truce.

Quinn has decided that his little sister is pretty cool after all. When she's up and awake, I have to field constant requests for him to "kiss Lyra", and "kiss Lyra again".

Things are settling down...we now average about six hours of sleep a night. If you've noticed any light blogging for the last few days, there's my excuse. I'm usually busy with one or the other.

All you moms out there who raised multiple kids by yourselves, or with no help from your hands-off "baby care is women's work" husbands: you have my deep and heartfelt respect. These two are enough to keep two parents busy all day long.

All you husbands out there who consider yourselves the "working" part of the marriage because you leave in the morning and bring a paycheck home: you have it easy. Going to the office is infinitely easier than juggling the attention requirements of multiple little children. It's not particularly difficult, but there's a constant low-level stress that comes from never being off the clock completely, and the effect is cumulative.

Here are some pics from this morning. Maybe I'll have the time for a gun-related post later today.

depressing.

This marks the fifth time in recent years where a Texas mother killed all of her children in a gruesome fashion.

For all you Texans out there, what's the deal with mother-perpetrated child homicide in the Lone Star State? It's simply puzzling.

As a parent (and I am by no means claiming to be an authority on the subject of parenting and kids), I believe that anyone who would harm their own offspring has some profoundly faulty wiring in their cranium. It's simply unnatural...just the thought of harming or killing my own kids makes me physically ill.

how not to treat your heroes.

The Victoria Cross is the highest decoration for valor that can be awarded to members of a Commonwealth military. It's pretty much the British equivalent of the Medal of Honor, with the same "above and beyond" type heroic acts needed to qualify for such an award. Like the Medal of Honor, a significant percentage of Victoria Crosses have been awarded posthumously.

One Mr. Tul Bahadur Pun earned a Victoria Cross while in the service of the Gurkha Regiment in Burma on June 23, 1944. After almost all his comrades were wiped out, he seized a Bren Gun and, firing from the hip and running through ankle-deep mud, ignored Japanese fire to storm machine gun positions.

His official citation read: "His outstanding courage and superb gallantry in the face of odds which meant almost certain death were most inspiring and beyond praise."

Now aged 84, Mr. Pun recently applied for immigration to Britain. His application was turned down "because he has no strong ties with the United Kingdom", and because he couldn't prove that his medical condition would mean a better quality of life in Britain instead of Nepal.

Now, if I were in charge of the British immigration service, I'd arrange for a free transport to the UK via the Queen's Flight, a slot in the UK's finest veteran's hospital, and a new passport hand-delivered by whatever bureaucratic lickspittle made the original decision to deny one of the Commonwealth's bona fide war heroes the request to spend his last days in the country for which he risked his life in such exemplary fashion.

It's more than a little appalling that the UK has no problems with the immigration of young Muslims who not only don't want to have ties with the UK, but who actively oppose the culture of their new home land by way of backpack bombs, but that someone with the service record of Mr. Pun is told that he can't live there because he has "no strong ties" to the place. A Victoria Cross, or its American equivalent, is pretty much the most bulletproof evidence of loyalty one can produce.

"The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten." --Calvin Coolidge

parenting advice.

If you have kids, or are thinking about having kids, here's a piece of advice.

If you have a toddler and a jumbo-sized bottle of baby powder, it is advisable to not leave one within reach of the other outside of immediate parental supervision range.

Two words: winter wonderland.

i'll take "frivolous lawsuits" for $1000, alex.

A while back, some guy drove his SUV into the back of a tow truck while intoxicated. Apparently, this is a big deal because the guy was a ball player, relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. (Note the past tense here, because the gentleman in question expired in the collision.)

Now his father has filed a lawsuit against the bar that served his son the alcohol, against the tow truck company and the driver of that truck for being in the road assisting another vehicle, and (for good measure) the driver of the disabled vehicle for having the temerity to break down on that particular spot.

Apparently, everyone is to blame for his son's death except his son, who drove the car with a BAC of twice the legal limit, while speeding and yakking on his cell phone, and neglecting to wear a seatbelt.

It boggles the mind, it really does.

ah, sweet lortab.

Yesterday afternoon I had an appointment to, ah, get my wires clipped. I regretfully had to pass on the Valium they offer just before the procedure because I had to drive myself home, but the whole thing wasn't a terribly big deal anyway...I've had more discomfort from a toothache.

Today I'm just feeling some sort of low-level discomfort, but the urologist prescribed some Lortab for the aftermath, so I'm actually doing pretty good right now. Hooray for Schedule III drugs, I say.

When I was under the knife, so to speak, I remembered the Gary Larson cartoon where this dog hangs out of the window of the family car as they drive by a yard where another dog is playing. The dog in the car yells out of the window, "Ha ha, Biff! Guess what? We're going to the store, and then I'm going to the vet to get tutored!"

notes from a quiet monday.

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, I am typing this in our backyard, which is a fenced-in 75'x75' patch of grass barely deserving of such a lofty label. Quinn is discovering the ballistic properties of various objects such as balls and rocks, and my supervisory role is to warn him when there are breakable or living objects in the direction of his trajectory. Lyra is asleep in her bassinet inside, and Robin is preparing dinner for the lot of us.

I've had a few people ask about the origin of Lyra's name, so I'll divulge our inspiration for it. Lyra, the lyre, is a star constellation centered around Vega, the second-brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. It's also the first name of the protagonist in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra Belacqua. We like celestial things, and we both love the books, so the name kind of sounded right when one of us first proposed it. (I honestly can't remember who came up with it first.)

My brother and his wife are expecting kid number three, and they gave each other lists of potential names, with instructions for the other to cross out unacceptable candidates. When they returned their respective lists to each other, every name on either list was crossed out.

Ah, kids and family. I need to come up with some more blog entries about guns, politics, and philosophy, lest this blog live up to its name and turn into a pure parenting blog, but on days like this, it's hard not to bore the blogosphere with seemingly inconsequential minutae from the family front. Marriage and parenting have their ups and downs, but even on the worst of days, I wouldn't trade this to anyone for any amount of money.