she can use her hands to reach out and grab an object. I held a bite-size candy bar that was still in its wrapper in front of Kali. It was a yellow wrapper and was very shiny, so it drew her interest. After a lot of misses, she finally managed to put her hand on the candy bar and grabbed it. Just to see if it was a fluke or not, I took it out of her grasp and held it back up in front of her. After a few more tries, she grabbed it again. It does appear that she has to be in the mood to try to grab it. I tried it later and she had no interest at all.

Kali and I gave Mrs. Lime a card yesterday for Mother's Day. I thought it would be fun to trace Kali's hands on the card since she helped pick the card that we bought. Easier said than done. First, Kali was very interested in chewing on her hands, which make for some very slippery and wet hands. Once I got one of the hands laid down on the card, I had to trace quickly as she was wiggling and moving her hand all around. I felt like I was wrestling a greased pig. It took a few minutes to dry up the drool all over the card, but we eventually got it in a presentable state.

Mrs. Lime is working quite a bit this week, so I'm going to have plenty of quality time with Kali this week. She'll likely get tired of me by the end of the week. I'll likely be tired as well, but that's par for the course with a baby in the house. It's a 'good tired', so I'll get over it.

To rain or not to rain.......

I think it's times like these that you fully understand why farmers are generally religious people. For most, their entire livelihood depends on what kind of crop yield they get each year. If they have a great year, they do really well. If they have a bad year, it could bankrupt them.

This week, we've received a ton of rain in the Midwest. The river and flood levels are equal to what we saw in the floods that hit this area 14 years ago. That was called a '100 year flood'. Unfortunately, it didn't take 14 years for it to happen again. The same towns that were flooded out 14 years ago are now being flooded again. I'm not sure why those people even moved back to those areas, but that's another story.

Farmers have fields that are under water or extremely saturated. Some of these crops can't handle those conditions. While there is crop insurance which farmers can buy to minimize their losses to deal with the crop loss, it doesn't even come close to covering the full loss. There's going to be a lot of farmers living pretty meager existences for most of the year because they aren't going to have much in the way of crop yield unless they have a field on top of a hill.

So why are they religions? Because at times like these, all you can do is just pray it stops raining. Also, you have to hope that your prayer doesn't work so well that you end up with a drought in the summer heat of August.

Longer and stronger.......

Kali 0.3 continues to grow like a weed. I'm amazed at how much she changes just from week to week or even day to day. One day, you'll notice that her forehead is larger. The next day, her eyes are getting bigger. Another day, her legs are longer. It's just constant growth.

I gave Kali a bath last night. She was getting fussy because it was getting close to bedtime and she was pretty tired. She usually calms down quite a bit if I give her a bath. I was chatting with her and she was responding quite a bit. All of it was babble, but she was pretty sure she was stating something of great importance. At one point, she evidently told a joke (I must have missed the punch line) and started giggling. She started to laugh hard enough that she blew bubbles (from the wrong end) in the water. It was the worst smelling bubble bath ever. However, she did enjoy it, so I didn't mind the smell too much. As a father for 3 months, I've now become desensitized to the smell.

Kali and I also had a big discussion concerning the upcoming arrival of her new cousin. My sister is roughly 3 weeks from giving birth to a baby girl. Kali has been informed that she'll soon have a playmate and will not longer have to rely on Daddy and Mommy for her sole entertainment. She's pretty excited about it (from what I can detect given that she's only 3 months old with very little communication skills). I'm sure they'll be swapping dolls, clothes, etc. in no time.

Politics at its worst........

I'm going to dive into a political post here. Feel free to bypass it if you aren't interested.

I generally am not a huge fan of what's going on in politics lately. There are some people absolutely abusing situations for their own personal gain. The latest two of note are Kansas governor Sebelius and Barack Obama.

Governor Sebelius capitalized on the terrible tornado that flattened a town of 1,800 people and killed 10 people in the process. She decided to make a speech on a podium placed right in the middle of the devastated town. I can't tell you how goofy that looks to see a perfectly good podium standing in the midst of ruin. She spoke briefly about the current situation and then went out of her way to go on a political rant about the total lack of trucks and equipment available to the Kansas National Guard because all of the equipment 'is over in Iraq'.

Evidently, someone forgot to let Governor Sebelius know about the stacks of trucks parked at the National Guard Armories in Kansas City and Topeka that are going unused while she complained that no trucks were available. Thankfully, the local news crews went out of their way to go down and film all the inactive trucks that were supposedly unavailable and in Iraq. It amazes me how a politician can think they can get away with these kinds of statements without someone actually verifying that there truly are no trucks and equipment available. Worse yet, they sometimes actually DO get away with it.

Barack Obama decided to cash out on the tornado situation as well. First, he mistakenly said in a speech yesterday that there were 10,000 people killed in Kansas. The number was actually 10 dead, not 10,000. Given that Kansas is a deeply Republican state, my guess is that Mr. Obama just wishes that there was 10,000 dead Republicans rather than only 10.

Mr. Obama went on to regurgitate the information that Governor Sebelius stated. He just had to drag out the statements about how woefully equipped the National Guard was to handle the situation due to the war in Iraq. He also stated, "It turns out that they had to slow down the recovery process because of the lack of National Guard assets in the state."

Sure, Mr. Obama. You know us Midwesterners far too well. We just sit around on our tails and wait for the government to save us from ourselves. You've got to be kidding me! Those people in Kansas are not going to wait around for some National Guard trucks to show up. They're going to drag their tractors and trucks out (which most families already have in that part of the state) and get to work cleaning up. President Bush has already authorized emergency funds for PRIVATE clean-up and they're going to rebuild. Mr. Obama just doesn't get it, but it fit his platform. His campaign platform is not to propose solutions. It's meant to show all of the screw-ups of the current administration. Just to be clear, that's not the platform of a leader.

No one is immune to the problems of the current administration. I voted for Dubya and I'll be the first to state that he made some bad decisions along the way. As a result, I think we'll see a much more moderate candidate like Rudy or McCain come out of the Republican primaries this year, which will likely be a good move.

With that said, someone needs to inform the Democrats just how badly they're screwing up right now. Their total lack of forward-thinking in their ideas shows just how bad their choice of leaders is at this point. They're attacking an administration that will not be running for re-election. If the Republicans were putting forward a similar candidate, that might be a good tactic. As it is, they're attacking a candidate who the vast majority of Republicans agree is not the best choice for a future candidate. The Republican base is showing that they aren't interested in a candidate like Dubya because Rudy and McCain are the leaders in the polls. The Democrats are basically beating a dead horse which everyone acknowledges is a dead horse. It's not going to be any more dead than it already is right now.

Worse yet, the Democrats appear to have not learned from the Republican mistakes over the past few years. Republicans are very aware that the voting population is not interested in another extreme candidate like Dubya who is considered to be very right-wing. So what does the Democratic party do? They go out and put out Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as their candidates. Hillary Clinton does one thing. She plays off her husband's popularity (despite the fact that he publicly cheated on her in the Oval Office) to draw big funding from the Democratic base. She is a polarizing figure who may draw Democrats, but will turn off independent and Republican voters. Dubya may be the only candidate that she could beat in an election, but he's not running.

Similarly, Barack Obama is not exactly a 'people' candidate. He regularly blows his horn, trumpeting how he opposed the war from the beginning. He comes off as a 'know-it-all' who is more worried about being right rather than dealing with the current situation. I personally don't care how right or wrong he was in the past. He also smokes, which I see as a weakness in a candidate. Nicotine is a powerful drug, but it's an addiction that the leader of the free world should be able to beat. Also, through no fault of his own, he's also being touted by the Democrats as the first minority to be a legitimate candidate. I don't care what the color of his skin is. He's got to be a leader and Barack Obama is anything but a leader.

I really hope we are able to pull in a moderate candidate like Rudy or McCain that holds some beliefs that some Republicans and some Democrats can both agree on. I'm really tired of the political posturing that plays only to one base or the other. Is it too much to ask for a candidate to make a stance based on their beliefs rather than what will raise the most money????

Another milestone........

Well, I witnessed the dreaded '36000.0' go by on my odometer this morning on the way to work. My vehicle is officially out of warranty. I have no doubt that my car will now have its revenge and start falling apart right before my eyes.

On a brighter note, my car will be paid off in 14 months. So even though I'm now responsible for fixing the car with my own hard-earned money, I won't have to make monthly payments on it much longer.

Kali 0.2 and Mrs. Lime are coming home tonight. I think our dog is a bit bored right now with me going to work all day and leaving him home along with nothing to do but bark at the occasional delivery man that drops by. He'll be happy to start working full time again once the baby gets home.

I noticed this morning on the way to work that the Missouri river is still very high. Some of the trees along the banks are disappearing under the water. My understanding is that they released a lot of water upstream from the resevoirs in North and South Dakota to alleviate some of their flooding issues. Of course, that now causes flooding issues in our area. At one point, the river went up several feet in one day. Screwing with nature is always a touchy issue.

Hopefully this weekend will be relatively uneventful. Seems like there's been too many things going on this week. I could use a 'boring' weekend.

Lucky or unlucky??????

I came home last night from a weekend trip to Baltimore. I did quite a bit of babysitting as Mrs. Lime and Blondie had a few things to do. Thankfully, Kali 0.2 cooperated for the most part and even slept on occasion. It was good bonding time for Kali and I. She's a really good baby for the most part. As long as she's got food in her belly and good entertainment, she's a pretty happy kid.

In the Baltimore airport, they've got some construction going on. It's a mess that alters the path of the security check line. The problem is that instead of having a queue to hold the line, the line extends a long way through the terminal. It's not that the line is any longer than usual, but it makes people think that it's out of control. As a result, complaints circulate through the line.

I had a lady and her mother standing behind me. Immediately, the way they talked gave away that they were Jewish women. The lady was helping her mom through the line until they got to the checkpoint. The conversation is enhanced below to read much like it sounded......

Lady: OK, Mom. I think you have everything you need to get home. Here's your boarding pass. I'm going to put it in your purse pocket so you don't forget.

Mom: Oh my gawd! I'll surely forget it there. Put it in my hand because I surely won't forget where it is then.

Lady: OK, Mom. Here's the boarding pass. Now, don't forget to have your ID ready to check as well.

Mom: Do they check it right now or at the end of the line?

Lady: They check it at the checkpoint. But you should probably get it out right now and have it ready.

Mom: OK

Lady: Thanks for coming to the bah mitzvah. We were so happy to have you come out to visit us.

Mom: (crying) Oh my gawd, it was beautiful. Will you all be able to come see me soon?

Lady: Hard to tell. If we can, we'll come out.

Mom: Well, I don't want to put any pressure on you, but if you would come out, it would mean the world to me!

Lady: OK, Mom. Have a safe flight.

Mom: Gawd willing! Hope you come to see me soon!

Lady: (waving and walking away) OK, Mom. Bye!

I'm happy to report that the lady did make it through the security line just fine.

Once we were in the queue within the ropes, I noticed a couple that obviously needed a hotel room if their actions were to proceed much further. They were all over each other. Kissing and hugging galore with occasional heaving petting thrown in. I was a bit sickened by the whole site. I don't mind a little public display of affection, but these kids (who were easily 40+) were really going at it.

As we neared the security checkpoint, the man laid one last monster kiss on his girlfriend. He then wished her well on her flight and then headed back out of the queue to evidently catch a different flight. The lady turned back into the line and had a smile on her face. After a few seconds, her smile quickly turned to tears. It was pretty obvious that they weren't going to be seeing each other for awhile. I felt a bit guilty for judging their actions once she cried. She was pretty upset. While I don't endorse heavy petting in public, I guess I'll have to be a little more lenient in my judgment of affection at airports in the future.

Once inside the airport, I goofed around on my portable video game for awhile while waiting for the flight. They eventually had us board. As I was waiting for my turn, an older lady handed her boarding pass to the check-in lady. The computer read the boarding pass and emitted a horrible sounding buzzer. Evidently, this lady had got in the line for the wrong flight and nearly headed off for Kansas City instead of Phoenix. Good to see that the computer system catches those things. I'm guessing that lady would have been pretty surprised to land in a rainy Kansas City airport.

We had a wild ride into the airport as there was a thunderstorm going on as we landed. The plane was wiggling back and forth. The guy sitting next to me was from Baltimore and we had been discussing tornadoes. East coast people are petrified of tornadoes. Most of it just comes from not knowing that it's easy to avoid problems as long as you know what to do if a tornado is coming your way.

Me: You know. I'd be alright with all these bumps if I had paid $70 for a white-water rafting trip.

Guy: So, do you have to land in storms pretty often in Kansas City?

Me: Sometimes. It's just part of living in the midwest. Storms come and go pretty quickly.

Guy: I'm not sure I've ever landed in a plane while lightning was flashing all over the place.

Me: I wouldn't worry about it. Think about it. How many times over the last few years have you seen a story about a plane crash. Out of the hundreds of thousands of flights, only a couple at the most have crashed.

Guy: (laughing) Yeah, I guess that's true.

Me: Look at it this way. If your plane ends up crashing, you ended up a loser on a bet that you win 99.99% of the time. It was just your time and there's not much you can do about it. You're just awful unlucky.

Guy: I suppose so.

We thankfully landed without issue and I razzed the guy about the whole ordeal. I told him, "See, I told you we were going to make it all along!".

He just laughed and elbowed me. I was never worried about it. I'm a lucky guy.

Warning: Cuteness could be contagious......

Mrs. Lime just checked today and Kali now is up over 13 pounds. We headed up to the store to pick up some new pajamas. The newborn pajamas are starting to look more like Spandex at this point.

Someone has learned a new trick.......



She hasn't figured out how to get all the way over yet on her own, but she's really close......



Posing for the camera.......



Always got to eat something.......



Trying to look at the TV........



Playtime on the floor........

Night terrors..........

I'm a big fan of the paranormal and love to read books and watch shows about it. There's something about the unknown that I love. When I was younger, I read all the ghost books that were available at the local library. The Dewey decimal number for ghost books was 133.00. I knew it by heart. The ghost books only accounted for a couple of shelves worth of books. Eventually, I got to a point where I had read all the books in that section. In future visits, I'd go over to the ghost section and just look through to see if any new books had come out. Every once in awhile, I'd find a new one to read.

One of the things that people often mistake for paranormal activity is a phenomenon called 'night terrors'. Many people have had night terrors in one form or another. A night terror is when you 'wake up' and feel like you're paralyzed to the point where you can't move or speak. Often, you feel like you're being moved or touched. While it feels like a paranormal experience when it's occurring, it's really just your mind causing the problems.

During a night terror, your brain fools you into thinking you are awake when you are actually still asleep. You feel like you are actually conscious. The terrifying feeling of being moved or touched is a panic caused by the feeling of paralysis. When it happens, it's a very real experience and it can be pretty scary when it happens. There's no rhyme or reason as to what might trigger a night terror.

I only mention night terrors because I actually experienced one last night. I 'woke up' and was unable to move my entire body or speak. I felt like I was sliding slowly across the bed without any control and I couldn't do anything to stop it. It was pretty weird. Then, I woke up and quickly realized that I had just had a night terror. A couple of factors were a dead giveaway that the experience wasn't real.

1. I was in a different bed when I was sliding than when I woke up.
2. If I was sliding across the bed as I felt, there's no way I would have been oriented in the position on the bed that I was when I woke up.

Night terrors account for a surprising number of 'paranormal' experiences in the home. It's an interesting thing to experience, but it has little to do with any actual paranormal activity.