Today is Friday of my first week of paternity leave completely “off”. Besides all the normal baby stuff, the list of things knocked off the “to do” list is not insignificant.

As I type this, I’ve just finished spending two or three hours contorting myself into a small space and rapping my knuckles repeatedly, in the interest of replacing the faucet/fixture on the downstairs bathroom sink. I also encountered a surprise “let’s re-seat the sink bowl on the cabinet” project, since the probably 20 years’ old adhesive wanted to give way so easily.

In any case, it works, and there aren’t any leaks, and doesn’t look completely awful (actually, it looks pretty good), which is exactly what I was going for.

Earlier in the week I took on the long-overdue job of mending the backyard fence; replacing a couple of board that have broken, mostly due to children who know they’re not supposed to climb the fence but do so anyway, as well as replacing the sticky (okay, frozen) latch on the gate. My back yard is once again secure, and my dog can no longer go on unscheduled, unsupervised walks about the neighborhood.

I also got the oil changed in the van, did the shopping, and supervised Andrew’s “starting school” physical with immunizations (he didn’t like those at all), got the shopping done, bills paid, and made an unscheduled service call on the next-door neighbor’s computer.

The kids start school on Tuesday, so we’ve had orientation sessions this week (Colleen and the girls are currently at Mary’s); and a couple of trips here and there to track down a couple of errant school-starting documents and last minute items. I get the feeling that both kids are eager to start up.

And, there was also the business of tracking down addresses to send the birth announcements out (you folks who’ve been solicited for help know who you are – thanks!), and another weigh-in for Catherine (who’s gaining weight slowly, and eats all the time, but the doc wants to keep checking).

Oh, and I watched 300, which was completely over the top to the point of flirting with full-on camp, excessively violent, and a ton of fun; I highly recommend it.