A reflection of, wait, she's TWO YEARS OLD ALREADY??

Greetings readers! A week from today, Mia turns 2. It's crazy how fast the last year went. Last year around this time, I made some points and reflected on what I learned in my first year as a Dad, and gave advice as well. Tonight, I'll once again, reflect on the last year.

After she hit one, she had a good amount of teeth in her mouth, but throughout the year, she teethed, and teethed HARDCORE. We had some pretty rough nights with her sitting up for many hours. I was told many times by people "just put booze on her gums" but it just wasn't gonna happen, sorry folks. Somehow, we got through the teething stage, and currently, it would appear that all of her pearly whites are in.

She mastered walking this year as well. It was pretty awesome to watch, actually. This little bugger crawling a bit at her very first Christmas, and at her 2nd Christmas, she was running around giving out presents to people yelling out "OH MY GOODNESS PRESENTS!" One of my favourite things to do with her, is just simply walk with her hand and hand through the stores. It's even more enjoyable when I'm off the same night with Jill and we can walk with Mia together. Like tonight, roaming Mayfair Mall. I'm sure the people behind us didn't care for it, but screw it, this is our family night together!

She's developed a lovely picky eater attitude. REALLY loves cheese in its many forms. String, shredded, grilled cheese etc. Luckily, she loves the different fruit packets, eats bananas and of course, and noodles (also in it's many forms). Veggies are tricky with her, but it's a work in progress. Like most kids. She's not a big fan of meat, except hotdogs and some chicken.

Over the last year, she fully developed her creative side. Both art and music occupy that part of her little brain. She has created all kinds of different water colour/acrylic/ finger paintings. She also loves to colour and create "birthday cakes" out of Play Dough. Always says "happy birthday" to whomever she makes it for. One of my favourite activities with her is drumming. She really rips on the drums. Over the last year, she got more confident with playing on my kit. Used to require my lap to sit on, and would noodle around a bit. In recent videos, she's developed some awesome chops and kills it on the snare while sitting on the throne solo.

Car rides have gotten somewhat better over the last year. Still, we bring the portable DVD player in the back for those long drives to Illinois just in case. Surprisingly, we haven't had to use it in the last few car trips to Chi-town. In fact, she prefers to sing songs on the drive. Whatever keeps her happy and as long as it isn't Beiber.

Mia knows all of her major colours, can do the ABC's perfectly, knows some shapes, can count to 20 roughly, and can name off animals and their sounds really well. Going to the zoo quite often over the last year really helped in that category too. Plus, she's got quite a bit of animal books. Her vocabulary really developed over the year as well. By One, it was the basic "Momma, Dadda, Grandma, Grandpa". Soon, she was repeating phrases, animal noises, etc etc. Even at the doctor check up recently they said "she says way more then a normal 2 year old does". Aw, our little chatterbox :)

One of my other favourite things that she's working on is playing soccer. Well, kicking the ball, really. We've kicked her soccer ball around our house and Grandma/Grandpa's house a few times on those cold winter days. Can't wait to get out in the park and play with her again. Last year, we hit the park a few times, so I'm going to try to do more when this white crap melts.

It's been a crazy year with it's ups and downs, but we're loving every minute of our beautiful daughter. I couldn't imagine a better child in my life and look forward to whats in store for us in the next year. Thanks for reading everyone!

Closer

Greetings. Just finished watching a very awesome performance broadcasted on Youtube of Tegan and Sara live from SXSW. It was supposed to start at 11, but it started 30 minutes later. BOO! Oh well. Totally worth it, plus I got some art time in working on this ridiculous Weezy portrait. I hope I never see his face again after I complete this thing for my friend's daughter. The performance was quite awesome. Wish I could have seen them in Milwaukee last week. Mia and I enjoyed our time off today. I recently switched from hard contact lenses to soft ones. My hard contacts, I've had for a very long time and year after year, they'd get dried out. Well, the eye doc suggested soft lenses, and sure enough they work quite well. Today, Mia and I went in to order some, and headed over to Steffans soccer to mainly poke around, see what I can't buy. So a while back I was paging through a Soccer.com catalog and showed Jill a pair of purple and pink Nike cleats, the Mercurial boots. I said "I bet these will be what Mia will want to wear for soccer cleats when she's older. Today, FIRST shoe she sees on the shelf. The EXACT same pair I showed Jill. "Dadda, put on my foot??" Already into soccer. Hopefully it lasts. I can't wait for Spring soccer to start. It's gonna be so awesome. Later tonight since Modern Family was a repeat (curse you March Madness) we got Mia all dressed up and headed to the Mall for a picture with the Easter Bunny. She was totally not into it, till the photographer bribed her with a frog stuffed animal. Plus, Jill had to sit with Mia and Mr. Bunny. The picture turned out nice, which is what matters. Mia was running through the mall so excited to see the rabbit but when she got too close, she grasped onto my leg.

Took a rad video of Mia drumming a few days ago. She really went to town on my kit and it was quite amazing. She loves music almost as much as I do :) Anything else I can quickly mention before heading off to bed? It was a late night last night. Mia crashed at 2am. Hopefully she sleeps well tonight.  Alright, that'll have to do for tonight. Thanks for reading.

Hold That Thought

Greetings everyone. It's hard to believe that the Christmas and holiday season is complete. New Years Eve nearly here too. Man did the year fly. Me, Jill and Mia spent some time last weekend  visiting Jill's friends and family. It's always difficult trying to see everyone before we had to quickly head back for Christmas Eve with my familia. Mia got a LOT of gifts this year, and enjoying opening them too. Her typical response was "ohhhh MY GOODNESSSSSS!!" Sometime she'd get so excited and say "YAYY MIAAAA!!" I absolutely loved her reactions. I'm not going to go through everything she got, but she deffinately liked everything. At one point, she said "no more presents". We may have to adjust when she gets everything in future Christmases because like some kids, she was Christmas'd out. My nephew too, I heard was pretty spent on opening gifts. I guess there can be TOO much of a good thing sometimes.

Today, Jill, Mia and her familia went back to Illinois till New Years when I go pick them up. It was a pretty rough leave because I had to carefully load a sleeping Mia into her car seat and while slowly walking down to the car, I thought how much I'm going to miss this girl (AND Jill). I'm missing both of them right now. I was able to take down the Christmas tree tonight and position Mia's new castle/tent she got. This sucker is huge and fits pretty decent in the corner of the living room. Mia even gave everyone in the house a tour of the inside of the tent, grabbing each of our hands. Adorable.

Didn't accomplish any art today, despite having some projects to start/complete. Tomorrow morning after my walk with Remi, I plan to spend some quality time with my drum set before work. Looking forward to it. Usually rusty on the first day back, so we'll see how it goes.

Actually ended up spending some of the night looking for a spring 2013 adult soccer outdoor league to play in. Not an easy task, however it's still winter so there really isn't much info. I worked a Saturday morning one time and there were some people that stopped in on their way to a game (I'm not sure where or who they played for) but I really want to figure it out. The second session for Brookfield Indoor is out and every time I look at it, I think "why even bother trying". Sad effort right? I dunno. I really really wanna play, but don't want to drag the family out to be disappointed like myself. I'll keep trying I guess.

That's all for now. Have a safe New Years Eve friends :) Thanks for reading :)

Three Little Birds

Hey friends. Another quick update on things before calling it a night. Haven't been getting the best sleep lately. I think Saturday night I slept like 3 or so hours before my 6am-2pm shift. Because of the severe lack of sleep, I didn't even make the effort to go attempt to play indoor soccer that night. Ended up watching a movie with Jill & Mia. Speaking of indoor soccer, I'm pretty frustrated as of lately with the place. I read on their website that if you submit your info (if you're a sub like me with no team) to the people who run the leagues, they can forward it out to the teams in case someone could use a sub or another player for the future. Sounds cool. Drove out there today with Mia and the guy in the office flat out told me "no we don't do that for the adult teams, you just have to keep showing up". BS. As much as I love dragging myself and my family to watch me get turned down week after week because every team tells me "we're good, don't need any subs", it starts to wear you down. I'm sure Jill's getting frustrated that we drive out for NOTHING. Yes, this is the only way to go about do this, but it's pretty crappy. Every team that plays is formed prior to seasons starting. Totally sucks for ones like me who have zero contact with any of these adult teams. There's no community board, or section of the website for players in search of a team. I'm either A-going to try AGAIN in January to play or B-wait till spring time and try to get on a team and play the season. Either way, it's frustrating.

Mia napped for 3 hours today, which gave me time to work on a coworker's tattoo. 3 hours were pretty wasted in the end because I drew the scorpion too big and the numbers and zodiac signs that circle around it don't fit well SO while watching the 121212 Sandy Relief concert tonight after the familia went to sleep, I drew it AGAIN. Got the scorpion part done. The numbers and symbols shouldn't take too much effort. Phew. I'm getting behind.

Getting more and more amped for the holiday. Mostly because I know Mia's going to have SO much fun. She already mastered the fine craft of opening presents whether they're for  her or someone else. I love her so much and couldn't imagine my life without this kid. She can get irritating at times, but my heart lights up when she gives me those big big hugs. Being a Dad is an amazing experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The other day, her and I had the most fun drumming on my kit. She's honestly getting quite good with the snare. She totally concentrates on what she's doing, which is awesome :)

Okay, gotta call it quits for now. Thanks for reading friends.

Writing A Letter

LOVE the warm weather today. Especially because I was off from work :) When the weather is nice, I can take Mia outside and she really enjoys that. This morning the pouring rain woke us up and we weren't able to take Remi out. Luckily the sun came out early in the day and we could go for a nice walk/jog. Makes me want to get a jogging stroller. AND a Bicycle. :( Hopefully this summer I can find one. So the other day when I was playing with Mia, I remembered that my mother in law took Mia down and let her play with my drum kit. The first and only time I ever took her down to play with it, she was petrified of the cymbals. No biggie. Well I guess my mother in law said she didn't seem to mind, so Tuesday, I thought "hey, let's try this again my Mia.."

 Well believe it or not, she had SO much fun! I gave her one stick and she hit every cymbal, my snare and the two toms. Gave her TWO sticks and she would alternate sticks on the snare drum. WAY RAD!!!!! I know she's just exploring and playing around with the instrument, but it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself. She still likes playing with my bass guitar, but this was a new smile for her. Something different. She figured out that "If I hit something on this drum kit, it will make a noise and if I hit EVERYTHING on here, they all will make noise!" Couldn't get some good pictures, but got a few. I told Jill about it later and she suggested we do a photo shoot with my drum kit and Mia outside sometime. Should be a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, we've got our first wedding of the year this weekend. My cousin's getting married Saturday and we're bringing Mia. Should be interesting and possibly challenging. She's never sat through a full catholic mass before or even been to a wedding so hopefully she doesn't cause a ruckus. The last wedding Jill & I attended was in Fond Du Lac and her parents were kind enough to come along to watch her. I'm thinking we'll do alright. We've got another wedding this month in Peoria. Then one in June in Waukesha. Man, I remember when Jill and I used to go to a bunch of weddings a year. Some to attend, others to photograph. They were fun times, but photographing weddings got to be pretty stressful, so that shipped graciously sailed.

Back to work on my dog portrait. Finally able to focus on this beast of a picture. Maybe complete it in a week or so. Then I can start other projects including some sports art for my dad's "man cave" in my parent's new house.

Adios and thanks for reading :)

Sing Out America

Hey dudes and dudettes. I've got a fun story to share from my day off yesterday. Didn't get to write about it last night since Mia decided she didn't want to sleep and would rather play last night. Crazy Kid. Anyways, so yesterday I was upstairs with Mia. We were playing with Remi. Like a normal day. She enjoys walking through our hallway and discovering him laying on our bed. I looked over to the corner of our room and saw my bass guitar. It's a black Ibanez. Nothing real special about it. I bought it when I was 17 years old. It was a time in my life, when I had played drums quite a bit and wanted to branch out and try a new instrument. I'm not that great, but I'm good enough to read tabs correctly and figure things out by ear at times. Anyway when I noticed it in the corner, I thought "hmmm I wonder what Mia would do if I played the bass with her...?"

So I pulled out the beat up bass and we had a total blast. I was strumming it, and she found it fascinating! She would hold the strings down and watch me strum with this major smile on her face. Like "Dad, how are you doing this??" It's been the highlight of my week. Today during her photo shoot at the studio playing with my Pearl Piccolo snare drum come second. I was showing her "Mia, hold the drum sticks and hit the snare like this" and quickly she'd figure it out. She seemed to enjoy throwing the sticks more though, but that's alright. She's got the music in her blood, her soul and her heart. Just like her Dad.

Tomorrow, maybe we'll play a little bongos. It's been a while. She's been enjoying walking and wobbling around the house more and more. Exploring the rooms and seeing what she can play with. Won't be long before she's doing it without holding on to my hands. Then I'll have to chase after her. Good grief. On my way to a work leadership thing today I put in Decibully's World Travels Fast record in the car. Almost forgot how perfect that album is. They were one of Milwaukee's finest bands live and on record and sadly, most of the people here probably aren't that familiar with their work. But then again, that may have been a good thing because they may not have gotten the same experience from their music that I did. Easily one of the most creative bands I've ever heard. Anyways, back to my bowl of grapes, then to the showers, then to sleep. Peace out kids.