Watching my kid playing with his new toys is awesome, and for his second birthday the home run present was this sound making tricycle thing. He’s amazing, riding around on this thing and gets quite annoyed when it’s time to come in.

Officially, he is no longer an infant. As a toddler, the Lil’ Baby Moo may also be growing out of that nickname we’ve first given him.

We got him a lot of other gifts, too. For his party, we got an art themed series of presents with loads of crayons and markers and paper and other stuff. On his birthday, we got a lot of Elmo presents — a bath toy, a flashlight — and some other presents like puppets and books for us to read to him.

But the coolest one was the trike.

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I am a sporadic genealogy buff. I have been sort of maintaining a half assed family tree for several years and have learned many things about my family, including several things I sort of wish I hadn’t. I think it is important to look back at where one’s family came from so that one can marvel at how unlikely it is that one came into being at all.

What are the odds, after all, of the granddaughter of a Tennessee pedophile meeting and marrying the grandson of an Irish mobster? Minimal, I should say, but God bless America because that is where I came from.

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve learned.

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One thing I hate is my inability to stay wide awake behind the wheel. It was never this way before, but now I can’t seem to go from point A to point B without nodding my head.

It would be 3 in the morning and I’d be on the streets, prowling away with my friend Marie, heading to the bagel shop in Smithtown. We’d stay out for at least three hours, getting home with enough time for us to start our days. I wouldn’t get home until around midnight, and three hours later we would be at it again.

Today, I can’t go from here to the store which is but three blocks away without dozing off, and I’m getting more than my share of sleep.

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