Larry.org

Sometimes I’m struck by how poorly historic lessons fit the challenges we face today. Especially with regards to globalization, especially collaboration, management and staff/team development.

Here’s a great video

by XPlane that sums it up quite effectively.

Thanks to out to the folks at The Innovation Weblog for bringing it to my attention.

David continues to grow up quickly. In the last few weeks he’s really been joking around a lot more than he ever has before. Most of these jokes are related to inserting the words pee pee or poopy into a song or a statement.

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Speaking of songs, it’s really fun to hear him play around with melody. He knows a few songs now, so he will occasionally just start softly singing a tune to himself while he’s playing. He also makes up little nonsense songs on his own, which I really enjoy as I’ve always enjoyed doing that myself.

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The other day he looked at Laura very seriously at the breakfast table, and said to her:

David: Mom, I have something to tell you.

Laura: Yes, David, what is it?

David: Mom, I know you like apples. And I also know that Daddy likes apples.

Laura: Yes

David: But Mommy, I do not like apples.

We naturally found this to be extremely amusing.

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I came home from work last week and David greeted me at the door. As I walked in I held up my hand and said “High Five”. He looked at me and, out of nowhere ran me through the whole:

“Gimme Five, Up High, Down Low, Too Slow!” routine.

I don’t know where he picked it up but he found it very amusing how stunned I was that he pulled it on me.

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It’s amazing to play with him and talk to him. He’s such a smart kid. I don’t know how it’s possible that he’s about to turn 4 years old. I remember before we had David, someone telling me that the great thing about having kids is when they are old enough to have conversations with you, and how it gets better and better as they get older. Now that we’re getting into David’s fourth year, I can see how that’s true.

Yesterday, Laura was having kind of an allergy headache and needed to lay down for a while after I got back from church.

It was about 11:00 and it occurred to me that 1) David and I had no idea what to do 2) the Red Sox were in town.

There was no way that we were going to make the game though because it started at 1:40 and David goes down for his nap at 1:30 (ish).

So then I think to myself.. if we bring water, pack up a lunch and buy the worst tickets in the ballpark, we can have a nice time in the air conditioned ballpark.

So off we go and got a Brandon Webb action figure as a promotional item.

Here's a photo of me and David at the ballpark.

Well it’s finally happened. I’ve received my first “look at my kids” video in an email that links to YouTube!

more...

David, not entirely sure the socks I want to put on him are clean

David is officially a two-year old.

Sure signs are:

• He repeats things for hours on end ("hot potato" from the wiggles right now, "that's a cool place" and other things Laura and I say to each other, with no warning whatsoever that David will latch on to them for days)


• He does things he knows are wrong to see what will happen (throwing in the house is the biggee)


• His verbal skills are getting hysterical. (After misbehaving I will ask him to say "I'm sorry Daddy", he will usually apologize to all the characters of the 100 acre wood before he'll say "Daddy". He usually starts with Tigger.)


• He is starting to ask alot more questions


• He is learning to actually dance, rather than just sort of sway like he used to. The Wiggles have been very involved in this, especially the "stand on one foot and shake your hands" dance.

Some funny stories from the last week.

He has developed a funny habit of calling Laura and I "guys", as in "Let's go guys" or "thank you guys". We likely will not discourage this, as we find it very amusing.

Tonight he was getting ready to go to Baja Fresh for dinner, and as I was putting his jacket on, his stomach was sticking out so I tickled him. He ran over to Laura and said, "Mommy's tummy is oh so cute."

David has been trying to jump for the last couple months. He finally figured it out this last week.

Here's a video:
I'm not sure if this will work or not, but if it does that'd be super. I think you need QuickTime installed.

[gv data="http://www.larry.org/videos/DavidJumping.mov"][/gv]

David has had a low grade fever for the last four days. The pediatrician says he's fine, it's just a mild respiratory virus going around, and that it could take a week.

As Laura started her new job yesterday, I got to stay home and watch David yesterday and today. (We don't take David to day care when he's running a fever as A) we don't want to get the other kids sick and 2) they won't let us.)

So just in case you were wonderiing, David is a bundle of energy even with a low fever. Here's a list of what we've done the last two days:
* invented two games,
* thrown the baseball in the front yard
* run laps around the house
* gone into my work to pick up some stuff I usually bring home on the weekends.

The trip to work was especially funny as I had to bang out a few emails real quick. After a few minutes David got bored and started exploring. The first time, I caught up with him about 5 feet from my door. The second time he made it all the way back to the front door, about 60 feet from my office, and a co-worker, Elaine was walking him back when I caught up with him. The third time I couldn't find him anywhere.

I was walking around saying "David, David" and near the front door I heard a voice saying "I'm in here Daddy!" coming from the elevator. He'd learned how to operate the elevator visitng Laura's Parents. So I opened the door expecting him to look a little scared and upset. He was just standing there looking at me like he wanted the door to open on the second floor.

Laura is going to be the new Internal Communications Adminstrator for AAA Arizona. 

New job? What happened to her old job? 

Laura has recently left a position at Best Western (BW) International Headquarters. This was a very difficult decision for Laura as many of you may have already talked to her about. Laura spent most of her 10 years at BW doing Employee Communications. Over the last year BW has been through quite a bit of change, not the least of which was the Communications Department getting moved into the Marketing Department. As a consequence of that change the Employee Communications role was distributed accross many staff members and Laura was moved into other duties. Well she really missed that aspect of her job and after the other duties didn't seem to fit very well she and BW decided it was probably better to move on to other things. It was, of course a mutually agreed upon solution as both Laura and BW are class acts.

Why AAA Arizona?

A couple months ago she heard about a position at AAA Arizona that seemed like a great fit. This position is specifically Internal Communications, which is almost entirely employee communications. That combined with the similarities between AAA and Best Western, combined to provide a remarkeably good fit for her. After many phone calls, interviews and networking, AAA Arizona and Laura figured out that which seemed obvious at the onset, was still true after due diligence was applied. AAA Arizona and Laura would work very well together.

How did she find out? Is she excited?

Yesterday on the way home from the store, Laura got a phone call and was given a verbal commitment from AAA Arizona for the position. She's excitedly waiting for the offer letter to arrive in our mailbox so she can "officially" accept the position.

Laura is very excited about the new position and knows that her difficult decision to leave BW was a good one. One of the thing that AAA Arizona has specifically reassured her on throughout the interview process is that they value their employees personal / family time and do not believe that one should suffer for the benefit of the other. Thanks everyone for all the support and kind thoughts during this transition for Laura. You are the best!

-Larry 

So, this sounds pretty weird if you don't have kids, but if you do have kids, well it probably will still actually sound weird but at least you'll understand how it could happen.



Skunchie Man (Note: the lack of an "r" in the spelling, it's very important that you don't use an "r".)



Laura was nice enough to agree to have her voice recorded for this.



In a way it's both an indictment and a complement to the catchiness of "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. I'm sure the last thing that Ozzie Osbourne and the rest of the band wanted to do was write a song that could be repurposed in such a manner. But then Bach probably didn't expect to be on cell phone ring tones either.

Here's a good site with many Nursery Rhymes on it. It will be handy now that we have a little boy in the house. It's a bit more fun than the others I've found because it explains the origins of the piece. I mentioned it to Laura last night and she asked me if I knew why most nursery rhymes were based on 'negative' things. I said I wasn't sure but I thought it was a way to scare kids so that they didn't do stuff that was bad for them, and the reason they rhyme and are about simple characters etc. is so the kids will remember them. She said, that's what she thought too. I guess it's true but it's sure interesting to read about the specific way a particular rhyme came to be.



All of todays media for kids is much more positive of course. I think it's good that it's so positive now. I take it as an indicator that life is easier now and there's more time to have kids hear things that are inspiring and wonderful, as opposed to training kids that life is very hard and bad stuff will happen to them if they aren't careful. Of course bad stuff can still happen.. but what the heck.



I look forward to reading some of these rhymes to David.