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Friday, May 09, 2008
Prioritize your projects
I went and saw Dr. Malani, who gave me antibiotics, and in about a day and a half I was feeling much better. Now I feel good enough that I'm guilty for not going to the gym. I really need to work out.
I've made good progress on the ceiling. Started the painting, and took down the hermetically sealed plastic dust barrier, which make our living room much more pleasant. I need a few more coats of paint and some blue touch up on the walls and we can move our furniture back to where it goes. I can't wait.
Now we have to prioritize the next few projects.
1) Paint the stairwell
2) Carpet the stairs (dependant on #1)
3) Clear out the guest room to make it Leah's new room
4) Purchase furniture, paint and other niceties for Leah's new room (prereq: #3)
5) Patio
6) Repair lawn with compost and overseeding (stupid fertilizer/pesticide, I just wanted to get rid of the ants)
Between home projects, the fact that this month is chaos at work since we are about to go live with my big project and the work contest it is looking a little overwhelming. Why is it when we are overwhelmed we get less done, but have more to do? Not helpful.
In fun new, little miss has a new favorite song. The ABC's. She will get all excited and ask for "more-more" even before we finish. She dosn't know all her letters, infact she normally says "C-C-C" but throws in a few random letters, maybe a "B" maybe a "R." She definitely knows "Z," her favorite letter, which she screams as loud as she can. And once the song is down we throw our hands up in the air and yell "touchdown!"
I can't wait till she goes to kindergarten and wants to know why everyone else says something as obvious as "now I know my ABC's" at the end of the song. Those losers.
Oh, a co-worker was able to convince work that I need to go to the RailsConf at the end of the month, so I am psyched about that. I should check with Paulo to see if he is going again this year.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Fading Goats.
I really think fuzzymonk.com is way over due for an update, something to simplify things, but don't think I am going to get any time to deal with that any time soon. Would really like to migrate the cookbook and dictionary to rails. Would be stupid easy.
We just got back from Colin Hay. Was our second time seeing him at the Birchmere, he was every bit as good as he was last time. We even had an extra ticket so were able to drag my esteemed colleague from the west out. I think everyone had a good time, nice chill show with some funny enter-song commentary.
I think the best part of the evening was coming home to and having our delightful babysitter, Mer, tell us how wonderful our daughter is. We always worry she won't be good for other people, if for no other reason because we want them to come back and babysit again. But our worries were for nothing, and she was sweet as could be. Apparently liberal with the kisses and hugs, as well as easily entertained and didn't mind going to bed. Score one for the little Sexton girl.
Oh, that silly girl:
Pretty dress on a pretty day
Cookin' in the kitchen
Sunday, April 06, 2008
T-Minus 3 days
We have passed the halfway mark of the great Leah famine of 2008.
Just in case you don't know, Leah went to Texas with her Grandmother who wanted to take her to see the bluebonnets and visit family. I thought this would be a great time to get a lot of stuff done around the house, Kelly thought this would be a good time to go insane. Now that is probably the good and healthy for a mother who's baby girl changed time zones with out her.
As I mentioned, I was hoping to get a bunch of stuff done, but the preceding weeks have been a little rough and we are mostly using the time to rest, recover and spend quality toddler free time with the wife. My goal has shifted from getting Leah's new room cleared out to eating out at nice places and going to the movies. If it hadn't been for the stairway-to-debacle project or the surprise trip to Austin i'm sure plenty of progress would have been made on little miss's new room, but I'll take what I can get.
Aside from the phone call's from Kelly's mom about the massive deviations from Leah's normal schedule and the news of a fever, we are handling this pretty well. She will return home on Wednesday, and there is no way that either of us will stay home from the airport. However, I am a little scared to get between Leah and her Mom when they are fresh off the plane, least Leah choose to come to me first. I would not want to suffer the consequences if that were to happen. And there would be consequences.
We did go downtown for brunch today, but it was wet and dreary so we decided to skip the walk around the tidal basin for the Cherry Blossoms. A bit of a bummer, but Kelly got the pedicure and I got to hang in the coffee shop and play on the MBP.
I think we are going to finish off the weekend nice and easy: Kelly has a book, I am playin' rails, and maybe some wings for dinner.
Anyone want some wings?
Labels: leah
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wait a second, what happened to January?
I am nto sure what happened to january. I think I remember christmas, and I know there was CES, but I think that was just the other day. Now my computer is telling me it is time we start thinking about February. Who knew!
I have been talking every last second of my free time to geek out on rails recently. One of our prestigious swapfriends is in town and I am stealing every bit of knowledge I possibly can while he is trying to do real work. It is working. I am learning alot. Of course this process leads to me reading/coding on the train, bus, at work, over lunch and at night when I should be sleeping. Heck I even tricked people into staying after work to "ya know, hang out and code". It worked. Yes, I asked people to volunteer to stay and continue to work after work. They did. Sure some bailed once the pizza was gone, and a few more after a couple of beers, but we have a few rock out to the dev-tunes.
Anytime I am not squandering away with work is family time. I need to make sure to keep the family time top priority, because things are starting to slip, and I see it getting cut. But it is still top in my mind. And Leah and really become alot of fun. She can really play now. Proper little kid playing. Make believe, rough housing, dancin', the works.
I cannot believe how surprised I am every time she shows her abstract abilities. A few of thing things I am the most impressed with are: Language comprehension (she can't say it, but she knows what the elephant is, and how to find the matching shoe when you ask), imagination (changing dolly's diaper, dressing up like mom), and trying to manipulate her parents (Yeah, I normally see though it, I just sometimes let it happen -- it is just easier). I am sure all parents out there are equally astonished, but can't understand how abstract thought can be learned, but I am watching it happen right in front of my eyes. Teh cool.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Leah Does Stuff
Guest post by Kelly
So, at a little more than 18 months I think we're starting to see both a very independent streak appear in Leah, right on schedule, as well as some other behaviors I wasn't quite ready for yet.
The little girl seems to be loathe to accept help from her parents on just about anything these days, unless it is to use our bodies as a step stool. One of the most poignant examples of this happened Monday night. We had just returned home and I caught a whiff of some pants that needed changing. At the same time Leah wandered over to her diaper bag and pulled out the changing pad. She proceeded to set down the pad sort of in front of me and lied down. When I tried to adjust the pad to be right in front of me I was showered with a chorus of "No, no, no!" and giggles. We repeated this almost a dozen times, sometimes trying to adjust the pad's position in relation to me, sometimes trying to adjust Leah's position in relation to the pad, but all attempts to alter Leah's chosen configuration resulted in "No, no, no!" I eventually decided that I am the parent and we'll do things my way and wisked her off to the changing table to do things right. Much less laughing and much more pouting. (Man it sucks to be the responsible one sometimes.)
Leah is also showing a lot of maternal instincts with her dolls. She holds them, feeds them, "changes their diapers", pats them on the back, etc. Monday night she also took to educating them. As she was reading "That's Not My Dinosaur" she would "read" the page and then take the dolls hand and put it on the touch & feel part of the page. Ta-adorable!
Lastly, Leah is becoming her Dad. At least in the mornings. Two days ago when she woke up after coming to our bed she stretched, looked around, crawled over to the bedside table, turned off the light, and curled back up with her eyes closed. Clearly, it was too bright and she was trying to sleep. Geez mom! This morning she just kept shifting from one side to the other and curled back up in a little ball at every attempt to waken her. It probably didn't help that Dad was curled up right next to her and soundly sleeping too, but she was determined to sleep. I thought we'd have until she was a teenager to have to pry her out of bed but I guess when you adore Dad you pick up his habits early.
Labels: kelly post, leah
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Sock mouth is born
Leah and I just finished playing a nice round of sock-mouth
Sock mouth dates back to yesterday when we were eating some eggs for dinner. One of the bigger bits of eggs was still too hot when she put it in her mouth. so she spit it out and gave it a very suspicious look. You know one of those, how could you do that to me type looks. Well to make her feel better I treated that bit as if it were gross. I pushed it away and said yuck. She thought this was great. So she pushed it away too, I grabbed her hand and said yucky yuck! and the game was born.
At least the game of yucky eggs.
Tonight when I went to change her diaper she was very sad to be leaving the couch so I tried to cheer her up. She gave me the idea when she took off her sock and handed it to me. I shook it and said yuck, made a face and set it on the table next to her. She immediately associated the face and word yuck with the egg game and thus sock-mouth was born.
She tries to put the sock in her mouth and I make faces. She tries to put the sock in my mouth and I make faces. Then we run around squealing.
If it is a game, then there must be some way to win. I had to turn to Leah for inspiration on this one. But she sure found the definitive win condition.
First one to vomit wins. Shove a sock into your mouth till you throw up 2 fish sticks.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Trip to ColoSpngs
This was Leah's second plane trip, and last time we bought her a seat and her grandma came along to help out. Unfortunately we didn't luck out enough to get a row to ourselves, and had to share space with some poor unsuspecting traveler. The flight out she never really cried, but was a little fussy and very fidgety the entire trip. The way back she was very sleepy and cranky, but after a tour standing up at the front of coach dad was able to trick her into sleeping. Despite the evil glares from a business man (who had an empty seat next to him). And Kelly and I (and the poor lady in our row) had a couple hours of still and quite.
When we landed early in Denver, early enough that jeannie had not even left the her house in Colorado Springs yet, and was gonna be a while. So we gathered all our babies and baby related stuff and set out to find a place we could let Leah get down and run. And run she did. It was way past her bedtime, and she was hyper like only a hyper one year old can be. We were running around a column playing 'catch the baby which eventually blossomed into a proper game of hide and seek. I would take her to the corner and tell her to count to 3, then count with her while trying prevent her from peeking. then run off a few feet away and 'hide' by the wall, or behind some of our luggage. Once we got into it she was playing along good. So much so that I overheard passers by saying "oh, look! she's counting" while she had her head buried in the corner with a "du...du...du." our games involved lots of running, flailing and screeching. Impressive thing is, she didn't even crash right away in the car, she lasted a good 30 minutes.
One best parts of visiting the McPenberthy's at Monopuss Manor, are the Dogs. We would sit out back and throw a ball for hours. In addition to the fun puppies to entertain Leah (and her dad), the weather was gorgeous, no humidity and no bugs. Dirk, Jeannie and Kelly kept making these amazing meals that we could eat on the back patio. Strap the baby into her chair and we could chow down on Alaskan Salmon, King Crab and Stuffed Blueberry French Toast Croissants. I think I gained a few pounds. Which is not surprising considering how many pounds of Fondue I ate.
Leah's favorite backyard activity must have been collecting rocks. Dirk and I took her out behind the back yard so that he could run the dogs a bit more, and she started picking up rocks as best she could and when he noticed that she could only carry three at a time, Dirk set out to get her a pail. Turns out a Tupperware bowl is a lot like a pail. Especially when filled with rocks. From then on, we where in serious rock collecting mode. So the rock beds all around the edge of Monopuss Manor were really handy.
We didn't say at their house the entire time, though I would have been happy to hang out there -- between the back yard, the dogs and FotC on OnDemand, I really didn't want to leave. However, we were in CO, and there were fun things to go do. And we did a few.
First one was the Air Force Academy. Which is across the street from their place. Kelly and I being a couple of AF brats, we had a good time. Checked out the Chapel and looked at a few planes on display. Pretty fancy campus. We went from there to the Olympic Training center and wondered around. We were there late so they didn't have any tours still, but Leah had a good time running around in the little courtyard.
The highlight of our excursions had to be the Zoo. We went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which was a really fun little place. Little miss was pretty overwhelmed while we were there, but was also very interested in everything. She was clearly tired but never got fussy. Just went hard until she crashed in her stroller.
Labels: friends, leah, vacation
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Leah is more fun than programming
I know I have been really bad about about keeping up with my blog. In the past I would make long senseless posts about wushu between the fun adventure posts. Well, since I haven’t been doing much of that (and when I do I mostly just work basics and get sore), I don’t have that stuff to post about. Now, there are more adventures, nearly all inspired or caused my the little miss, but work has been nuts so I am falling behind on them.
I could replace the wushu posts with programming posts, but I am not sure that is what my audience (read: Kelly) wants to read about. Not that they wanted to read about wushu, but it was an easy topic that was constantly on my mind. So now that programming is my idée fixe I figured maybe I should write about that. So here goes:
I just spend the last few days trying to figure out some weird C Runtime Library (CRT) issues with our new installer. We had always built things as multithreaded, not multithreaded dll, so it was never a problem. We would much rather have larger exe’s than to redistribute the msvc dlls. Well, turns out that you can’t build C++/CLI mixed mode code as multithreaded, so you have to dynamically link to the CRT if you want to build with /cli. Drat. I just want to statically link and be done with it. This was annoying because I didn’t notice until after I deployed on a machine with out the Visual Studio installed, and it would crash hard and give me this fancy FileNotFound error. I read all about manifests and how to embed them, but Visual Studio’s linker automatically does that for me – eventually I figured out that we were trying to use the redist dll’s from VS2005, but built out lib with VS2005sp1! Egads! Now that I have the correct version of the dlls, I think we are in business.
And that’s why they call them business socks.
Hmm, maybe, I shouldn’t write about that stuff – and if I want to I will need to make the articles useful, and that takes lot of time. Plus my audience really just wants to hear A) Stories about Leah B) Funny stories or C) Funny stories about Leah.
They would prolly love to hear about how Leah got my wallet, emptied it’s contents, stuck the post-it’s on her belly and handed me the empty shell with a big grin on her face. I think she hid one of my credit cards. Hopefully this is not foreshadowing.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Babes in Blacksburg (aka, can we please not be in the car anymore, dad?)
Ride down: Well it didn’t start out so smoothly. Work exploded so Kelly & Leah went home to pack on their own and pick me up on the way out of town. Leah apparently wasn’t thrilled with this idea and has to get a playmate from down the street to distract her as Kelly packed. Then the ladies swooped in and picked me up. A quick dinner at Baja and we were on our way. The little girl was asleep before we hit 81 (and nearly hit a cayote). Things went fine for a while until we hit traffic and Leah woke up. She cried for 20 minutes or so while we pretended not to be there and eventually went back to sleep. We arrived at our hotel at 12:30am and there was a line to check in. We all got into bed and were happy to be near The Promised Land.
Friday we got up and Kelly had a stupid meeting on her stupid phone. So Leah and I decided to go to Walmart to play for a bit. But we got lost. They seem to have installed a dozen or so overpasses for no apparent reason. However, as a side benefit we discovered that nice part of Christiansburg – The Toy Station, antique shops, The Chocolate Spike, Dude’s Drive In and Due South BBQ.
Our adventures (and the less than normal night’s sleep) had tuckered out the little girl so we went back to the hotel for naps. Despite being exhausted Leah fought going to sleep and stood up in the Pack-N-Play looking around. Kelly & I had to dive onto the floor and army-crawl behind the bed so Leah couldn’t see us. Once Leah was asleep we moved to the bed and the three of us slept soundly for three hours! We all felt like new people when we woke up. And hungry people. Our dilemma: where to eat lunch. I told Kelly about Due South and she agreed that we should check it out – after all, the baby is a fan of BBQ.
Due South was great. The food was awesome and Leah rocked out to bluegrass. The only problem was that it wasn’t a nostalgic place for us. We decided that we should go there lots so that we could make it a nostalgic place and go there every time we’re in town.
From there we headed to the main event – Blacksburg. Kelly was getting nervous as we got closer and closer to town – it might not like her anymore – and all our driving around to find a good parking spot was just making it worse. Eventually we said any spot will do and got out to breathe Blacksburg air. We wandered around Steppin’ Out looking at all the booths and telling Leah things like “That’s where Daddy used to get his hair cut,” or “Mommy once sat on that bench eating ice cream in the winter.” The only thing we bought from one of the vendors (if you don’t count the tasty limeade) was a knit hat for Leah and headed off for the air conditioned book store to do some real buying.
Kelly has wanted to get Leah a cheerleader outfit all summer so she made a beeline for the baby section. We picked up half a dozen other shirts and a few little trinkets but not nearly as much as we anticipated. There were no “Hokies United” shirts and they won’t have more in until the end of the month. We could enter a raffle at Steppin’ Out but I think we’ll just order some when they’re back in stock. Man I wanted one of those shirts. We then proceeded to hit up every Tech paraphernalia store between there and our car. But not before spending some quality time on the Drill field since we had to introduce Leah to Kelly’s tree. Kelly and I just sat for a while and Leah ran around picking up leaves and whatnot.
Once it became clear that Leah needed to get a nap we headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately the baby fell asleep in the car and we didn’t have the heart to mover her. So we sat in the car. She woke up after about an hour and we were off to dinner. We’d already decided we were going to Bogen’s. I was a little ethrown off, because the menu no longer looked like a monopoly board, but the food was still tasty.
We headed back to the hotel and proceeded to prep the baby for bed. She was clearly tired, and we figured she would go to sleep quick and easy. We were wrong and wrong. I walked her. Kelly walked her. She was wired. This went on for a couple of hours. The elaborate forts we built to shield the us from Leah’s view went down, as we were just too tired to deal with them (and if we were gonna go to sleep right away, there was no point). If we were at home we would have put her in her crib and let to put herself to sleep, but we couldn’t do that in the hotel -- especially after we found that she liked to entertain herself by banging on the walls.
Around 11 she was finally out, and so were we. Up early and armed with the knowledge that we were going to be kicked out of the hotel by 1, we set out to make Leah as tired as possible so she could have an early nap. We did what any good parent visiting Blacksburg would do. Head to the toy department at Wal-mart. We also fit in a tasty breakfast at Cracker Barrel, with grits galore—but then it was back to the room for a nap.
We were smart and hung the DND tag on the door handle. Leah cooperated and crashed for us. We slept too. The house keeping lady banged on the door a little after noon. I opened the door and said no thanks. That woke up the baby and we were up for good. I’ll get you eh house keeping!
But we packed and loaded up the car and hit up Macado’s for lunch before the trip to the duck pond. We fed them our left over crusts from lunch and half a grilled cheese sandwich. Them ducks, they loved it. We even found a mama duck with a dozen fluffy yellow babies, and since they were babies Leah shared her stars. They didn’t eat them. I think they were too little to eat the stars. Poor ducklings, stars are good.
As we were headed into campus to make our way back to main street Kelly and I decided we were just too exhausted to last the rest of the day and headed back to the car to journey northward. We wound up skipping the home place, but it was the right call. We’s was tired.
Leah did great for the first few hours in the car. She was awake and mostly happy – eventually dozed off for about an hour. She came to about the time we hit I-66 and decided she had enough of that stupid car seat and wanted out. So she screamed. A lot.
We had this theory that she was hungry and wanted to run around for a bit. So we asked tom tom for suggestions and he lead us to Old Carolina Smokehouse in Hay marked VA – which was awesome. Leah didn’t want to eat or run around. She just wanted to not go back in her seat. So we ate and put her back in her seat. She screamed for most of the 45 mins home – which was not awesome.
Back at Ft. Truxion little miss was as happy as could be. Running around with her new orange and maroon pom poms, flogging the cats. Giggling.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Leah likes to be tall.
I know this because she has taken to walking around only on her tippy toes. That, and she likes to climb. She is a mini Sherpa. Which is impressive because Sherpas are quite small. I even had a lady comment that leah was just learning to walk because "look how she walks on her toes." That just proves that ladies can be pretty dumb. Take that toe-lady.
Last night we had a big accomplishment, followed by a bit of despair on our part. Leah figured out how to eat with a fork. She took an empty fork, speared a piece of tilapia piccata, and stuck it in her mouth. We cheered. She continued fumble around with the fork, occasionally getting more food, but mostly getting food close to her mouth before knocking it off the fork. The despair kicked in when we noticed she wouldn’t let us feed her, she had to feed herself. Moreover, she wouldn’t use her hand to pickup the food either, she was all about the flat ware. Eating took a long, long time. Luckily, Kelly figured out how to sneak in a few bites when Leah brought an empty fork to her mouth. Sure, it sped up dinner that night, but it might be reinforcing bad fork skills with tasty fish reward.
Parenting is hard.
Labels: leah
Monday, July 02, 2007
The Big One.
Leah turned one yesterday and we had the party to prove it. It was a few weeks of planning on Kelly's part, then there was a couple of days of baking and prepping. Mostly baking. We baked 4 cakes, carved one into a penguin and added a few few basketfuls of cupcakes just for fun. Turns out that cake decorating is a really good grip strength exercise.
We were going to do practice cakes on Friday, so Kelly made a quick cake mix into a sheet cake and we carved it out into a penguin and iced it. Well, he turned out cute, so we decided that we were going to keep him for the party and promptly decreed that no one is to harm the penguin-cake and tucked him away in the fridge.
Saturday we made the Big bear and two little bear cakes and got to icing them up. It was also when we really had to get the house cleaned up nicely, if anything to make room for all the loot Leah was going to collect.
Sunday was beautiful, we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. It wasn't oppressively hot, or raining--just nice. Kelly and I headed down to the lake to setup and get ready, and found Nanjo and Kids there waiting for us. Our picnic area was nice and shady, with a polite breeze. We filled balloons, and set up table clothes and waited for Grandma to bring the birthday girl. Leah was pretty happy, I thought she would be in a better mood, but she wasn't unhappy by any means. She didn't mind people holding her (except Todd) and was more than happy eating her little cake. However, she didn't do face first dive into it, to my dismay.
I think all the kids had a good time--Everett, Neal and I played Frisbee with the older kids for bit. There was plenty of playground to handle the pandemonium.
Labels: leah
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Quick and boring recap.
Well I have spent the last two weeks a little under the weather. I am doing much better now, but it was a little rough for a while. The doc said that I had some sort of viral sinus infection. Hooked me up with some pain killers, antibiotics and a decongestant. I have finished the antibiotics, and am doing much better now.
This past weekend we took Leah for her fist Ikea trip. She loves shopping, always looking around at all the things to see, wanting to 'get' everything. Ikea was great as far as she was concerned. We let her run around and explore, fed her meatballs and potatoes. Well, I should say Kelly fed her those things. I gave her a fork full of lingdon berries right after we sat down and she made a very sour face and didn't trust me to feed her again for the rest of our meal.
Last week Kelly and I actually got to have a date night. Grandma came over and swiped the baby from daycare and we had Thursday night to go out. We went and got tapas at La Tasca in Clarendon, which was made the lady very happy. She loves her some Tapas. We then went to a quaint little toy store and I bought Leah a book, which I am saving for her birthday.
After that we jumped in the car and headed home. I think we were in bed by 9:30, for sleeping. We are that Wild. 9:30.
I think we slept for 12 hours. It was awesome.
That next Friday the Tulli came into the city to return our child at M&S grill, but I had to work late and missed most of dinner. They had a spiffy little cubby booth in the back that Leah could run around under the table and look out the window. I eventually showed up just after dessert with C-Dub and we had a tasty beverage and fun apa-teaser.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Hot licks
Today Leah, Kelly and I were in the kitchen playin' magnets and doing some dishes. Leah toddles over to the dishwasher in her normal baby like way and starts licking it. She turns around and says a few baby-gibberish things to Kelly who simply assumes that the little girl was trying to persuade her to join in the dishwasher licking. So my brilliant wife says "okay!" scoots over and licks the dishwasher too.
I just though that needed be said.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
An email from my wife about my daughter
Yep, this morning she's your daughter. Not mine, yours. I would never behave like she did.
So I put her in the car and detect a slight odor. I should have gone in and changed her then, but I figured we'd be ok and I wasn't even sure I smelled anything.
When we got to Mrs. Malik's I started putting her shoes on her and definitely smelled a smell. Pungent. (Ok, that sounds like she's my daughter, but I never really agreed to that nickname.) She was getting fidgety (your daughter) and turned herself over in her seat and tried to climb up out of it into the front seats (your daughter).
As she stood up I noticed a rather large brown streak down the back of her darling pink pants.
Not knowing how liquidy said brown mess was I held her very gingerly as I carried her in.
We went straight for the changing mat and I wouldn't let her sit down lest she soil the carpet too.
The brown mess was caked onto her pants and leg.
I cleaned her leg up some and laid her down to change her diaper.
I got the diaper off, I had her mostly cleaned up and then it happened.
She grinned, she grinned first I tell you, and then peed. Peed on mom. Or at least near mom.
She soaked her shirt, her sweater and her back. I'm surprised her hair wasn't wet.
And she was giggling.
I got her clothes off of her and she popped right up and started trying to run around naked. She was as happy as could be. Naked and free.
I eventually wrangled her into some clothes and got myself and her super cute clothes cleaned up.
Your. Daughter.
No doubt about it.
It was definitely a more eventful morning than I had planned, but now I'm at work and will be in boring meetings until 4 so I guess I needed some eventfulness. And that definitely sounds like you.
Well I should run. And boy, it's taken all sorts of self control to not call you and tell you this. But I wanted you to sleep.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Why to you come to my blog?
Since it has been so long since I made a real post, I could tell you about my 20+ hour coding weekend or my fun out-of-the-blue promotion or other work things but we all know you are here for one reason, and one reason only.
Pictures of the baby. Now, I may be wrong, and you would rather me drone on and on about wushu nonsense, but I am gonna go with my huntch, and simply leave you with Leah in photo awesomeness form.
There is toys in this here chest
Bath duck gets kisses.
Gettin' some stars
Catch Dad!
Labels: leah
Friday, April 27, 2007
Pitter patter of little feet
Whew, I gotta stay up-to-date with this thing here, because when you fall behind it becomes rather daunting to think about the huge write up that is necessary to bring things up to date.
Well, lets start with a quick recap of recent events.
I spent last week in Austin. Kelly even came out for a while. The original idea was that I would be there two weeks ago, but out meetings got moved *after* we booked the tickets. So, we did things in reverse. She went with me to teas on Friday and returned Sunday with out me. I have decided that was not the way to do it, our original plan was much better. You have to bear in mind that this was the first time Kelly was away from Leah overnight. That's a huge deal for any mother. Honestly, I think she handled it great--but there was a few bumps along the way. I think they can all be attributed to the baby being off her normal routine. Nobody told me how crucial the baby's routine was going to be.
Got that Tom? Routine. Schedule. They are your friends.
The rest of the week was full of brutal meetings (can I say code audits), and awesome food. Austin is known for Tex-mex and BBQ. In heaven I don't plan on eating anything other than Tex-mex and BBQ. Needless to say I was happy. And in case your wondering I like County Line over Salt Lick. Both were great, but County Line had a talking cow head on the wall (and ribs that appeared to be from a brontosaur).
I was very happy to finally return home. I came in the door and the first thing Leah did was walk to me. She was holding onto the couch and just turned and nearly ran to me. Sure, some might call it a controlled fall, but is was definitely walking. Over the course of this week she has been doing more and more toddling around. I think the practice outside on the uneven grass has helped, it is much easier to walk on a flat carpet once you have been battling hills, sticks and pine cones.
Since I got back, I've had a new sense of urgency for my work, so I have been pushing hard on that. Poor C-Dub, I abuse that guy. Thank God he's there. I meant to go to wushu on Tuesday, but forgot my shoes. I was going to go yesterday but wound up working till 7. I am feeling fat and inflexible.
Ok, Imma go do the splits. Cause I am cool like that.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Poor Baby
Our poor little girl.
We took her into the doctor because she had a fever and was clearly feeling bad, and they proceeded to dig a bunch of earwax out only to find she had an ear infection. The next week we took her back for her well visit, where they poked her with needles (she was extremely well behaved, however). The next day her face broke out in a rash and was very congested. You could hear it in her chest. Fever was back. We returned to the doc to ask about her rash. She had another ear infection in her other ear. What kind of crappy antibiotics was she on for the first one. The rash turned out to be some sort of Amoxicillin induced virus, which wouldn't have broken out if she had not been on the drugs. They gave us new antibiotics for her new ear infection and some 'good luck' for the cold and rash. Oh, it has spread to her arms and legs now. This has to be the worst thing as a parent ever. I want to take it away and give it to me.
Our poor little girl.
Labels: leah
Thursday, March 15, 2007
C-O-H-F Based Propulsion
I came home tonight and found this on the fridge.
Swingin' on some swings!
We Built a fort at work. It was not appreciated. Drat monkeys.
I know I have been leaving poor 'lil bloggie out of the loop recently, so here is a little recap.
As you can see from the pictures Leah is promptly becoming the cutest baby ever. She properly fun now. I know Kelly liked her teeny tiny little baby, but seriously, all she did was lie around and poo. Now she can crawl--and when she wants to crawl fast. It is the best thing, when she gets going really fast she does this high stepping thing where she picks up her knees and hands as high as she can then slams them back down on the floor to propel her along. I would think it would hurt her knees, but she doesn't seem to mind.
Yesterday she was wearing a pretty, pretty dress and had a hard time crawling in it. Being the resourceful kid she is, she developed a crazy crawling-on-her-feet technique. COHF (pronounced cough) propulsion. She scooted across the floor with them little bloomers sticking up in the air, attacking the cats and removing magnets form the fridge with glee.
Last night I was supposed to go to wushu since Wednesday is the early class, but I skipped because it was so nice out side and I wanted to play with my ladies. And we played out in the front yard, chatted with the neighbors and ate leaves. Well, one of us ate leaves. Them leafs might be more fun than toys. I still think pinecones and sticks are all the toys kids need. Not that I don't want to buy more toys (the little people sets are crazy fun, I want the Pirate Ship. And the Zoo. And the Barn) but I think kids have just as much fun with the basics. And we need to be saving, because there is one day that she will want iFrogs and sellPhones and other crazy gadgets (the answer of course is no, sorry Leah).
At work I have been buried in my big project. It is a lot of fun to design and build a big component from the ground up, but the fact that it is about 3 times more complicated than it needs to be is a little unsettling. You may ask, Chris, if you designed and built it, why0oh-why is it so much more complicated than it needs to be. Well, it's in the requirements. Specifically it needed to be buzzword compliant. The software world is obsessed with these words and all their buzzing. It has really gotten our of hand.
Of course we have been fairly agreeable on this specific project, because if it works out like we hope it will, then we can do some cool stuff down the line. Way down the line, but this gets a big item crossed off our list.
Unfortunately, all this work at work (and at home) leave no time for personal geeky projects. The last thing I did was shorten my mouse cord. While useful I also have a couple of bigger projects I really should pay attention to--specifically the wushu tournament software I'd like to dig into. Hopefully I will have time to get into that before this summer.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Raspberry Avenger
I know it has been way too long since my last post, but I will make up for it with some leah pictures.
Since I last posted we have been to Texas to visit great grandparents and have started standing on our own. Crawling faster and getting into stuff like crazy. Whew.
Catching Snowflakes
Reading Books
Breaking out of the baby cage
Breakin' stuff
Playing with Unky Neal and a Penguin
Great Grandpa Jim has something on his face.
Aunt Claudia and the baby with one sock
Labels: leah
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Take that washing machine!
Our washing machine is fixed. Kelly proclaimed that I was the hero. I like that.
Now, the lulaby that I made up for Leah:
Hush little baby, don't say a word
Daddy's gonna buy you the Hokie Bird
And if the hokie bird don't gobble
daddy's gonna buy you a weeble wobble
And if that weeble wobble falls down
Daddy's gonna buy you a pretty gown
And if that pretty gown don't fit
Daddy's gonna buy you a baseball mitt
And if that mitt don't catch
Daddy's gonna buy you a wodden match
And if that match won't light
Daddy's gonna buy you a bright red kite
And if that Kite won't fly
Daddy's gonna sing you a lulaby
And if that lulaby don't rhyme
Then it must be baby girl's bed time
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Watch out Chompers and Nibbles!
Slicer and Dicer are coming.
Baby girl actually slept through the night last night, and I credit the Tylenol. We had a number of mid-night wakings recently, coupled with a grumpy girl that didn't want to take her bottle when we she was going down for bed. So we were uncertain if she was hungry and fed her in the wee hours. But last night was a success. And we had a happy smiley baby this morning all alert and ready to play with toys.
I can't blame her toys are fun.
I just wanted to tell you about the new teeth, and if anyone as any suggestions for names of teeth, please let me know. Because I have already started down that path and it might be too late to not name them all.
Back to CSS hell. Holla.
Labels: leah
Monday, December 25, 2006
Merry 1st Christmas
Leah's first Christmas--fun for all!
Rawr--I'm a present!
I hope it is toys.
Opening presents is hard work, makes you a little sleepy.
The fam.
Tune in next time for sitting up, crawling, and holding a bottle on our own. Until then, dad needs to rest, he caught baby's cold. Uuunnnnahhhh. *cough*
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Chompers!
Leah may have shed her squeakers nickname but she has officially picked up a new one, Chompers. All the drooling and fussing and grumble cakes has produced her first tooth. It is not all the way though, so we are still a bit grumpy, but I am certain she will have it in properly by Christmas. Front teeth for Christmas! Good timing baby!
She is about over he cold, about finished with this tooth almost back to her happy self. I was getting worried we were not going to see the happy Leah again. Normally in the morning she is all smiles, or if you lie her down in her pack and play she would dance and coo, but recently if we set her down she should immediately get mad and scream some unhappy things. She is not back to her super happy self but we are making huge progress.
Labels: leah
Monday, December 18, 2006
Poor little girl.
But first, an easy way to feel stupid:
After making an appointment and writing down the directions I hopped in the truck and drove it to the appointment I had made to get the check engine light looked at. Unfortunately the engine light was on in Kelly's car, not my truck. That got me into work a little later than I had planned.
Leah wasn't feeling too good this past weekend. She has officially been sick now. We almost made it 6 months with out her getting ill, yesterday she had a fever and a lot of congestion. She had actually been congested for a few days before that, nothing too bad just a snuffly nose. Yesterday was different, she didn't eat too much and she grumbled all day. Never a full cry, but a constant complaining whimper. Easily the saddest sounds ever. The congestion provoked a nasty cough. We tried to suction the boogies out of her nose, with some success, but that makes her super mad. She sure loves her boogies and doesn’t like it when we take them.
We called to doctor once her fever broker 100, but they seem to think it is an ear infection. I am not so sure, the internet tells me that teething can cause these symptoms so I am inclined to think that is the cause. Kelly should be at the doctor now and we will find out for sure. Luckily we had a regularly scheduled appointment today.
The rest of the weekend was fun, had a couple of holiday gatherings. Games night was the biggest ever. Darpa peoples we run but Kelly missed out because of the baby (and honestly she was the one everyone wanted to see). We even had a fun lunch with the Suns at a crazy Japanese buffet in
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Smores and Foofs: Smfoof
I spent most of last week in Austin with work, then we headed out to San Diego for an entire day before getting home just in time for my birthday. My ladies and I had a nice birthday weekend, very low key. We spent a lot of the weekend hanging out in the basement near a nice fire. Smores and foof chairs for everyone. Kelly got Leah and I matching Virginia Tech hoodies--the best birthday presents ever.
Things at work have seemed to calm down. That's mostly because our "partner" has decided to not actually do anything at all, so we can just do it. Sad thing is it reduces the amount of work we have to do. Thus the reason for the quote marks around partner.
Christmas is fast approaching and we are completely unprepared. Normally Kelly handles all the Christmas shopping for us, but her little helper is impairing the ability to waste hours running around malls. We wanted to try and do all our gift shopping online, but I am worried we missed the deadline for shipping in time for Christmas. So if you get a gift card from us please don't think we are anti-thoughtful, we are just first time parents who like our baby too much to drag her to an over crowded tysons corner after her bed time.
I actually went to wushu last night, first time in a few weeks. Stephon is back and it seemed like he never left. Heck it was better than before he left. I think is break was good for the guy. And I am very happy to have adults back in class. Not that I am ever in class, but on the rare occasion that I make it, it is nice. I did come to the conclusion that on the days I train I don't get to see my daughter. I don't like that one bit. And my knee was bugging me a little, but I think with this can't-see-Leah thing that is not going to be the thing holding me back.
Leah has developed a new trick. She dances. If she is lying on her back she will grin real big and sorta bend her torso back and forth to the sides. It is the greatest thing ever. I am fairly convinced she is mimicking her mom and I. We will often lie her in the pack and play and sing and dance to her, which she finds very entertaining. This trick is almost as much fun as her big greeting smile when you walk in the room and she recognizes you.
Stuff like that makes me want to go snatch her out of the crib in the middle of the night to play. Her mom won't let her come down to play though. Party pooper.
Labels: leah
