Ricky Turns 2 and Getting Back To Routine

This week's blog is going to be broken up in to 2 topics so I hope you feel like you're getting a bonus.

Ricky Is 2-Years-Old Today

If you are friends with me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter or Instagram, then you probably are well aware of my son who we had officially 2 years ago today. Today is my little buddy Ricky's second birthday, and it's mind-blowing how the last even few weeks he has seemed like a completely new kid. He is singing songs in the shows he watches with clarity, and he remembers lines out of the blue while watching them too.

Now he's seen these shows over and over and over and over and over and over again. That in itself is probably not enough "and overs" that deem necessary to accurately portray how many times he has ACTUALLY seen them, but we'll save the page space for now. It's just so cool as a dad to see my son growing in to such a smart individual. It still blows my mind how talented he is with the iPad/iPhones around the house. The only feature he hasn't quite gotten down yet is the number lock I have in which he replies "daddy help." It's hard to believe that he is 2 already, and it has honestly felt like a blur. I know that's a cliche, but it's 100% true.

We plan on having a party for him Saturday, but we did just a little family birthday for him today where he opened his gifts from us and he had a cupcake, which he thoroughly enjoyed....shirtless. We will having his friends/family birthday on Saturday at a jump house so we're all looking forward to that.

Part 2

Getting Back to Routine

Being sick is always a party, and as much fun as it is to spend hours on end in bed, or worse over a toilet, I'm glad to be feeling normal again. I really was excited to have my urge to drink coffee in the morning back. What has been great was the motivation I got the first day I felt "normal." I cleaned up the living room, kitchen, Our Room, Ricky's room and Jen's girl room in a span of  about a day and a half. When I lived on my own in my apartment at school I always lived with the mindset that if anybody came in to my apartment at any time I wouldn't be worried about a mess or anything. Now here and there I would have days that it'd be a mess, but for the most part it was kept pretty tidy. That is my goal, but on a larger scale. Our house can sometimes get remarkably messy, and I'm not talking about things here and there, I'm talking about things being all over the place, dirty dishes in the sink, our countertop filled with junk, dirty clothes on the floor, food/drinks on nightstand. It's just a combination of mess that I think stresses me out. After being sick, I started vacation and that has given me a day or two where we haven't been babysitting other kids or had stuff planned where I can really get stuff done. A lot is in the morning while Jen and Ricky are sleeping. I'm now left with an overabundance of laundry, the laundry room and the basement to clean up to say my house is at least respectable.

On top of that, I have been trying to stay current on my Youtube videos. Right now my schedule is set up to where I post new videos on Wednesday, Fridays and Sunday. Unfortunately I shoot the videos the same day they upload, which causes them to not be fully done until the middle part of the day. I'm hoping to work on that schedule so that I shoot the day before, and on certain things like Soapbox Sunday, maybe shoot a couple episodes at a time so that if I don't make it to recording a current one, I can release one of those. My wrestling show is a little trickier because it has to stay current, and unless I do random Top 10 lists, then it will lose it's relevancy if taped too far ahead of time.

I'm trying to do this all on top of being a dad, and keeping up with all the chaos around the house. For instance, today and yesterday we were watching the two kids Jen normally baby-sits , and tonight Jen's friend Kim is having a gender reveal party we are going to. Tomorrow is Ricky's birthday party, and then Sunday I think there is a Jen's friend Nikki's son's birthday as well as another gender reveal party for her friend Sara and finally it's the Super Bowl. You can see where the schedule tends to overlap or tighten up pretty quick. That is why my nights are kind of my source of productivity, but Ricky hasn't been falling asleep until almost 1AM so getting him in to a good routine will help so I can get stuff done.

I just don't want things to get away from me and right now my two priorities in terms of non dad stuff is keeping the house clean and keeping up with my "hobby" of doing the YouTube videos. Oh and this blog is kind of important too, which you can see I waited until Friday to post compared to the normal Monday. All is well though, and I hope I can get my routine fully back and keep things going productively.

If anybody is interested here is my YouTube channel, I really like the ability to break videos in to playlists because that's how I separate my shows. Also I REALLY want to do a weekly web show with Tippin via Google Hangout. It integrates into YouTube so well that it seems ideal for what we used to try to do via Skype.