Today we built a swing in the front yard! Tree had the idea last weekend, and I’ve been planning it since then. I decided to invite Page, Joe, and Elijah (My sister, bro-in-law, and nephew) to help out. We put up the swing, played on it for a bit, and then grilled some hot dogs. Teresa’s grandparents had stopped through town too, so it was a nice day with family. Personally, I can’t wait to put everyone to bed and ride this sucker under the stars at night.

You can see the whole gallery here, in printable sizes for any family that wants them. For non-family…you’re just being creepy.

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Finally! After a year of waiting we got to do another family bike ride. As of the 25th Desi is deemed magically fit for bicycle riding.

Any doubt that Teresa didn’t take to heart my year of whining was gone when we went out Sunday in the mid day heat. It was roughly two-hundred and thirty seven degrees out. 112% humidity. Needless to say the ride was short, but it was still enjoyable. We had to face the sad reality that hot while riding equals dying of heat stroke once you stop. (I think that’s God’s way of telling you to just stay on your bike.)

It was fun to see Teresa on a bike again. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Tree is a closet bike lover. She’ll never admit to it, but when she gets on that trail, and no one else is around, she goes silent and gradually starts to speed up. Before I know it she’s disappeared around the bend and is nowhere to be found.

She had a rude awakening now that Noah is doing his own pedaling. She could play speed demon when I had Noah on the back of my bike, but now she’s gotta learn some self control. The big problem is that Noah absolutely refuses to “lose” to anyone. The entire bike ride he’s spouting off about what his race number is and how he’s winning and beating everyone etc. So when Tree takes off on one of her speed trances Noah immediately does his best to keep up, which is hard with the amateur gearing on his bike.

Meanwhile, Desi gives very little input.

If Tree wasn’t in one of her speed trances I’m sure she would have questioned whether he was napping or having a heat stroke.

We had almost made it back to the car when Noah’s spirit gave out on him and the last 100 yards or so was through gnashed teeth and howls, like we’ve seen in the past.

Overall, no one died, or lost any skin, so I’d deem it a successful family bike ride. Now we just have to do this once a week.

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Yesterday Noah, Elijah, Desi, Page and I went to the Big Creek Pump Track to give it a go. Page, against my recommendation, decided to try the down hill track that gets pretty darn fast. I present you the results.

The annotations don’t seem to be working, so maybe they just need to be processed or something…You may or may not be able to understand what Page is saying as she’s nearly killing herself.

Good to know I’m not the only one that can’t manage to stay on top of my bike.

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Yesterday I rode Bear Creek Trail in Ellijay, GA for the second time. Thanks to my friend Chris Korte, I was able to ride a full suspension Specialized, which is much like piloting a water bed with good steering. Instead of climbing like real men, we decided to shuttle ourselves up top, Chris, myself, and Chris’s friend Dave, going down two at a time while the third man drove back down. Oddly enough, we found that riding down the mountain is faster than driving. By almost ten minutes. Of course, that’s not too hard to believe after I tell you that I held the group’s speed record of 29.1 mph. That’s down the side of a mountain. A bumpy one. ‘Twas awesome.

Of course, that kind of speed comes at a price. I was warned about a downed tree near the top of the trail, and I stopped for it fine, but when I swung my leg over my bike to dismount, I ran my leg right into one of said tree’s broken branches. Shortly after getting back on, I took a tumble over my handle bars that probably would have killed me if I hadn’t had my helmet on. So that wreck left me with some road (trail?) rash on my left shoulder, which made sleeping last night a pain (Ha! Puns!)

I wanted to take some video, but I made the decision to live the moment rather than just try to document it. I only half regret it. I do have SOME video though, which I hope to have up before the end of the week.

On to more suburban topics. My sister, Page, moved in to a house right down the street from me. .2 miles away to be exact. It’s a five minute walk. 2 minute bike ride. 6 and a half hour plane ride. (You gotta compensate for security.) It’s been 7 years since Teresa and I have lived relatively close to any family. My other sister, Kathie, moved to Columbus a while ago, but that’s still 2 and a half hours away. We can do some weekends together, but it just ain’t the same.

It’s funny, riding back and forth between houses, dropping my bike down in front yards, and running inside. It’s a lot like being 8 again.

We’ve already had several dinners together, I’ve gone over late at night after Tree goes to sleep to just hang out…it’s almost like having a real social life. I could get used to it. Guess I need to start scheming now about how to keep them from moving at the end of their lease. Unless they want to move next door. Hmm…maybe I should scheme to drive out my neighbors…

Heck, tonight Teresa and I even get to go on a date! Well, maybe. I don’t know if Tree has talked to Page about watching the kids yet. So…80% chance of a real date tonight! Only a day after our 7 year anniversary no less!

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Yesterday we were getting ready to go out, everybody putting on shoes, rounding up supplies, getting Noah to choose a small toy to bring…you know, the regular routine. I open the door, start ushering Noah out, and Teresa looks at me and says, “Are we bringing Desi?”

Calmly sitting in the other room, oblivious to the world, is little Desmond.

“Oh yeah. Yeah, we should probably bring him.”

See, this is how my mind starts to internalize things. Teresa was in love with Desi and dreaming of her new four piece family within weeks of finding out. I, on the other hand, am like a fine wine. Facts must age in my brain until they’re ready for use.

As we load into the car, the old process of buckling Noah in has now expanded to buckling Noah in and getting Desi locked in. I try to avoid the second part, as putting a newborn into a car seat is akin to fitting potato chip into a change purse. It looks like it could fit, but your pretty sure something will snap in the process.

So while it used to be “Me and Tree and the boy” now it’s “Me and Tree and Noah and Desi.” It’s no longer “Noah is an addition to our couple.” It’s “We are clan Bullard.” We are a traveling troupe. Matching t-shirts would almost be appropriate.

After a long struggle (search “poop” and see how many posts come up) Noah has finally come to terms with the fact that poo belongs in the toilet. Turns out the breaking point was simply lying about the world’s supply of Noah-sized diapers. We warned him that we were running low, and that soon he’d be forced to poop in the toilet. It was a game of human waste chicken. Who would blink first?

Noah held out until the very last diaper, and then only held it in for a day before finally deciding the toilet wasn’t the spawn of satan (in regards to poop…peeing in the toilet has been no problem for months.) I got a call at work from a tiny voice saying, “DADDY I POOPED IN THE TOILET!!!” This time it wasn’t a wrong number.

So my life has changed in a very good way. I haven’t had to clean up anything resembling adult poop in over a week. It’s almost weird. He’s tells us when he’s going about 50% of the time, so sometimes you’ll just walk in on him, or it will be really quiet, and you’ll get suspicious.

“Noah?”

“I NEED PRIVACY!”

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“I’m having pretty strong contractions baby.”  That’s what she says to me at 7:15 am. 

“It’s not August 5th yet.  That’s against the rules.”

That’s how the morning started.  I’ll fill in details later, as typing on my phone is annoying.

So, Desmond Gregory Bullard was born at 10:05 this morning, after 3 hours of all-natural labor.  6lbs 6oz. 20 inches long.

There you go.

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Another year has come and gone.

Forgive me if I don’t have a cheerful holiday tone in this post. I’ve not been motivated enough to post in a long while, and I’m essentially forcing myself to write this one. So to those who yelled at me about posting again…happy holidays. Here’s your gift.

About a month ago I was given the treat of being able to sleep in. This is a very rare occasion, as Teresa would probably starve herself to death if she knew she could get a few weeks uninterrupted sleep. The only mornings she gets up before me is when she works, and Noah tends to wake up from her moving about the house, so even my weekends start pretty early. I rolled around in bed waking every so often, trying to ignore the growing worry. Something was amiss. Teresa NEVER gets up before me if she doesn’t have to…

And boy was there a catch. I walked into the bathroom, to find this:

There’s always a catch.

So there you go, for those who don’t already know, we’ve got another one in the hopper. August 5th due date. Birthday will be right after mine. Hope he/she doesn’t get too jealous when we blow all the party money on my birthday each year. Them’s the breaks.

So Christmas happened. I wanted to say that this year went off without anyone vomiting through the night like last year, but Tree is pregnant, which means there’s plenty of it happening.

Noah got more presents than God. Our den looked like a wrapping paper monster committed seppuku. He literally ran from present to present, trying to figure out how to devour as much fun as possible before it somehow slipped away. He was like someone at a radio station event in one of those cash snow globe things. And this was before the in-laws came into town. Two days after I cleaned the house, finding wrapping paper bits like sand in your body after going to the beach, it all happened again. It took Noah about 40 minutes to lose his favorite toys. We spent hours looking for them. Since Christmas day I’ve spent most of my days searching for some toy Noah can’t find. It’s maddening.

Seeing the Korte’s was nice. I didn’t get to see them much because of work, but I know Teresa appreciated having someone else around to take care of Noah while she was sick, and I’m sure they loved hearing her complain about being hungry, but unable to eat anything. Their visits are always good and bad. Good, because they leave behind things like half eaten Hershey’s Chocolate Cream Pie. Extra good cause with tree being so sick, it’s all mine. But bad because, despite their host’s many objections, they continue to use the ice crusher in our fridge door, which leaves crushed ice for 3 days following their visit. So every time I get something to drink I’m attacked my ricocheting ice pellets that end up on my floor, later to be soaked up by my socked feet. But you know…then there’s pie.

So New Year’s came and went. Tree and I celebrated the clock turning by sleeping/sitting at the computer. You can guess which one of us did which.

I managed to miss my 1500 mile cycling goal by just 74.42 miles. I tried hard to finish it, even learned that i could do 20 miles in just over an hour (which surprised the crap out of me) but the last 3 days of the year were bitterly cold, and I simply don’t own the right clothing to go biking in 20 degree weather. So I’ll reset the 1500 mile goal for 2010. February last year I barely road at all, so I’m sure if I just try to avoid lulling months I can overcome it pretty quickly. That, and now that I’ve discovered riding 14 miles straight to the train station in the mornings, skipping the bus, is quite refreshing, I’ll probably do that more often, which will certainly up my daily mileage.

(This is why skipping the bus is worth the extra 8.5 miles)

Oh,there’s also this:

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I was playing a game on my phone that Noah likes to watch called “Abduction” where you make a cow jump from platform to platform by tilting your phone. As I was playing Noah just started counting out of the blue. We didn’t prompt him to at all. he got all the way up to 13 before starting back at 1 again. As always, once we tried to video tape it, his performance tanks, and he insists nothing in the world is more important than cars.

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Oi, what a first half of a day. So my buddy Juan had the idea that we all go out for a bike ride, but due to schedules and rain, we decided to cancel. But Tree and I figured we might have time to do a quick ride early in the day, so we decided to go it on our own.

Thus began Murphy’s Memorial Day.

You know, I started this post, and then we put Noah down for a nap, and we napped too. Now we’re all up, and I have that good tired feeling all over where I just wanna watch TV and eat ice cream. So I’ll just give you a short list of the crap that happened this morning, rather than the usual long rant fest:
1) blown bike inner tube
2) lost bolt for hold Noah’s bike seat onto my bike
3) bought new bike tube and blew out the sidewall of the tire while replacing it
4) bought new tire
5) rain

Yep. Making a short list really takes the wind out of 2 hours of an unending trail of issues keeping you from having a nice bike ride with the family. But as you can see, Noah had a fine time.

And it’s tough to complain when, at the end of the day, you can get a photo like this of you and your spouses leg:

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