Hump Day Roundup

Here are the latest headlines around la casa de Rutledge:

Pacifiers Swiped!
Amy & I made the bold decision last night to take away the boys' pacifiers. Over time we had successfully limited pacifiers to bedtime. Many times those little things worked wonders for us when we needed to calm an unhappy, fussy child. But the boys are creeping up on their second birthday a couple months from now, and we felt it was time to pull the plug so to speak. So how did it go? Gus screamed like a banshee for 39 minutes last night after we put him down; Owen for 34 minutes. Fun times.

Toddler Punch
(Knock on wood) Gus has stopped his awful habit of biting, both his brother and his parents. However when one form of toddler violence leaves our house, another form scoots in the door to take its place. So now we are dealing with hair pulling from Owen and a surprisingly deft right hook and clawing from Gus. We will break them of these habits over time -- Amy and I are going to start with "time out" to get them to realize when their behavior is bad. But it makes for some unpleasant situations in the short term. Like when Amy's friend Julie brought her two little ones, Jack and Emma, over to play with the boys on Tuesday and our boys thought it was a battle royale instead of a play date. And when Gus decided yesterday that it was funny to grab his father's cheeks and dig his fingernails in with both hands. Ah, parenthood -- you clear one hurdle and two more appear. (Do we get any sympathy?) :-)

The Purple One
Amy queued up the halftime show from the Super Bowl yesterday while she was home with the boys. Gus took great interest in Prince's performance of "Let's Go Crazy," bouncing and dancing and shouting out "Go, go, go!" We have a little performer on our hands. Amy & I will have to get video and post it here if we can get him to do it again. Not that we'd use this to embarass him when he's a teenager or anything. He's not going to let the elevator break him down.

Hoops Heaven
As I've mentioned before one of my favorite things about the Triangle is the way college basketball is engrained into the culture here. With NC State, UNC, and Duke all right here it makes for some great drama between fans and some great matchups for a hoops junkie such as myself. As this past weekend saw both Duke and UNC suffer a rare loss -- the Heels to their archrival NC State no less -- the stage is set for tonight's raucous UNC/Duke game with both teams trying to avoid losing streaks. The rivalry between these two schools is like nothing I've ever seen. The students at Duke, albeit misguided their cheers scripted, take this game so seriously that they camp out in Krzyzewskiville, a tent city on campus where students live for weeks in advance of the game. The atmosphere in Cameron Indoor Stadium will be electric. From the Heels standpoint UNC fans despise Duke with sheer enmity, claiming Dookies to be elitist, self-centered carpetbaggers and their coach "rat-faced." Just check out some of the comments over on the UNC message board on the "You know you're a dook fan if...." thread -- tremendously funny stuff. So tonight I'm guaranteed to be parked in my chair watching the first installment of this season's rivalry with a big grin on my face -- I can't wait.

Cheers!

Update: To help Duke avoid a three-game losing streak tonight, the ACC will award them four points for each made basket instead of two. (Hat tip to LeDuc for this gem)