Sheep Guarding Llama

Day Three Alone with the Kids.  Luciana got me up at six thirty this morning having soaked through her diaper during the night.  She didn’t want to go back to sleep and wanted to watch Dora the Explorer or “Boots and Wowa” as she says.  I went to find it and Netflix couldn’t find it.  So I tried Diego, also no luck.  I knew what had happened and feared the worst.  I ran to my office and Googled the situations, sure enough, Netflix let their contract with Viacom expire this morning and the Nickelodean content that has been so important to us these past few years is now gone.  The shows that Liesl grew up watching are not going to be available for Luciana.  This is going to be hard to explain to both of them, Luciana especially as she is right in the early stages of the series Dora frenzy.  It is her favourite show.  She watches it every day and some Diego too.  They watch them together too.

Later in the morning, Luciana came into my office with Lambie asking me to help her put him into her backpack and then to put no the backpack.  A routine that she does so that she can pretend to be Dora the Explorer herself before going to watch the show.  She was very sad when I explained that we didn’t have Dora anymore and she took off the backpack and sat in my lap for a while.

Later in the day we figured out that the Nickelodean shows that we care about are being mostly made available from Amazon VOD either for free or for purchase.  So we plan on purchasing a lot on there to ensure that Liesl and Luciana continue to have access to them.

We had a pretty good day today.  It’s amazing that I have managed to be home with the girls, alone, for so long.  This is one of my longest stretches without leaving the house too.  I can see why Dominica likes to just stay home for a long stretch, it is very relaxing.  The girls and I have been having a good time getting a lot of time together and the timing was perfect that all of my college stuff wrapped up so that I don’t need to be worrying about that at all.

I worked all day and Dominica got home at a pretty decent time in the early evening.  She had left Houston just minutes before one and made the drive up only having to deal with Dallas rush hour traffic which held her up a bit.  The girls were very excited to see her and Liesl was very excited to show her the video game that we have been playing and how Liesl is now able to actually play the game herself rather than watching me play – something that Dominica has not gotten to see yet.

This evening Dominica was exhausted and mostly just relaxed.  Liesl and I played more of our game.  We are very close to the end of it but didn’t quite make it all of the way tonight.

Day Two Alone with the Girls.  I’m into uncharted territory here having never been alone with both kids for this long.  This is a new experience for everyone.  I’m sure that Dominica is kind of enjoying having some time without the kids as well as she never gets a break longer than about twelve hours from them.

Dominica said that she plans to be home tomorrow night, probably pretty late.  If everything goes to plan I’ll have three complete days alone with the girls.  There isn’t much opportunity for it to go longer than that because Dominica needs to be home for work early Thursday morning.

Very busy day at the office today.  That made it hard to spend any time with the girls.  They are a little restless as I’ve been very busy.  Liesl spends all day asking when we will get to play the video game, The Book of Unwritten Tales.  She is so into that game.  I don’t think that she has ever been so into a video game.  I’m not sure if it is the game itself or if this is a game that she and I can play together.  That’s certainly why I like it.  It’s awesome being able to actually game with my kids.  I’ve always looked forward to this.   So much fun being able to do this together.

The girls did a bit of painting today.  Liesl had me set up a painting station in the kitchen yesterday and she painted a mask and Luciana set up and painted one too.  Today Luciana put in probably an hour painting again.  Liesl decided that she wanted to paint her nails today too so did that all on her own (with permission) and then painted Luciana’s finger nails too.  They were adorable together.

Both girls were really good today even with me being exceptionally busy.

Once work was done, both girls came into the office, sat on my lap and we played Liesl’s video game.  It was great having both of them.  Luciana just watched and after a while Liesl took over mouse control and actually started playing the game!  She needs me to help her with the dialogue decisions since she can’t read yet but she is able to use the mouse expertly, navigate around the game, look for objects and clues and select the dialogue options.  It is very cool having her be able to really play and not just watch.  We really need to get a computer hooked up in the living room to the projection system so that she and I can play together from the couch.  That will be far more comfortable and engaging and I think it will be easier for her to do out there.

Luciana napped a bit today making it really hard to get her to bed tonight.  Liesl is happy to go to bed on the early side because she is sleeping in my bed.

Dominica left for work at a quarter to seven this morning.  Thus begins my first stretch at home alone with my girls for an extended period of time.  Dominica might be home late tomorrow night but more likely she will be coming home late Wednesday morning and possibly later than that.  So this is an adventure for the girls and I.

I had to work all day so that made it tough.  But at least I was home and got to see the girls all day.  Ciana was up first and watched some shows alone in the living room as she likes to do if she gets a chance before Liesl is awake.  She and her stuffed animals get some quite time to just relax.  I’m surprised by how much Ciana looks for alone time. She will often spend the day alone off somewhere on the far side of the house just hiding out doing something quietly.  Liesl did that a lot but she didn’t have someone with whom to play so seeing Ciana work to get away from everyone is interesting.

Both girls went down for early naps today.  Liesl just rested by Ciana slept a good long while which was helpful as working with the girls here is always challenging.

Dominica got out of work at four and went to Sonic and got on the road, in rush hour, to drive down to Houston.  She is going to have a really long drive.  The weather here was okay while she was driving but it was right as she was getting onto the road to head south that the massive hour long EF-4 tornado was tearing apart Moore, Oklahoma right up I35 from us so people from some distance away who weren’t sure that the DFW wasn’t getting hit with bad weather were pretty worried about her.  Her drive was fine, though, she was driving directly away from the bad weather systems the entire time and I don’t think that in Carrollton we even got rain all day although it was dark and windy.

The girls were taking a shower this afternoon, Luciana decided to open a bottle of shampoo and wash her face.  Poor little girl was screaming quite a bit when I got to her and had to hose her face off to get the shampoo out of her eyes.  Hopefully that is a lesson that she will not forget soon.

The girls watched some Dora the Explorer in my room while I finished up work for the day which went way too long, working till about six thirty, then they came into my office so that we could play a video game together.  Liesl has been just so excited about playing The Book of Unwritten Tales, she really loves that game.  This is our third day playing it and she just can’t get enough of it.  By the time that we turned it off so that Liesl could get ready for bed, which was way too late for her, we had just crossed the eleven hours of gameplay mark and appear to be around about halfway through the game.  Liesl is following the story really well.  She knows what is going on, she understands most of the puzzles and she helps out when she can.  She either sits on a chair directly beside me or she sits on my lap and snuggles.

Luciana doesn’t really watch the game at all but really likes having blankets put on top of the chairs that Liesl drags into my office and she plays on and under them while Liesl and I play the game.  Then, this evening, Luciana made me make her a cape so that she could run around the house being “Super Ciana.”  I have no idea where this came from or how she managed to explain to me that she needed a cape but apparently Luciana styles herself as a pint-sized super hero.  It was quite a game and went on for probably forty five minutes.

And that concluded the first ever, as far as I can remember, complete day in which I had the girls all to myself without any Dominica helping out with them at all.  That is probably not true, but I cannot remember it happening before and if it did it might have been when there was only Liesl.  Tomorrow will be the real challenge.  One day without mom they barely noticed.  But when Dominica is not here tomorrow Luciana will, at least, begin to worry I presume.  Liesl will be fine.  When I put her to bed she said that she had so much fun having a day just with her dad.  She gets “just mom” days regularly, at least every few months.  But a day with just me is unprecedented.  And without Dominica here that meant that I was home all day, watched no television (never even turned the projector on) and did nothing, other than work, but play with the girls.  And, of course, the big win in Liesl’s book is that when mom is away Liesl automatically gets to sleep in our room as it is only Dominica that she keeps awake. I get better sleep with Liesl there than without.  It’s amazing how much Liesl is the snuggler and Luciana wants to sleep by herself.  And Liesl has to have the light on to sleep and Luciana needs it as dark as can be.

Liesl came into our room in the middle of the night and slept with us.  This morning she explained to me that she had bad dreams about robots and lobsters and that is why she didn’t want to sleep by herself.  Robots and lobsters?

Today concludes my blow off weekend of doing no, or as little as possible, work.  It felt great.  We slept in this morning and spent the later part of the morning hanging out with the girls.  In the middle of the afternoon suddenly Dominica announced that the final episode of Dr. Who season seven part two, the big finale “Name of the Doctor” episode had finally released to Amazon VOD so we immediately made some snacks, took over the living room viewing center and watched the final episode.

I’ve been checking every few hours to see if my grades had posted yet for my last class.  As far as I know, I literally have only one assignment left to get graded on in my entire RIT academic career and that is the one that I submitted on Friday evening.  I know that grades are due very soon so I’m expecting to see the grade post much more quickly than normal.  Finally early the afternoon it showed up – my final project and assignment came in at a one hundred percent. By my calculations I am far and away above an A in both of this semesters classes and unless I am terribly mistaken that then means that I have actually completed a straight A, 4.0 GPA for my entire graduate program!  To further extrapolate, I think that that means Summa Cum Laude.  We’ll have to see if I am correct on that as RIT does not seem to have any obvious information about how the academic rankings actually work.

This evening Liesl and I settled into my office at her request to play The Book of Unwritten Tales which she discovered yesterday.  We had just played the tiniest bit yesterday and she probably missed the first fifteen or twenty minutes but had watched a bit of, enough to know that she liked it.  Today she made me play many hours of the game.  Maybe even five or six hours of game play time!  She loves it.  It is a point and click adventure game.  She sits on a kitchen chair that she places next to my desk and watches me play.  She will alternative onto my lap from time to time.  She brought in another kitchen chair and put its back to her space to make a “cage” that she was trapped in.  Later she brought blankets and her and Luciana’s small armchairs and made a bit of a prison system.  It was very odd.

The Book of Unwritten Tales, which I picked up from Steam, is pretty cute.  Great music and nice graphics it takes me back to my King’s Quest and Monkey Island days.  Very old school for me, I haven’t played this kind of game to any degree for quite a long time.  It is a nice departure and I really enjoy showing Liesl was games were like when I was younger.  It’s really cool that I can share this with her already.  That all of the dialogue is narrated makes it work really well for her.

Dominica had to pack tonight.  She works tomorrow morning and the girls are going to daycare and then she is leaving right after work to drive down to Houston.  We aren’t sure who is going to pick up the girls yet.  Probably me so that she can get out the door and on the road as quickly as she can.  She wants to be able to beat traffic or the drive will be awful.  She has to have all of her packing done tonight as there won’t be any time for her to do it tomorrow.

We were heading to bed, she was actually in bed already, when our daycare provider cancelled on us for tomorrow.  That caused a little panic.  I guess I will be staying home with the girls tomorrow.  No way around that.  The good part of that is that it makes it much easier for Dominica to get to work and get out the door.

I got to sleep in a bit this morning. No need to get up, for a change.  No classes needing my attention and no work scheduled for this weekend.  It has been so long that this feels amazing.  We did pretty much nothing all morning.  We watched the two remaining Doctor Who episodes that were available to us in Season 7 and we have one more to go that airs tonight on the BBC and, in theory, we will have available to watch on Amazon VOD by sometime tomorrow.

Mid-afternoon I went out to Redneck with Watson.  I’m on wingman duty today so Dominica didn’t mind.  We weren’t out for long.  Got home and relaxed all evening.  I did some investigating of video games that looked interesting on Steam and found The Book of Unwritten Tales  which is much like a modern take on a Monkey Island style game – object use and dialogue based puzzles in a story-driven adventure setting.  Cute, easy, not stressful.

I played it only for a little bit before Liesl decided to come in and check out the game.  We probably played it together for an hour this evening.  She loved it.  She didn’t play at all, she just watched me play.  She is able to follow it very easily, though, and the art work is very kid friendly being rather cartoony and cute and the puzzles are easy enough that she understands what is happening.  So she is having a good time with it.  It’s fun to be able to play a game with her hanging out with me.