Tuesday April 1st I achieved the rarely seen double meltdown. Thank God for Rifftrax on National Geographic. The next night we had two big accomplishments: Nina counted to five (she recites numbers but actually connecting the numbers to physically counting objects is new), and I ripped my entire Beatles collection. On a related note, Saturday morning “Here Comes The Sun” and 95 other songs were on my George Harrison playlist we were listening to. Nina said the sitar hurts her ears, but she’ll have to get used to it. Later that night, we were at our 3rd show at Wolf Trap in 3 weeks, and all local musicians doing George Harrison’s songs. Excellent show, and notable for the first time I’ve seen Todd Wright, Michael Clem and Eddie Hartness sharing a stage together (and I’ve seen each of them at least 50 times).
Sunday it turns out you can teach an old dog a new trick – 11 years old, and Illa got his first bird that day (it bounced off the side of the house trying to get away, but rebounds still count). Monday the 7th I took Nina to her first seated concert (Molly Lewis at Jammin’ Java) and she quite liked it (and was mostly behaved and sitting as she ate potato chips). Bonus – she made it into bed only five minutes later than the night before. Lots of milestones for Nina that week: Thursday she learned to spell her name, and we measured her at 35 inches tall (growing up so fast). Then Friday she did the call and response of “Mahna Mahna” before bed.
Saturday the 12th we had a very busy morning and afternoon celebrating my dad’s birthday by taking Nina to her first circus (Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus), then lunch at Red Robin, resulted in very little productivity the rest of the day – I napped almost as long as she did. Sunday I stained Nina’s new bed, and managed to pour the stain down the side of my hand. That stuff does not come off easily. There was lots of rain (and hail – I think that’s worse than snow) on Tuesday.
Saturday and Sunday I went to Awesome Con in DC, our first major comics and pop culture con in a while. Saturday the 19th Jill and Nina accompanied me, and we accomplished my major goal: getting a picture of Billie Piper with us. We also saw Leslie Carrara-Rudolph (voice of Abby Cadabby) do a panel, then stopped for lunch at Pete’s in Clarendon. Sunday after an Easter Egg Hunt at church I went back to get an autograph with Billie Piper (we couldn’t wait around the day before) and do some shopping. I stopped at Z-Burger to pick up tasty burgers on the way home, and walked in to “Daddy’s home – time to put on your underwear.”
Jill’s mom, Sue arrived on Sunday while Melissa, Ava and Tiernan came on Tuesday. They went to the National Zoo with Jill and Nina on Thursday and to the American Doll store on Saturday the 26th. Only 2 bands drew me to Merriweather that summer: Extreme and Queen. The rainy Friday traffic was as dreadful as anticipated on the 25th, but I still saw Lita Ford’s mini Runaways reunion in her set. Extreme’s set was short but sweet, nice to see them with a big crowd singing along. I also got a free t-shirt (and wore it, ’cause it’s cold) and ZZ Top/Jeff Beck ticket courtesy of the 9:30 Club. Hometown heroes Kix put on a nice show to close the night. I was back the next afternoon to check out Jack Russell’s Great White, Stryper and the Geoff Tate-less Queensrÿche (verdict: very good) before heading home and out again with Jill to see Robbie Schaefer at Jammin’ Java for his CD release show with Jake Armerding and Rachael Davis. Great trio, deserving of more shows together.
Nina had missed it when her playground friends moved away, but this month she started developing a strong friendship with Felix, who lives 4 houses away. He’s a year older, but they play very well together. It helps that his parents are very friendly too. The only bad thing is they ask to play together almost every day, and we have to turn them down sometimes.
