Still no baby, so I’m getting in a few little things while I can:

Mash-up Stories

Kaeta is constantly telling stories to herself while she plays, and they are often weird mash-ups of stories that we read or talk about.

A couple of nights ago, she wanted to play Star Wars with some of Jonah’s dinosaur toys.  Darth Vader was, naturally, a Velociraptor.  But since he could never succeed in doing evil (because Brachiosaurus Leia would swat him with her tail), he was hilariously ineffectual.

The other day she made a Mary & Joseph scene out of some magnets, bits of metal (nuts, bolts, and such), and a purple scrap of paper, taped into a dress for Mary.  She was playing with them and narrating for a while when I heard her saying, “But Joseph was caught in the brambles!  The wallaby came, but he couldn’t get Joseph out!”  Things were looking bad, but then, “God came, and he let Joseph out of the brambles.”  Her first Deus Ex Machina!

New URL?

I logged into Godaddy.com to do something this week, and it suggested that we buy the domain “FreeTheKurths.com” — I hope we don’t need to!

Why I am the worst father in the world

Kaeta is fearless when it comes to jumping off of high places toward me, because she knows I will always catch her.  It’s this fun father-daughter thing we do.  So last night, she was standing on her bed, and she wanted me to lift her up so she could turn off the ceiling fan light.  I was going to let her, but she was being really demanding about it, so I took a step back and gave her a look that says, “can you ask nicely?”

But I didn’t realize that she was already jumping off the bed toward me!  So I took a step back and completely missed her! She fell smack on the ground, hitting her head on the bed.

And then, between sobs, she kept repeating, “I jumped, but Daddy didn’t catch me!”  Oh, man!  A day later, I still feel pretty bad about that.

Soon all non-baby-related things will seem too insignificant to post, so I’d better get this out now.

The Monkey’s Fist

I got a really neat book for Christmas about how to tie knots, and this weekend I attempted The Monkey’s Fist. It turned out pretty well, I think!

Kaeta was very interested in what I was doing, and she’s been tying my practice ropes into knots a lot. I started showing her how to tie shoes, but no luck there yet.

Tokyo Steakhouse

On a different note, we have a tradition of going to Tokyo Steakhouse (a teppan-yaki restaurant, like Benihana) shortly before having a baby, so we decided to do that tonight, bringing the kids. I thought they would really love it… Well, Kaeta did, mostly. Jonah was totally freaked out the whole time. He started crying when the chef began hitting his spatulas against the table, and he completely lost it when the chef lit the whole table on fire. But he did enjoy the food!

Budding Photographer

The other day we had some friends over for dinner, and Kaeta got our camera and was taking pictures of everyone. A little later, I noticed that she was missing, and I found her in her room, with the camera set up on the edge of a chair, taking pictures of her toys, like this:

So fun! I love the dinosaur next to the princess dress. She took literally 100 pictures that night!

Been in “early labor” for about two weeks now…. and very ready to move past this!

This is from a week ago.  Derek made it possible for me to post pictures all by myself without using any fancy code!  So now I’m testing it out.  As far as the pregnancy goes, we’re at 38 weeks now and are definitely in “any day now” territory.  So stay tuned!

A Koala Bear!

If you’re seeing this, then I was successful in moving this site to Dreamhost.  Woo hoo!

We’re getting close — Baby #3 is due this month, so we started a baby pool here: http://www.expectnet.com/games/KurthBaby3. Get your votes in! We’ve been known to name babies after the winner, but I can’t guarantee anything

…we are finally saying Merry Christmas!

…and Happy New Year!

You can really get a handle on what people care about by going to Google, typing a word or two (without hitting Enter), and seeing what it suggests in the drop down.

I just went there and started a search “how do I know when to” and it suggested (in this order):

• put my dog down
• put my dog to sleep
• harvest
• kiss her
• put my cat to sleep
• end a relationship
• get a divorce
• replace my tires
• break up
• get married

From this, I gather that roughly the same number of people wonder about the right time to change their tires as wonder about when to get divorced.

I typed in “how” and got:

• to kiss
• to get pregnant
• to lose weight fast
• to solve a rubix cube

The higher the suggestion, the more people are searching for that thing, so this means:

1. A lot of people wonder how to kiss.
2. 2. Those who are successful with the kissing then wonder how to get pregnant.
3. 3. Those who managed to get pregnant wonder how to lose weight fast.
4. 4. Having conquered the physical realm, those who lost weight now move on to the mental realm by tackling a Rubik’s Cube (but without learning how to spell “Rubik’s,” apparently).

Finally, I typed in “what” and got:

• time is it
• is my ip address
• not to wear
• aburger

So lots of people use Google to find out what time it is!

Yesterday I logged into Netflix and clicked the “Watch Instantly” link. At the top of the page, it recommends shows based on what you’ve watched in the past. Check out the “Suspenseful TV Shows” they recommend!

It just doesn’t get more suspenseful than Inspector Gadget, people. And I’d love to follow that with some Mario Bros. Super Show, but I get uncomfortable after so much time on the edge of my seat.

Kaeta has been asking “Why?” questions a lot lately. This week I took her with me to the grocery store, and while we were walking through the store, out of nowhere, she asked, “Why do people have to die?”

I don’t know what prompted that question, but she seemed genuinely troubled. I picked her up and sat her in the cart in front of me and talked to her as we walked. I told her that we weren’t made to die, and I asked her if she remembered what Adam and Eve did. “Disobeyed,” she said. So I told her before that, nobody had to die, but when they disobeyed, they broke things between people and God. But because He loves us, God made a way for us to live again after we die through Jesus, so even though we have to die, it’s not forever.

(If that last paragraph seems rambly, imagine trying to come up with it off the cuff — it’s a tough one!)

That answer seemed to take the sting out of it for her. She thought about it for a minute. She looked up at me, very thoughtfully. And then she said,

“Why do we have to buy shredded cheese?”

That one was a little easier! I told her, “because Mommy wrote it on the list.” Then she told me that “two plus two equals four!” Who can fathom the mind of a child?