My dad had gone to Lexington this weekend for an eighth grade reunion or something like that.  I talked to him (and Baba) right before he left to come back to North Carolina.  I also got calls from Mom, Erin and Adam.

This has been a bit of a mixed day for me.  Church was good.  They didn’t have the Cruisers room at Grow Zone, which is for the babies who can crawl but aren’t walking yet.  Last week they had us put Milly with the little babies, but this week she got to hang out with the walking kids.  I told her that while I was hoping she’d start walking today for me, she shouldn’t start walking in there.  And she didn’t.

On the way home Milly was very fussy.  It was a little past her nap time and Dr. Hill said she might feel bad a few days after her shots.  We decided to stop by Panera for some breakfast before going home, but that was a mistake because she started crying and would not stop for anything.  And of course it took forever to get the food, we were behind slow people coming home and we hit a bunch of lights.  It put me and Amanda both in a bit of a mood, but we got over it.

Michael came over to ride with us to Amanda’s grandparents’ house in Beulaville.  We got Milly up after about an hour’s nap and drove up there.  Wasn’t nearly as bad as the ride home, though Milly did get a little fussy towards the end of the hour-long trip.  The Frazelles, sans Hannah who was coming back from helping at a youth camp, were there before us and Amanda’s parents got there just a little after.

We hung out, ate lunch, hung out some more.  Peggy and Earl just recently bought a new TV and Michael helped set their remote up.  He and Amanda had to explain/convince them to use the satellite’s controller instead of the new TV controller, since the satellite’s remote can’t control everything.  Michael ended up talking his grandpa to swap TVs with him.  Apparently they’ve got the same one except that Earl’s can hook up to the internet, and he said he’s never going to get internet.

I started feeling a bit bad there, or maybe on the way there.  My skin was a little sensitive and tingly and my head started feeling a little swimmy.  Since I didn’t feel good, Amanda drove on the way back even though she drove there too.  Milly and I snoozed on the way home.

Milly hadn’t eaten much today, so we let her have a bottle tonight.  She didn’t finish that either though, so her not eating much might not be because of having switched to sippy cups yesterday.  She had a giant explosive poo that filled up her whole diaper when I got her up at 7:30.  She was pretty playful after eating what she did eat, but she also went right to bed when we put her down.

Amanda and I wound down watching some TV.  We watched the first two episodes of a miniseries called Persons Unknown, which is about a bunch of people who were kidnapped and are being held captive in a small town from which they are not able to escape.  It’s intriguing thus far.

Zach Dotsey

Michael and Jenn joined us at church and we met up with the after the service at Panera before heading over to Wrightsville Beach.  It was really warm today and felt nice on the beach.  Michael and I went surfing while Jenn tried to get a base tan (which we all said was going to burn her- I await news on how that went for her).  My face ended up getting burned, but that was my own stupid fault.  Amanda and Anna had dipped Milly’s feet in the ocean, but it was cold and she didn’t like it at all.  Since it was Milly’s first time actually touching the ocean I stuck around for that, but Amanda told me that Milly didn’t really cheer up at any point after that and was in the pack & play back at la Casa Frazelle shortly after, though she, Anna and Kirsten came out for a walk when I was heading in from surfing.  Milly looked so adorable in her little brown bathing suit.

The surfing was pretty fun.  It wasn’t big and it wasn’t strong, but it was easy to catch and ride.  Michael was afraid he wouldn’t do well since he hasn’t been out in half of forever and he was using Big Betty when he’s used to using the Banana, but he did just fine.  We both caught plenty of waves.  Barry was going out as we were all leaving.

We all hung out with the Frazelles for a little while before heading on home.  We’d woken Milly up from her nap and she wasn’t happy about that.  She hadn’t had her early nap and she didn’t get to sleep all that much for an afternoon nap, but she went to sleep after we fed her at 5:00 and stayed down until I got her up at 7:30 for her final feeding up the day.  Even then she wasn’t already awake when I went to get her and she didn’t wake up when I opened the door.

After eating, she was in a pretty good mood though, so Amanda and I let her stay up until about a quarter after 8:00.  She played with a plastic egg, rolling it then going after it, and she read us some of her books.  She was having a good old time and talked to us a lot.  As I said before, she’s making more noises, but she’s putting different pitch and emphasis on her babblings.  She was so fun to watch.

Zach Dotsey
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Since I fell asleep earlier than I usually do I woke up a few minutes early.  Amanda usually gets up first on Sundays, but since I was already awake I figured I’d go ahead and get up and let her sleep in a little bit.

Milly wore her pigtails today, which were a huge hit.

When we dropped Milly off t Grow Zone at church, we asked if we should move her up to the next level yet since she’s getting up and trying to crawl, but we were told to hold off for now.  After the service, Amanda and I helped out in  Grow Zone ourselves.  Nothing big to report on that from today.  I was in a full room, but it was pretty incident-free.

Amanda and I left the little camera at Anna and Barry’s last weekend and they brought it to the movie yesterday, but we forgot to get it from them, so after church we headed towards Wrightsville Beach.  We called ahead to see if they’d want to meet us for brunch, but we didn’t get ahold of them and ended up eating at Panera, where we also fed Milly.  A lady who worked there was smitten with Milly and talked to us for a while.  We also saw Kaitlyn Boscaljon’s parents while we were at Panera.  We’d met her mom, but not her dad.  He seems like a really laid back and nice guy.

We got up with the Frazelles after that and headed on over.  We got our camera, changed a couple diapers and hung out for a while.  We ended up watching a Nickelodeon gameshow called Brain Surge.  Why?  I don’t know.  Nick was on and the show came on and nobody bothered to change it.  While we were there Amanda took out one of Milly’s hairbands to fix her pigtail, but she wasn’t very cooperative in letting us put it back in.  I went ahead and took the other one out, and that child’s hair, the only way I can describe it is that I said that I thought it looked like Helena Bonham Carter’s hair in most of her Tim Burton movie roles.

Milly hadn’t really napped all day, so when we got home, since she was asleep, I left her in her car seat and just carried that up to the nursery, where she slept for half an hour or so before her 4:00 feeding.

We watched an episode of Scrubs and a Saturday Night Live from right before Christmas.  After those we watched Virginia Tech not seal the deal against the Tar Heels.  Ugh.  Kansas, the #1 team in the nation and one of three remaining undefeated teams, will be #1 no more after tonight.  They lost to Tennessee today, which was somewhat surprising given that Tennessee had suspended some of their good players for weapons and drug possession and recently.  There were a number of upsets this week, but of course the biggest and best was still College of Charleston over Carolina.

Zach Dotsey

I got a message today from someone we work with now and then for work.  He has his own web design company now and is moving, so he’s decided to sell the site, a few domains and his contacts.  I considered buying it myself, but if I’d done that I’d have just run it as an extension of the company I work with now, so I decided to tell Scott about it and he called the guy.  I hope it went well.

We had pancakes for breakfast this morning.  Amanda mixed the batter but then decided that her first couple pancakes were too thick, so I did the rest of them.

After that we did a bit of running around.  Our first stop was Babies R Us, followed by Panera, where we met up with Karen and Casey.  Karen was a roommate of Amanda’s at Campbell and a bridesmaid in our wedding.  Casey really liked Milly.  He doesn’t look the baby type, but he was really good with her.

From there, we (by “we” I mean Dotseys and Lambeths) went to Costco, then the girls went to Anne Taylor Loft while us menfolk took the babies and went to Great Outdoor Provision.  I looked at the cost of getting and installing a rack on the Jetta, which would run about $250 or so.

During this time I was checking in on Duke’s game against Radford.  Sure, Radford isn’t an elite team, but they are picked to win their conference.  Duke won big, 104-69.  It wasn’t on TV, but I was following commentary online from my phone and Andre Dawkins started off 5-5 with three pointers and ended up with 20 points.

When we got a new car, we were really wanting to get something with a third row of seats.  That would have come in handy this weekend, as everywhere we drive we have to take two cars.  We don’t have room for four adults and two car seats, so Ben and Milly have been with me in the Jetta and Amanda has been riding with Jessica and Graelyn in their car.

We had meatballs and coconut rice (or something to that effect) for dinner, followed by fondue a little later for dessert.  In between we played a games called Wits & Wages.  I won the four games that we played, mostly thanks to history questions.  I think we all enjoyed it though- it was fun.  In it, everyone is asked a numerical question (all having to do with statistics, percentages, years, quantities, etc.) and each person takes their best guess at the answer.  From there everyone bets on what they think the right answer is.  There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it.

Zach Dotsey

Milly was still hungry after we fed her this evening, so we tried the rice cereal again.  She really took to it this time.

Later on we went back over the to Frazelles’ for dinner.  Anna had wanted to make dinner for us since we’ve been without a stove for so long.  It’s always a pleasure to hang out with them.

During dinner, Anna was holding Milly and Milly kept reaching for Anna’s glass of water.  Anna eventually let her have some, and it looked so funny because Milly wasn’t quite sipping at the glass- she had her mouth around the lip and was licking the outside of it.

Back home, we were getting ready for our trip to Winston-Salem and trying to make arrangements for Bruce and Harvey.  Bonnie, who was originally going to look after them, has pneumonia.  She can’t help that, of course, and I’m pretty sure she’d rather not be sick, but we’ve been scrambling to get the dogs covered.  Michael’s handling a chunk of the duty with the Warkentiens chipping in.

After that scramble we watched two episodes V.

Milly’s got a new favorite thing, which is being upside-down.  She just loves it.  I can hold her upside-down in my arms or I can hold her by her ankles, and she just thinks it’s the best thing ever.

Zach Dotsey

The Xbox 360 has decided to not work again.  I’ve tried it a few times today and while the sound is working fine, the picture, unfortunately, is not.  What makes it even worse is that my buddy Jason Revill finally got Left 4 Dead, but now I can’t play it with him.

My boss, Scott, was in town today.  He and his family went to Wrightsville Beach for a little weekend getaway so we got together at Panera for about an hour and a half while his wife and two girls were at Mayfaire.  He caught me up on a few techniques he’s been using for some updates then we talked about some marketing ideas that we’d somewhat covered last week on the phone anyway.  We also talked family stuff.  It was good to see him.  I don’t think I’ve actually met with him face-to-face in about a year and a half.  Last meeting I remember was when I picked up my iPhone from him.

Work was steady but not hectic this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Amanda and I were invited over to Nick and Amy Warkentien’s house for sghetti and bready, as I termed it.  We ate then played a game called Boxers or Briefs, which is similar to Apples to Apples.  Nick won tonight, which may be the first time I’ve ever seen him win a game.

Bruce accompanied us to la Casa Warkentien.  Amanda and I were on the way out the door and Bruce just really seemed like he wanted to go, so Amanda had me call to make sure Nick and Amy didn’t mind, which they did not.  Amanda threw a sweater on him and we headed on over.  He spent most of the night moving to different places on their couches to chill out.

Speaking of chilling out, and I really didn’t type it in the last paragraph just to lead to this awful seque, I promise, we’re supposed to get an inch or two of snow tomorrow, thought I doubt it’s last long.  Snow is a rarity here in Wilmington.  A month or more ago some was reported here and there around town, but it didn’t pile up at all.  I wouldn’t mind getting a little, since it’s been so cold lately.  I think they’re supposed to get up to four inches in the Triangle.

After we got home Amanda and I watched How I Met Your Mother then did our Starting Point studies.  Starting Point is a program aimed mainly at new and returning Christians, or people with questions about Christianity.  A lot of small groups have done it as a study though, and everyone we’ve heard talk about it has really gotten a lot out of it, so we’re looking forward to doing that with our own small group.

Zach Dotsey

Amanda and I went to Port City Community Church as we tend to do on Sundays.  I remember thinking we wouldn’t see anyone to talk to on the way out, but we ended up talking to Dave Sapp, Theo Milojevich, Jeaneal Guy, Kyle and Lorin van Zandt, Karen Anderson and Taylor and Esther Hutchens.  We ended up talking to people for a bit before heading out to breakfast at Panera.  After that we stopped by Circuit City to pick up some photo ink cartridges then Target to pick up some frames.  Obviously, we had the intention of printing some of yesterday’s photos.

When we got home, however, we were greeted with a horrific site.  The first thing I noticed was cardboard all over the place, then little puffs of cotton.  Harvey, it seems, had gotten bored while we were gone.  It turns out that he chewed up a shoe box that Amanda was planning on keeping, he got tore apart some of the fake cottony decorative snow we’ve got up here and there, he dragged out and I’m guessing shewed on a seashell, he put holes in a small bottle of (expensive) makeup and chewed a hole in the Duke jersey I’d gotten for Bruce when I went to the Duke-NC State football game.

We were a little upset with him.  Harvey used to chew stuff pretty often when we first got him, but he’s been so good over the past few months that we have let him stay out of his crate while we’re gone.  Well, no longer, at least not until Christmas is past.

We spent most of the day fixing up and printing pictures.  Amanda had mentioned putting the Christmas lights up on the house, so towards the end of the day I went out on the roof and did that.  It took me about an hour, all told, and when I plugged them in we noticed that we had a little Christmas light trouble.  Three of the snowflakes on one strand were out and another two from the more three-dimensional set were broken.  The lights worked on them, but the part where they stick out at a right angle had broken so those parts were just hanging there.  I knew they were broken, but I also figured you’d have to be right up on the house or looking right at those particular flakes to notice.

At first Amanda wanted me to just take them all down.  I got annoyed, since I’d just spent an hour in the semi-cold putting them up.  As I was messing witht he cord on the strang that had some lights missing though, those suddenly started working again.  Then Amanda decided that the broken ones weren’t really all that noticeable, so they stayed up.  Our lights aren’t as nice as the ones across the street, but I think it looks nice,

Amanda baked cookies and we invited Nick and Amy Warkentien over to watch a Christmas movie.  Amy hadn’t seen all of Christmas Vacation so we watched that.  She told us that their baby (they’re leaning towards the name Kenon, and Amy even called him that) has been pretty active and that you could even see him kick, but I guess he didn’t want to show off for us.

Zach Dotsey