Zach Dotsey

Amanda had an industrious day today.  She got a good bit of laundry put up and picked up upstairs a lot then started catching up on some scrapbooking.  (That sentence had a lot of “up” in it.)

Meanwhile, I worked pretty much straight on until 8:00.  I took a break to help feed Milly and put her to bed then worked until 10:00.

On the subject of Milly eating, she managed to twist of the the Bumbo tonight, which is where we sit her to feed her once she’s finished her bottle.  All I heard was the smack of her hitting the floor, but Amanda said she was leaning out so much that her face was really near to the floor so she didn’t actully fall much at all.  She cried a little but then we stuck some food in her mouth and that seemed to make it better.  I told Amanda that was not a good precedent to set: food will make it all better.

Amanda moved Milly to the highchair after that, but she hasn’t been in it very much and was really distracted by things as interesting as the straps holding her in.  Amanda’s mom, Karen, arrived at our house just as we were finishing getting Milly ready for bed.  Karen went on and on about how her grandbaby just keeps getting prettier and prettier.  Milly gave her some nice big smiles.

In good news for the day, Coach David Cutcliffe gave the University of Tennessee an ultimatum yesterday, saying they needed to go ahead and hire him in the next 24 hours or it was off.  I think his reasoning for this was that it’s a big recruiting weekend, and with the head coaching position up in the air like it was he’d miss out on some recruits if he ended up staying at Duke.  But then this morning he withdrew his name from consideration, to the adulation of many Blue Devil fans.  I think it’s a great move for him and it definitely benefits Duke.

In sadder news, Jason’s mom, Margie, took Sophie to the vet today to have her put down.  Jason told me that his mom said the shadows of the trees they were passing while in the car gave Sophie seizures and it sounded like the vet agreed it was time.  I could tell he was a little choked up.  It made me sad too, not just because I could empathize with him but because I remember when they got Sophie.  They’ve had that dog for half our lives.

We’re going to eat at Cracker Barrel in the morning, as we often do when Karen comes to town.  We called Michael to let him know and after some cajoling (because 10:00 is too early) he said that he and Jenn would be coming too.

Zach Dotsey

Milly was up at 7:10 this morning.  I let her babble to herself for a while and finally got her out of bed at 7:30.  Still didn’t feed her until 8:00 though.  She’s been getting up earlier here at the Mercer house, but I don’t know if it’s because she’s in a different place or because we’re sleeping in the same room with her and just notice it more.

Last night Karen and Amanda noticed an issue riding in Karen’s van, so Phil took it to a shop this morning.  Amanda had to pick up a few things from a grocery store, so she went ahead and picked her dad up while she was out.

The Pickens crew, Phil’s sister’s family, arrived around 11:30 I think.  It was their first chance to meet Milly, though Ona and Peter, Amanda’s aunt and uncle, had visited us in Wilmington the week before Milly was due.  Around 1:00 some more of Phil’s side of the family trickled in.  Apparently most of them didn’t know we’d had a baby.

Renee Tripp stopped by for a little bit to chat with Amanda and meet Milly.  I should have hung out in the kitchen while they were talking more- Renee’s cool peeps.

We all ate lunch and hung out a bit.  I was really impressed with Jessica and Wesley, younger second cousins of Amanda’s.  They seem like some really smart kids.  Another second cousin, Abby, is pregnant with her third kid.  They’ve got two boys and are finally having a girl.

We watched a bit of football, too.  NC State beat Carolina, which was great, but Duke lost to Wake Forest, ending their season and Thad Lewis’ career at Duke.

Everyone was gone by around 4:30 or 5:00.  Amanda and I had planned to leave too, but neither of us felt like packing, driving an hour and unpacking so we stuck around one more night.  Amanda, Karen, Michael and Jenn spent most of the evening watching a What Not to Wear marathon in the sun room.  Phil and I watched Forest Gump in the living room.  Well, it was on while he dozed and I edited pictures.

Zach Dotsey

Happy first birthday to my niece, Addison Sawyer, and happy fifth month birthday to my daughter, Milly Dotsey!

Last night before I went to bed I felt feverish, and, right before I went to bed, I started shivering.  I took some NyQuil and considered taking some Pepto Bismol, but read an applicable reason for not taking it at the time.  (I won’t mention why, as it’s kinda grody.)  Anyway, I was feeling pretty bad.  I got in bed, pulled the covers tight around me, pulled a pillow over my head, curled up and fell asleep.

I woke up and did a mental check to see if I felt nauseous at all or if I felt like there was still evil toxicity in my stomach.  Both checks came back negative, and it just made me feel so good!  My head felt clearer and I felt like yesterday had been washed away in the night.  It was a brand new day.

Amanda fixed pancakes and sausage on the electric griddle, which I ate happily since I had my appetite back.  Then the deliverers from Lowes showed up with our stove!  Great, right?  Well, no.  See, Earl had asked what color stove we wanted, and I told him black, but they brought us a white one.  It wasn’t Lowes’ fault though, because Earl got us a white one.  Amanda asked if it was the same model as was delivered Monday, and I said that it was.  I’d assumed it was the right one though because the top of it was black.  I mean, I had figured that all the flat-top stoves have black tops, but I didn’t really think much of the fact that they delivered us a white one the other day.

Long story short, they told us to go to Lowes and see about picking out another one.  Amanda was told that the model we’d gotten doesn’t exist in black though.

A little after that we all went to the beach with a short detour to talk to the Frazelles.  Amanda, Aunt Robbie, Milly and I went to The Oceanic.  We were going to grab some lunch, but AR wanted to go out on the beach and get some pictures of Milly too.  Once we did that we ate then stopped at a couple shops to look for birthday presents for Addison.  Since AR was heading to Charlotte later we were sending it along with her.  We ended up going to two local children’s boutiques and Old Navy.  AR got her present to Addie from the first one (along with something for Milly) and Amanda picked out some clothes from Old Navy.

Aunt Robbie left shortly after we got back home, which was a little after 4:00.  She really hit it off with Harvey on this trip and obviously enjoyed getting to meet Milly.  I hadn’t realized that she hadn’t seen pictures of her, and she kept going on about what a beautiful baby Milly is.

After she left Amanda and I went on back out to Lowes and, hopefully, got everything straightened out.  It turns out that there is a black version of the stove, but they don’t have it in stock so we probably won’t get it until next Monday.  Not this coming Monday, but the one after.  We’ll have gone two weeks without a stove at that point.

Despite what a debacle the Stove Saga has been, there is good that has come out of it.  First of all, we would have had a white stove when Amanda wanted a black one.  And she’s right that a white one wouldn’t have looked right, since our cabinets are off-white.  The other thing is that when the stove was originally taken back to the store and refunded (which is just the way they had to do it), the store hadn’t refunded and repurchased the extended warranty Earl got us, meaning that if we have a problem down the road and tried to get work done based on the warranty, they wouldn’t have honored it.  So we got that taken care of too.

Once we finished all that up we headed back over to the Frazelle house to celebrate Barry’s birthday.  Anna fixed stuffed shells and salad with her famous chocolate chocolate cake for dessert.  Barry’s parents showed up shortly before dinner was ready and Kirsten took off to do a city-wide scavenger hunt put on by Port City Community Church.  Michael was invited, but he wasn’t told about it until this afternoon and already had plans to eat at Atlanta Bread and then do some Christmas shopping with Jenn at Mayfaire.

We hung out there for a while then headed on home.  Amanda was pretty exhausted and went to bed pretty soon after we got in.

Duke got creamed in football against seventh-ranked Georgia Tech.  They started out 10-0 but didn’t score for the rest of the game.  Unfortunately, the Yellow Jackets did.  Seven times.  Then Carolina beat Miami.  Suck.

I plan to go surfing tomorrow.  There were some decent-looking waves today, but I didn’t get a chance to go out.  I really want to get out there tomorrow since it’s been, what, two months?

Zach Dotsey

After getting Milly up, fed and dressed, then taking showers ourselves, Amanda and I went to Sam’s to get some more Enfamil then scooted over to Old Navy, where they had a 50% off sale on outerwear today.  Amanda picked a couple things out for Milly, but the lines were ridiculously long so we ended up just leaving, which is probably just as well.

After that we headed over to Wrightsville Beach to see the Frazelles and take a walk on the beach.  I ended up helping Barry back some files up on his Mac because he was going to reinstall the operating system, which is a few years old.  It needed it, too.  It probably took more than five minutes for that thing to reboot.

We took our walk with Barry and Anna, but Barry didn’t get too far because their dog, Scout, got tired really soon after we got out there.  Anna mentioned that he probably wouldn’t be brought out on the beach much anymore for walks.

Milly got to taste a couple new things today.  Barry had a chocolate-dipped granola bar still in the wrapper that Milly was enjoying playing with, so I actually let her lick the chocolate off of one.  She really liked it and had chocolate all over her mouth and running, mixed with drool, down her face.  Later on I let her try a granola bar without chocolate and a BBQ potato chip, which she also enjoyed licking.  I didn’t think her reaction to that would have been so positive.

So the tally so far is BBQ chips, chocolate, granola bars, pizza sauce and chicken salad mayo sauce = yummy, apple sauce = icky face.  My girl’s going to like junk food.

When we got home Amanda and I (mostly I, but Amanda seemed to look forward to it despite not liking football) watched Duke play at Carolina.  It was Duke’s most favored chance to beat Carolina in a really long time.  The end of the first half saw the score tied at six all, all points scored on field goals.  Carolina turned it up in the fourth quarter though and ended up winning 19-6, which was disappointing.  Duke’s offense just couldn’t do much.

Amanda went and got us some chips and some sandwich supplies, but one of the bags of chips was nasty and stale, though it was still sealed when we got it and the date on it was fine.  I took it back at halftime and checked the new bag before I even got out of the store.

Amanda folded a bunch of clothes tonight.  We got into laundry mode for the day because we had some clean clothes sitting on the guest bed that Cobb decided to pee on.  I blame ourselves because the litter hadn’t been cleaned in a bit.  Still, it’s frustrating.  Fortunately we don’t think the cat pee went through to the mattress.

I tried something new when I gave Milly her bath tonight, and that was to just pour the cup full of water that I use to rinse her right down her head, not worrying about directing it away from her face.  It didn’t seem to bother her at all, which bodes well for her living at the beach.  More importantly, it made all her hair go down in front of her face, like bangs.  She has some hair that comes down past her eyebrows, but what I want to get at is that when I did that and then she opened her eyes, I think I could see her as she’ll look as a little girl.  I mentioned a similar vision in regards to Eli Warkentien a while back, but now I can see it with Milly, which is pretty cool.

I talked to my mom for about a half hour tonight.  I think the commute to Rochester during the week is tough on her, but it sounds like she’s pleased with a lot of stuff going on at home.  At the end of our conversation, talking about Milly, Mom agreed that she’s a very pretty baby, but she also said that she’s very endearing with her little personality.  In my best Robert Barone: “Everybody loves Milly.”

Zach Dotsey
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Amanda went to Old Navy again this morning, this time to actually take advantage of a discount.  Milly and I just hung out.  She was a bit fussy throughout a good portion of the day and she never really took much of a nap.  Shortly after Amanda got home her parents arrived and we all headed downtown to meet Michael and Jenn for brunch.  The place they wanted to eat had a forty minute wait, however, and Michael had to be at work around that time so we went to Front Street Brewery instead and had lunch.  And thus came about Milly’s first trip to Front Street Brewery, as well as the first time she sat in a high chair at a restaurant.

After lunch Amanda, her parents, Milly and I (Michael and Jenn had already left)walked over to Killwin’s for some ice cream.  We walked to the riverfront for a minute or two then took off back home to do not much of anything for a bit.  When they left they took their pressure washer with them.  We’ve had it for quite a while and I never got around to using it.  My own fault.

We tried jumping my car again.  I had returned the jumper cables I previously bought and got some heavier duty ones, but these were apparently not enough either.  Bonnie came over from across the street to see if she could help, but ultimately said we could use her jumper cables, which are really heavy duty, tomorrow.

After that we dressed Milly up in her kitty cat Halloween costume, which was obviously very cute.  Unfortunately though, it’s a very thick costume and it was about 80 degrees outside, so we took off the top part of it before we left to drop her off at Anna and Barry’s.  We did put it back on once we got there though, before we went and knocked on the door.

We hung out at the Frazelles’ for a bit.  They all seemed really excited to be watching Milly tonight.  Kirsten had plans to go out (although she apparently stayed in to watch after Milly), Hannah was having some friends over and Anna and Barry were planning on just hanging out.

When we left there we stopped by Starbucks to get some food and drink then Amanda had a costume idea.  We weren’t really planning on going out as anything, but based on what we were wearing I said that she could be stripes (because she was wearing a shirt with a bunch of stripes) and I could be a tape (because I was wearing a shirt with a picture of a cassette tape).  She said something about The White Stripes then came up with the idea of getting some black t-shirts and putting a white piece of tape across them and going as The White Stripes.  I thought that was a very clever idea.

We showed up at the Konny’s right at 8:00 and learned how to play Mafia.  I won’t go into explaining it too much, but we had a really fun time with it.  One to two people in the group are picked to play the Mafia and have to discretely take other people out, then everyone else has to guess who’s in the Mafia.  In the first game I was the first victim, which Blake, my murderer, apologized for later.  A couple games later, Amanda accused me of being Mafia, even though I wasn’t.  Her reasoning was that I was doing a lot more accusing that game, which is true, but it was the first game where I had feelings about who was in the Mafia.  I was right, too.

We left there a little after 11:00 to go pick up Milly.  Hannah and her friends were watching the end of The Blair Witch Project, which I hadn’t seen in a while, so I watched that.  Anna and Barry told us that Milly had been great, which is good.  Anna talked to me about getting Hannah and Kirsten to start coming over on Mondays to watch Milly while I work, which would be awesome.  I mean, I really love having all that time with Milly, but it would hopefully keep me from needing to work all hours into the night to get things done as often.

Milly was in a great mood on the way home.  Usually she falls asleep pretty fast in the cars eat, but she babbled happily on from Wrightsville all the way back to the house.  She seemed wide awake when we put her down, but she went right to bed again without any fuss.

Duke beat Virginia 28-17 in football today, the first time in 20 years that Duke has had three consecutive ACC wins.  Pretty awesome.

Overall today was a pretty good day for us, but it wasn’t as good for the Sawyers, my baby sister’s family.  Andra had posted on Facebook that Josh had been headbutted while played in a rec league soccer game today and from what was posted I thought he just had a concussion.  My mom called later though and told me that Josh’s face had been broken.  I talked to Andra later on and I can’t remember exactly what happened, but basically a guy ran into Josh then walked off laughing about it.  Basically, it seems to have been on purpose.  In a REC LEAGUE GAME, which ultimately doesn’t mean anything, this guy had some issue so he headbutted my brother-in-law and broke bones in his face.  Andra said that Josh basically doesn’t have a left cheekbone right now.  He’ll be undergoing surgery in the morning.  Everything should be fine, except things are already tough for them, they’ll have a pretty big deductible to pay plus Josh, who is self-employed, will be out of work for a while.  Keep them in your prayers.

Zach Dotsey

Milly didn’t sleep well last night.  She was up for a little while around 6:00 but we ended up getting her back to sleep again.  She woke up again around 9:00, which was surprising to me and Amanda.  It was nice to be able to sleep in a little more.

We both had sore throats, and since we both had them I don’t think it’s a cold.  Maybe it’s being around the horses and the hay, I don’t know.

Mom and Dad made a breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon.  We all ate and hung out for a bit before I took off to Duke by myself.  Dad was going to go, but he’s got a bit of a cold and the forecast says rain, so he didn’t want to stand, sick, in the rain for a few hours.  Amanda was going to the basketball game, but she isn’t a fan of football and didn’t want to go to that (and stand in the rain doing so).  I knew there wouldn’t be time to go from Duke back to Rougemont and back to Duke again between games and we were making plans on how to work that out when Dad said he’d take her.

In the hang out time in between breakfast and my departure, Milly rolled over for the first time.  She can roll from her stomach to her back and from her back to her side.

I met up with Seth Holloman, Randal Kennedy, Matt Tedder and a few other guys from the Duke board before we walked over to Wallace Wade.  They were handing out Duke hand towels, which I got three of.  It rained off and on pretty much the whole game except for during halftime and when the game was over, of course.  I had a great time though, and Duke beat Maryland 17-13.  It should have been a higher score, but Thad Lewis fumbled the football on the two yard line, which sucked.  Duke got it back shortly after that though, and could have probably scored again but they took consecutive knees to run the clock out.

After the game we all headed back over to the parking lot, where Aunt Reggie dropped Amanda off.  She’d been over to the house and doesn’t live too far from Duke, so she volunteered to take her to save Dad the trip.  Erin, Adam, Andra, Josh and Addison were all at the house too, so between all of them and my parents, Milly had plenty of people to watch after her.  Well, not that Addison could really help, being only seven months older, but still.  Jackson, in case you’re wondering, stayed in Gastonia with his other grandmother so he could go to two birthday parties.

Amanda and I made our way over to Cameron Indoor Stadium along with everyone else.  We picked up a pizza, Cracker Jacks and some water there for $14 (as I hadn’t had any sustenance save a couple doughnuts and a few cans of beer since breakfast) and headed off to our seats.  We were only one row from the very back, but in Cameron even the nosebleed seats aren’t nosebleed seats.  We happened to sit next to another guy from the Duke board.

The game was a lot of fun.  Amanda really enjoyed her first trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium.  Duke blew Pfeiffer out, as expected.  The final score was 129-70.  There was a lot of good in it.  Freshman Ryan Kelly scored the second most points (behind Kyle Singler) and Mason Plumlee had a one handed dunk from just about the free throw line.  Ridiculous.  Harrison Barnes looked like he was having a great time, too.  The Cameron Crazies made a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in a Duke uniform along with a few banners, but the cutout got taken away.  There were a few chants too, like “Harrison Barnes (point at Barnes), this is home (point at the floor)!”

So that was my day of Duke.  I really enjoyed it, and Amanda enjoyed her first Duke game.

Back home, Amanda and I hung out with the family after taking a peek at our sleeping baby.  Mom freaked out because the soles of my feet were brown and she thought they were going to rub off on the carpet.  When Rainbows get wet that just happens.  So talked and hung out and watched some Kentucky football then parents and Addison went to bed.   The rest of us played MarioKart on the Wii for a bit.  I got beat once, by Erin.  I was just about to overtake her at the end of the final lap when a red shell hit me.  Dangit.

Zach Dotsey

I went to bed earlyish last night.  I fell asleep on the couch but got up and went upstairs when I let the dogs in from when Amanda let them out to pee.  Getting up and walking around tends to wake me up some, and I didn’t fall immediately back to sleep when I got in bed.

I did go to sleep early though, like I said, and I ended up getting up just a little before 8:00 this morning.  I was planning on getting Milly’s breakfast ready and getting her up at 8:15, but Amanda told me from upstairs at 8:14 that Milly was up and crying.  I fixed the bottle and went upstairs, where Amanda was going into the nursery.  She doesn’t get to get Milly up often in the morning, so she was kind of excited going into the room.

We fed Milly and watched House.  After that Amanda showered and we walked to the store to pick up a few things with Milly in her stroller.  A lady at the store told us that we had a beautiful baby.  When we were in the checkout lane Justin Hauenstein walked up to us.  Justin lives on the south side of town, but he was up this way doing some work for Time Warner.  He said that he said to himself when he walked into the store that he thought he’d see me.  We talked for a few minutes.  He and Lisa are expecting a baby, and Lisa’s had a rough first trimester.  They find out the sex in about a month.

Most of the rest of the day was spent taking care of Milly and cooking.  Well, Amanda cooked.  We were going to Blake and Stephanie Konny’s tonight and she made chocolate chip and toffee cookies and macaroni and cheese to take there.  The house smelled good.

Amanda’s brother, Michael Mercer, and his girlfriend, Jenn Greenawalt, came over at 4:00 to babysit Milly for us.  Amanda gave Michael a crash course in feeding and diaper changing (which Michael was not pleased to learn) and showed Jenn what to do when putting Milly to bed.  After that we headed over to Blake and Stephanie’s.

Blake and Stephanie, as long as we’ve known them, lived in a one-room (well, two if you include the bathroom) garage apartment behind Stephanie’s sister’s family’s house.  They moved into a rental house not too long ago, and this was the first time we got to see it.  Mike (Lars) and Kaitlyn Boscaljon were there when we got there.  We haven’t seen them in quite some time.

We had a good time there.  Chris and Katy Davis were there, and even though Chris had to leave early I talked to him a bit.  I also spent a good bit of time talking to Stephanie’s brother-in-law.  Amanda and I both thought that his and her sister’s younger daughter, Sophia, looked a bit like we imagine Milly will look like in about a year.

Later on we played The Blake Game.  Guys versus girls, as usual, and also as usual, us guys won.

Early on when we were at Blake and Stephanie’s I got a call from Michael.  Milly was screaming in the background and he was wanting some advice on calming her down.  He called again a little later and she was quieter.  Eventually they took her for a walk and she fell asleep, and I think things were fine from then on.

When we got home we looked in on our sleeping daughter then talked to Michael and Jenn for a bit before they borrowed a few DVDs and took off.  A few minutes later Amanda and I heard Milly crying upstairs, and to be honest we were a little glad since it gave us an excuse to interact with her.  We changed her diaper, gave her her sweetmaker and put her back in bed.  She gave us a smile before rolling over on her side and falling right back to sleep.  Amanda pointed out before that she sleeps like me.

The only real regret I have about going out tonight is that Duke played NC State tonight, kickoff being at 4:00.  Duke versus State was the game I went to last year, and the Wolfpack beat the Blue Devils.  They got some revenge tonight though, and how!  The score was 49-28.  I wish I had DVR’ed it.

Zach Dotsey