My two kids are throwing up, my wife is nauseous, and I stubbed my big toe.

My brother-in-law is always having interesting things happen to him. He’s an earthy, low-impact type of fellow who hates spending money. The vegetable garden he was trying to grow on his porch wasn’t doing so well, and he was almost thinking he was going to have to go out and buy some fertilizer. The next day, 12 police cars showed up at the garage next door and busted a major grow-op. They hauled off 300 plants. His wheeling-and-dealing roommate made a deal with the unfortunate landlord of the grow-op building to clean the place up for a tidy sum. Among the hyrdoponics and lighting systems was 15 bags of fertilizer. My brother-in-a-law got a free bag from his roomie, and his porchtop vegetable garden is doing much better.

Sam is officially weaned from nighttime feedings. Last night Gina and I had the most amazing sleep in about a year. 11:00pm to 8:30am! 9 and a half hours! It was so great. And then Gina had an afternoon nap. This evening she said she hasn’t felt so awake in months. In other news, I went for a two-hour run today. That’s the longest I’ve run since last October. Things are shaping up well for the half marathon.

We’re working on weaning Sam from his nighttime feedings. So if I’m cranky, it’s because I spent last night trying to convince Sam that he doesn’t need to eat every hour. Hopefully he’ll get the drift in another few days.

We took Ana and Sam to the Vancouver Children’s Festival today and watched the National Acrobats of Taiwan. It was fun, except for the 10,000 other kids.

My running is going pretty good these days. I did a 16km long run yesterday and I’ve done my Thursday interval workout two weeks in a row. I’ve been taking L-Glutamine for a month, and so far no injuries… I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if the stuff really works. I’m planning two races: the Sandcastle City Classic 10K in White Rock on June 5th, as a primer for the ScotiaBank Half Marathon on June 26th.

My wife’s mother’s cousin’s daughter designs beautiful wedding cakes for a living, and she asked me to build her a web site. So I procrastinated for about 6 months, and then I put this together: cakesbymeg.com. Most of the web projects I work on involve a dozen stakeholders and tens of thousands of lines of code, so it’s a pleasure to work up a small, simple web site for an appreciative customer. Of course, there’s not a lot of money in web sites for relatives.

In 1984, I may have had almost the worst overbite on the planet, but darn if my teeth weren’t tough. After 32 years, I still don’t have a cavity. So that’s why I was so confused at the pediatric dentist today. My precious 3 year old girl needs root canals, caps and fillings, and she’ll have to be put under general anaesthetic for the whole procedure. The dentist thinks it’s from nursing Ana at night and letting her fall asleep with a breast in her mouth. As comforting as it was for her, it seems it’s done in her teeth.

Sam is much more taken with animals than Ana was at his age. He’s fearless–he was roughing up the goats yesterday at the petting zoo. And he makes an excellent woofing noise every time he sees a dog.

It’s day 6 with no wife or kids and I’m really, really lonely. I think I’ll dump the toy box in the kitchen and smear some muffin on the couch, just to make things seem more homey.