Tonight I started my child watch training with Cole and Ally. Bharat and Jen were kind enough to let me sit the two of them in order to prepare for Sam's visit. I've come to the conclusion that sitting for those two didn't help me much: they were great, not nearly demonic enough to help me out.

Jen made us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Mmmmmm! Tas-tee! We had carrots and cauliflower, too. Much to my surprise, Cole ate his whole half of a sandwich without prompting. Ally did a good job, too.

Near the end of the dinner, Cole started making cheese balls, rolling them in his hands and handing them to Ally. Ally would lift her hand high, bring it down, smash the cheese balls and cry out, "I squished the cheese ball!" This continued for at least 10 cheese balls, after which the remaining balls bounced off the high-chair and into Moxie's waiting mouth.

That dog can round up cheese balls faster than any other collie I know.

I finished my sandwich first, and started cleaning up. Ally finished second and wanted down. She started prancing around with her sippy-cup. When she finished, she threw the cup. All done, right? Well, the cup smacked Cole right upside the head.

Great.

I told Ally she couldn't throw anything unless the person you are throwing at is looking at you. She looked at me all bright eyed, "I can throw?"

Huh?

Oh.

Whoops.

She ran over to her toys and picked up a ball and threw it. Right at Cole. Great. I stopped her and asked if Cole was looking at her when she threw the ball. When she said no, I told her again that whoever she's throwing at needs to be looking at her. She said okay, and then started throwing with me. Better, but I later learned there's no throwing in the house.

Cole and I started throwing, too. Cole would throw a ball at me and I was supposed to throw another ball at the same time, with each of us catching the ball thrown at us. I misunderstood the game, and kept timing my ball throws to smack his ball throws. They kept both flying backwards over Cole.

Cole was very patient with me, though. He kept throwing with me until I clued in, and started throwing the ball to him as he threw his ball to me. My throws starting getting fairly accurate.

Accurate to smack Cole in the face when he missed.

Every time.

Ally, meanwhile, was becoming bored with the whole ball throwing, and started walking around with objects in her mouth. Having flashbacks to my knocking out my two front teeth when I was four, I removed the objects from her mouth and asked her to keep things out of it. She didn't listen, and kept putting more interesting and varied objects in her mouth. The last two being one of Cole's shoes and my left foot.

Eventually, Ally picked up a book and we started reading. We did the barn yard dance, learned about race car driving, and thought about reading about the birds of north america, but decided against it.

Much to my surprise, after about five books, bedtime happened. When I said it was time for bed, Cole stood up and said, "Then we have to brush our teeth." They both calmly walked into the bathroom, Ally standing on the toliet and Cole on his step, reaching up for their toothbrushes.

Who trained these kids? What twilight zone am I in? Where's the punked/candid camera?

When we were done with the teeth, which involved sucking on the toothbrush more than actually brushing of the teeth, they walked into their bedroom. I asked Cole where Ally's diapers where, and he led me out to the family room. He climbed up a step and onto a dresser where he walked across it, doing a little jig. Eventually, I figured out he was pointing out the diapers were on the dresser, and pulled Cole off. I went back into the bedroom expecting to find Ally.

No girl.

Huh? Did I just lose that little girl?

I wandered back to the bathroom.

No girl.

Back into the family room.

No girl.

Ally?

No sign of her.

I rushed back to the bathroom.

Nope.

The office?

No.

The hall?

No.

The living room?

No.

Panic has started to set in. I left her alone for thirty seconds in a closed house and I lost the child? How the hell do you lose a kid in an all-doors-shut-and-locked house?

And then I heard Ally giggling in the kitchen. When I rounded the corner, she was naked except for one sock, her jammies strewn across the kitchen floor, diaper on the other side of the room. She stood up and started running away from me. Eeek! Naked baby! Flee!

The taste of freedom did something, because she declared she had to pee, and hightailed it to the bathroom. When I plunked her down on the toliet seat, I didn't plunk quite right, because she started peeing a stream that went into the tub 2 feet away from her.

Damn, girl, keep that talent, will you?

Eventually, I managed to get her clothed again, and both of them into their respective beds. With the noisemaker on (what is up with people and their noisemakers? Kris can't sleep without one and it drives me nuts. I remember Jenny having the same habit, of having a noise maker on to help her sleep. Argh.), Cole with his stuffed animals in bed and Ally in her crib, I snuck out of the bedroom.

Or at least tried.

Ally wanted to hold hands with Cole. "Hands! Hands!" Which meant, standing in her crib, reaching up to Cole, who was reaching down to touch hands with Ally. It was cute, and quite endearing, but I was told to remain firm and leave the room.

So I did.

Only to hear, "Kit-ten! Kit-ten! Kitt! Ten! Kitten!" a few moments later.

Heh. Adorable in a way only a 2 year old can be.

After about 10 minutes, Cole was asleep. Ally, however, I could not get to go down. She kept calling me, and babbling incoherently. When I left, she would scream.

The cycle would be, "Be firm. Be firm." Leave. Scream! Return.

After a half hour of this, I figured out I had forgotten to give Ally her pacifier. All she wanted was her pacifier to go to sleep.

One pacifier and two books later, Ally was asleep. Yay!

All in all, a good evening with two remarkably well behaved children that did nothing for my Sam training. Maybe if I poked and prodded the kids they'd turn into monsters for me to practice with.

Maybe with a lot of prodding.

Admittedly, the best moment of the evening was the discovery of Bharat's secret for accomplishing many, many things. And I'm about to tell the whole world. I wonder if I should ask Bharat if it's okay to tell everyone about his Time Turner first...

To:         Kitt
From:       Mom
Subject:    IPod

Got my fancy silver one! I'm happy, but stayed up WAY TOO
LATE ripping songs. :|

My mom. Ripping songs. And knowing the lingo.

Word.

One of the comments Jonas made last night, mostly in response to my comment that I know another Mark Smith was that there are, on average, six people in the country with the same name.

The distribution is probably a bell curve of some sort, with Kitt Hodsdens on one side, and Mark Smiths on the other. Although it makes finding me that much easier, I like having a relatively unique name. As far as Google and Yahoo! know, I'm the only Kitt Hodsden in the U.S.

Which makes me reluctant and not very likely to take Kris' much more common last name. With his last name, I'd probably have google duels with a lawyer in San Francisco, a 22 year old in Germany, a Colorado College graduate, some woman in England and a "Miss Kitty" who died recently in Florida.

And I wouldn't have the cool urls that I have now.

Sorry, Kris. You lose.

Note to self: even if it's a tech meet-up, I should still dress like a girl when I go.

Last night, I managed to make it to Tag Tuesday, as mentioned yesterday. And I'm very glad I did.

I managed to meet a few people I've been wanting to meet for a while, as well as meet up with an old acquaintance, and meet some new people, too.

I finally met Jonas Luster. I'd been hoping to meet him for a while now. I've been following his site for a while, and lamenting his switch from Drupal to Wordpress.

Jonas (pronounced as Yaw-nas by Jill, whom I also met last night) kept insisting he had met me before when I walked up and introduced myself. I told him we hadn't met, and he said sure we had and started listing conferences he had been to recently. When I told him I hadn't been to a conference since SiGGRAPH, he looked at me in disbelief, and turned to Niall to ask where the two of us had met.

Which is how I met Niall. We talked a bit, before Kevin Marks, who was going to be presenting, came up to talk to me. Turns out all of these guys work at Technorati. Go fig.

As did another Mark Smith. He goes by "Junior", and works at the opposite end of the building from Ian, who noticed my brand spanking new running shoes. We laughed about it.

At some point, I did manage to meet Matt, who seemed surprised I didn't know who Stewart Butterfield was. For those also not in the know, he's one of the two founders of Flickr, an online photo sharing site.

Eh.

I enjoyed talking to Matt, Mark and Kevin. After a while, though, people who knew each other showed up, and those of us not in the clique were left to fend. It was a little uncomfortable, so I made the best of it and talked to other people.

The entertaining surprise of the evening was seeing Dave McClure. We talked a long while (he's at Simply Hired, so we spent time talking about job-posting microformats, the job-hunting online sphere and a bit about community development and startups.

It was really nice to see a friendly face (and an ultimate player!). I don't think I ever truly appreciate how great the ultimate community is in terms of comform, belonging, friendships and networking. Always something to talk about, always a friend nearby.

When the presentation finally started, absolutely no one could hear anyone, and the presentation slides were projected onto the ceiling.

Note to self: do not try to give a presentation at a brewery.

Eventually, everyone clued in, and we headed outside, across the street and talked in a huddled group.

The party ended when we heard, from the Coast Guard alert station right next to where we were, a tsunami warning for the coast of California. Turns out, there was a 7.4 earthquake off the coast of Humboldt county, about 250 miles north of the Bay Area.

In disbelief, we all disbanded. We were going to continue, but Jonas insisted we all notify anyone on the coast that might be affected.

Zoom. We left.

Things are happening around me that are quite exciting. The area seems charged like it was back in the late nineties. Cool things are being developed, people are excited about the new opportunities, toys are around everywhere. Just a general feeling in the area that I can't say I've felt for a long time. Not quite heady/giddy days of the last bubble, but definitely one of promise and hope.

And in that vein, while recognizing that networking is crucial for new ideas as well as contacts for help, I've decided to come back out of my work shell and look around, start meeting up with these people that are moving and shaking things up around me.

In other words, I'm in the Bay Area, I might as well milk it for what it's worth.

I'll be attending the Carson Workshop on "How we built Flickr" next Monday. I was looking forward to meeting Matthew Mullenweg of WordPress fame (and who seduced Jonas away from Drupal), but he's heading to New York this weekend, so that one's nixed.

I have a bet with Mike, who is also going to the workshop, that the men to women ratio will be like 17 to 3. Though, from the pictures on the Carson site, I'm thinking it might be 19 to 1 (me).

Bah.

I'm also heading up to the city for the Tag Tuesday to meet up with a couple tag developers, see what they have to say. Since I'm finishing up with a tagging project for a client, other reference points would be nice.

And since tagging now works on my other site it'll be good to compare notes on implementations.

And then there's the Blogher conference in late July. It's a mostly "women in blogging" sort of thing, though men aren't exactly excluded. To be honest, I'm going for two reasons: to get information on what bloggers want in order to develop drupal modules for them, and to meet Heather B. Armstrong.

I have no shame.

All in all, a good start to this groundhog's shadow check.