Felix had his first "solid food" yesterday night in the form of rice cereal in breast milk. And, of course, he was a natural and didn't spit any of it out. A little bit dribbled out the side of his mouth while he was chewing, but otherwise he took it all right from the spoon and gobbled it down. He's really been chomping at the bit to start eating anyway, so I think he's been waiting for this.
Also, his 6 month appointment was on Friday. He's 18lbs, 4 1/4 oz, 27 inches tall. He's in the 70 something percentile for height, 60-something for weight, and high-fifty-something for head circumference. He's a growing boy. It was also the first doctor appt that he didn't have a major poop during.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
pop goes the weasel
What a week. Work is super super busy. I've just been told that my promotion went through, so I'm now a Systems Engineer (no longer "Associate"), whatever that means. Winter heating bills suck, which is part of why I hate winter so much these days. Next year I think we'll hop on one of those set-billing-rate plans where they estimate your annual gas cost and then distribute it across 12 months, so you end up paying more per month in the spring, summer, and fall, but less in winter (this last gas bill was $300 and I expect January, February, and March to be even worse, even if I am able to get some heating holes patched). So, if I had been smart last summer when they gave me the option to start paying like $168 a month for gas I would have taken it. At the time, comparing $168 to an average gas bill of something like $30-$60, I went for the regular monthly billing because we had the baby and all and, as usual, when iopt for the "mo'money now" it always bites me in the ass later. You wonder how come you've gotten promotions and raises five times in the last two years and still its the beginning of winter and you're scratching out an existence from paycheck to paycheck? Oh, well, while your annual pay has gone up almost 30%, you've also lost the second family income, your monthly housing cost has gone up $1000 a month, and your monthly bills have gone up because you are now paying gas, sewage, water, garbage on top of electric, internet, and phonebill. So, apparently while it LOOKS like I've done a great job of increasing my net worth/earning power I have also increased my cost of living at the same rate. So...its sort of a sad statement.
On the one hand, it helps me rally look forward to warmer weather when we'll have a couple hundred bucks left over after paying bills, and on top of that we'll hopefully have those habits that allowed us to live through the winter, so maybe that extra money will add up somewheres and we can really start planning for our future. So far, we've really just been planning for now, doing for now. We have "plans", but they are really just goals that we're not able to put much substance behind as of yet. I'm still hoping that I'll get an increase at annual review time, which is in the next couple months. The way I see it, the promotion is a reflection of my over-all worth to the company and the expectation of what I will accomplish and an annual review increase is a combination of cost-of-living increase and merit for performance over the previous 12 months.
On the one hand, it helps me rally look forward to warmer weather when we'll have a couple hundred bucks left over after paying bills, and on top of that we'll hopefully have those habits that allowed us to live through the winter, so maybe that extra money will add up somewheres and we can really start planning for our future. So far, we've really just been planning for now, doing for now. We have "plans", but they are really just goals that we're not able to put much substance behind as of yet. I'm still hoping that I'll get an increase at annual review time, which is in the next couple months. The way I see it, the promotion is a reflection of my over-all worth to the company and the expectation of what I will accomplish and an annual review increase is a combination of cost-of-living increase and merit for performance over the previous 12 months.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
flipped the switch
Who turned off the global warming? Suddenly it's 5 degrees. Suddenly, the house is really really cold. When the temp was hovering around 20-35 degrees the radiators were doing a good job of keeping the house around 70-72 degrees all over. Now that the temp has drastically dropped and stayed down, upstairs is hovering around 70 and most of downstairs is too...but there's a drastic thermal layer at knee level where the temperature seems to drop to, oh, 40 degrees? Yeah, and I can actually feel the cold air flowing in through my swiss cheese 100 year old windows. Looks like I'm gonna have to really figure out what to do. Some windows we can shrink wrap, but others we'd like to be able to open and close the shade, so we need to figure out another way to seal them up.
I don't know why, possibly because its just a major change, but not having a dog anymore makes me feel like I'll somehow have more time to do things around the house. We are still feeling the reverberations of Ash's absence in major ways and I'm trying to keep positive about it. I do believe he stands a good chance of finding a home. I try not to think of the alternative. His absence is felt here in many subtle ways. Lack of constance activity, no clackety-clack of his nails on the floors, no loud baby-waking racket from his controlled falling up or down the stairs, and the kitchen and dining room floors are no longer magically free of dropped food bits. Andrea was cooking dinner the other night and I head, "Ahhh! What's all this?!" as she stepped on a dropped piece of mushroom or carrot or shredded cheese. Now she understands why Ash was always hovering around her legs while she cooked.
I find myself reflexively chastising Ash when I hear random house-settling noises, only to realize that there is no real noise and no dog causing it. Just a passing car or a rattling pipe. I think I'll slowly be cleaning up the remaining evidence of his presence, storing what's in good condition or memory worthy, and throwing out or donating everything else.
On the other hand, there are as many times every day when I feel liberated or relieved. It was a poor choice on my part to adopt Ash when I did, or even at all. My responsibility to care for him has influenced and even directed many of my past decisions and I shudder to think how my life may have been different had i not adopted him. We both benefitted, for sure, but we both also suffered as well. To not have that one additional, very large, responsibility looming over everything else is amazing. Andrea and Felix and Ash were not the only ones who were being held captive in our house. All of my travel decisions, living arangements, etc, have all been somewhat dictated by how Ash could be fit into the equation. Finding someone to house/dog sit, finding a place that ALLOWS dogs, and has a place he can be safely kept when I'm away, finding a place to kennel him, paying fines for barking complaints, losing damage deposit due to property damage, strained relations with neighbors, roommates, spouses, and family. Even as recent as Felix's birth, we had to work around Ash's special needs. We actually took Ash to the hospital and he stayed in our car while Felix was born. I brough him back home when my parents were able to come up and watch him, and obviously on the day of the birth of their baby's baby, the last thing they really wanted to do was stay at home to take care of the dog.
Anyway...I think it is due in large part to the drastic change in our family that everyone is feeling like we're in a new stage, like a new family paradigm is arising...
My last living grandparent, my grandmother, is having some medical difficulties. Should something happen that requires me, or me and my family, to make a trip somewhere, I can now do it. Arranging time off from work is easy, not much of an impediment. Now the only thing keeping us from going somewhere is our own resources and time, not the added difficulty of finding someone to be our surrogates at our house.
It feels like a new day. I hope it is like a new, better day for Ash as well. I miss him terribly, but I also feel tremendously relieved.
I don't know why, possibly because its just a major change, but not having a dog anymore makes me feel like I'll somehow have more time to do things around the house. We are still feeling the reverberations of Ash's absence in major ways and I'm trying to keep positive about it. I do believe he stands a good chance of finding a home. I try not to think of the alternative. His absence is felt here in many subtle ways. Lack of constance activity, no clackety-clack of his nails on the floors, no loud baby-waking racket from his controlled falling up or down the stairs, and the kitchen and dining room floors are no longer magically free of dropped food bits. Andrea was cooking dinner the other night and I head, "Ahhh! What's all this?!" as she stepped on a dropped piece of mushroom or carrot or shredded cheese. Now she understands why Ash was always hovering around her legs while she cooked.
I find myself reflexively chastising Ash when I hear random house-settling noises, only to realize that there is no real noise and no dog causing it. Just a passing car or a rattling pipe. I think I'll slowly be cleaning up the remaining evidence of his presence, storing what's in good condition or memory worthy, and throwing out or donating everything else.
On the other hand, there are as many times every day when I feel liberated or relieved. It was a poor choice on my part to adopt Ash when I did, or even at all. My responsibility to care for him has influenced and even directed many of my past decisions and I shudder to think how my life may have been different had i not adopted him. We both benefitted, for sure, but we both also suffered as well. To not have that one additional, very large, responsibility looming over everything else is amazing. Andrea and Felix and Ash were not the only ones who were being held captive in our house. All of my travel decisions, living arangements, etc, have all been somewhat dictated by how Ash could be fit into the equation. Finding someone to house/dog sit, finding a place that ALLOWS dogs, and has a place he can be safely kept when I'm away, finding a place to kennel him, paying fines for barking complaints, losing damage deposit due to property damage, strained relations with neighbors, roommates, spouses, and family. Even as recent as Felix's birth, we had to work around Ash's special needs. We actually took Ash to the hospital and he stayed in our car while Felix was born. I brough him back home when my parents were able to come up and watch him, and obviously on the day of the birth of their baby's baby, the last thing they really wanted to do was stay at home to take care of the dog.
Anyway...I think it is due in large part to the drastic change in our family that everyone is feeling like we're in a new stage, like a new family paradigm is arising...
My last living grandparent, my grandmother, is having some medical difficulties. Should something happen that requires me, or me and my family, to make a trip somewhere, I can now do it. Arranging time off from work is easy, not much of an impediment. Now the only thing keeping us from going somewhere is our own resources and time, not the added difficulty of finding someone to be our surrogates at our house.
It feels like a new day. I hope it is like a new, better day for Ash as well. I miss him terribly, but I also feel tremendously relieved.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
doggone
I took Ash to a shelter yesterday so he could hopefully get adopted by a new family. It was possibly the hardest thing I've ever done, even though it had to be done and has a good chance of providing all of use (Ash included) much happier outcomes. I bawled in the car in the parking lot for about 20 minutes afterwards. Please don't ask me about it or send emails.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
sunday morning post
Felix has finally gone down for his nap, Andrea is at the Y, and I'm here at home, finishing my coffee and scribbling some thoughts here.
First- news of the weird/disturbing nature.
Yesterday I discovered a breadstick on the outside windowsill of our front picture window. This was the thick style of breadstick that you might get with a plate of spaghetti. Alone this would seem strange. This is the third known incident of pastry being left on our porch. The first time I discovered a half eaten danish on the front porch railing. The second time it was a half-eaten bagel left in the bottom most corner of porch floor, on the alley side. In both of these cases, someone could have easily walked up the the porch and left said breads on our porch without really coming onto the porch. Once from the front, once possibly from the side by the alley. At first it was kind of funny and we noticed both instances shortly after a visit from Andrea's helper. Andrea thought it sounded like something she might have done (ditching a food item right before "arriving"). Well, this last time it was on the windowsill, as if someone were standing on our porch, right by the picture window, and carefully set their leftover food right on the corner of the sill.
So...yeah, a bit creepy. Andrea is very upset that Ash has never made a peep about these visits. I expect it is because he is asleep when this happens, so of course he's not going to hear it. For christmas from Andrea's dad we got a wireless video baby monitor system and an all-weather outdoor wireless camera that I will probably get mounted pretty quickly now that we have someone we'd like to catch. I'm suspecting it's some guys from the apartment building that are hanging around in the alley waiting for someone who think its funny to leave bagels or something on someone's house.
Well, we're gonna get that guy on candid camera. Of course, all of that does depend a bit on the final piece which connects to the computer via USB and lets you monitor and record to your hard drive. We also got a camera monitoring program from the same company that will do things like time-lapse and motion detection. And it will automatically encode the archives into divx format so it won't take up loads of space.
Well, thats all for now. Only took me 2 days to get this one post out...
First- news of the weird/disturbing nature.
Yesterday I discovered a breadstick on the outside windowsill of our front picture window. This was the thick style of breadstick that you might get with a plate of spaghetti. Alone this would seem strange. This is the third known incident of pastry being left on our porch. The first time I discovered a half eaten danish on the front porch railing. The second time it was a half-eaten bagel left in the bottom most corner of porch floor, on the alley side. In both of these cases, someone could have easily walked up the the porch and left said breads on our porch without really coming onto the porch. Once from the front, once possibly from the side by the alley. At first it was kind of funny and we noticed both instances shortly after a visit from Andrea's helper. Andrea thought it sounded like something she might have done (ditching a food item right before "arriving"). Well, this last time it was on the windowsill, as if someone were standing on our porch, right by the picture window, and carefully set their leftover food right on the corner of the sill.
So...yeah, a bit creepy. Andrea is very upset that Ash has never made a peep about these visits. I expect it is because he is asleep when this happens, so of course he's not going to hear it. For christmas from Andrea's dad we got a wireless video baby monitor system and an all-weather outdoor wireless camera that I will probably get mounted pretty quickly now that we have someone we'd like to catch. I'm suspecting it's some guys from the apartment building that are hanging around in the alley waiting for someone who think its funny to leave bagels or something on someone's house.
Well, we're gonna get that guy on candid camera. Of course, all of that does depend a bit on the final piece which connects to the computer via USB and lets you monitor and record to your hard drive. We also got a camera monitoring program from the same company that will do things like time-lapse and motion detection. And it will automatically encode the archives into divx format so it won't take up loads of space.
Well, thats all for now. Only took me 2 days to get this one post out...
Friday, January 05, 2007
reading
I'm just about through reading "The Catcher in the Rye". Andrea got it from the library and read it in like a day or two (she reads fast). Immediately she started theorizing that Wes Anderson must have been heavily influenced by J.D. Salinger. One search in Wikipedia confirmed this. I've been reading it so that we can talk about it. We've found that Felix seems more interested in observing us talk about stuff during dinner than watching us watch a show (or rather, trying to watch the show himself). Also, doesn't your life feel more worthwhile when you can read, digest, and discuss a good book with someone you live with? It is important to be able to talk about things outside of your domestic conversational realm like paying bills, doing house work, baby stuff, trying to further your career, etc. It is nice to have intellectually stimulating yet relationship-neutral discussion topics.
That and its nice to have adult conversations that remind us that we are two people who are married because deep down we really do like to talk to each other and can have some great conversations.
That and its nice to have adult conversations that remind us that we are two people who are married because deep down we really do like to talk to each other and can have some great conversations.
Monday, January 01, 2007
premidlife record year comes to an end
Well, as it says in the description, 2006 was the year that it all went down.
Work
House
Baby
Stepped across the adulthood line of no return (turned 31)
How did we say goodbye to the old year? Quietly. The happenings outside were making enough noise that we didn't feel the need to add to it. That and we're all out of fireworks and/or ammunition. I love how since some fireworks are now legal in Minnesota, ALL fireworks are apparently socially acceptable in Minnesota, even in an urban area. And how people feel more free to shoot their guns in the air in the hopes that it will be masked by/mistaken for fireworks. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we heard both gunshots and fireworks last night. I wonder if the ShotSpotter system is in place in my neighborhood yet.
Anyway, we started the year with snow on the ground, a baby in the crib, and Andrea winning at Scrabble. I think this may finally be her year.
Felix is cuter than ever and more gifted and talented and advanced than any other baby on the planet. We're already interviewing recruiters from various ivy league schools. It is a little tricky because so far Felix is undecided about whether he wants to focus his extra-curricular time on intramural lacrosse, judo, chess club, or advanced robotics and industrial design. He's pretty much undecided all around. We won't know for sure until he learns English.
In 2006 Andrea started working on her own magazine, ran an entire design studio essentially by herself (due to high turn-over in all other positions and an ever increasingly insane, bitchy, and wholly unreliable boss), ditched that job for a promising new position at a small furniture design company only to find out she got the old bait-and-switcheroo there(worse position, possibly worse boss), promptly dumped that steaming pile of pucky, went freelance and cranked out a monstrous product catalog for the worst client ever, all before delivering Felix in record time (something like 6 hours, start to finish). And that just brings us to July. After July she went full speed ahead on the mommy path and scaled back her designtrix-extraordinaire efforts just a tad. She joined the local printmaking co-op so that she could screenprint her work rather than shelling out money we don't have for sub-par digital printing. She sent in a poster to a movie festival/art gallery in Cincinnati which sold, and again submitted the same poster at the MCAD artsale where it sold as well. She completed the first in a series of ironic deco-modernist posters and hopes to finish the series in 2007. And of course she has survived being cooped up in our house day-in and day-out due to a very precocious Felix and a separation anxiety ridden german shepherd (more the latter than the former). All in all, a banner year.
Felix spent Jan-July in-utero then joined us on the outsid mid-July. From that point on he's been steadily leading the pack by a several lengths. He regained his birth weight in 2 days, doubled his birth weight in 2 months, and is constantly outgrowing clothing that it one to two age-sizes away. He's a very healthy and robust lad. He is interested in the world around him and he is very keenly aware that we have a dog, though he's not sure what it is for, yet. He reads and writes at the 3rd grade level and is just finishing a series of monographs about "My Pretty Puppy".
It has been a banner year for me as well. I started 2006 with a promotion at work, which included a nifty raise and a move to new new team. Then February I received a great annual review and another happy raise. Both of these played a big part in our ability to finance a house. So we started seriously looking at houses in January, put it on hold for about 2 months, then started again. On May 31, we closed on our house. Yay. We were moved in by June 15th. A month later Felix came flying out like cannonshot. I was present as partner, coach, and clenching-post. The summer seems to have been mostly uneventful aside from googling at Felix every chance we got. Little did we know those were the easy days! As he became more aware of the world, he became more demanding of us. It was no-longer feed me, change my diaper, put me to sleep. It became feed me, change my diaper, entertain me, take me out, show me things, let me watch TV, and I don't want to go to bed yet, I'm just going to wake up in 2 hours anyway so why not cut out the middleman and just let me stay up til then. Andrea and I worked pretty well as a team and the "lack of sleep" really didn't seem to be an issue for the first four months. In September I turned 31 AND made it rain in my kitchen while attempting to DIY some plumbing on the baby room's radiator. In October I got my 3rd raise of the year during the mid-year review. This one appears to be a "industry norm" level-set by HR (i.e. based on your reviews and your current position, we feel we should start paying you what the going rate is for people being recruited into this 'same' position across the industry), but who cares, its mo'money (sorta). Then in November/December I installed a new radiator in our car, saving us hundreds of dollars and gaining 5000 experience points, split between my auto-mechanic skills and manliness attribute. I think I went up a few levels in the process.
So that's 06 in a nutshell.
07 looks to be more of the same :).
Work
House
Baby
Stepped across the adulthood line of no return (turned 31)
How did we say goodbye to the old year? Quietly. The happenings outside were making enough noise that we didn't feel the need to add to it. That and we're all out of fireworks and/or ammunition. I love how since some fireworks are now legal in Minnesota, ALL fireworks are apparently socially acceptable in Minnesota, even in an urban area. And how people feel more free to shoot their guns in the air in the hopes that it will be masked by/mistaken for fireworks. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we heard both gunshots and fireworks last night. I wonder if the ShotSpotter system is in place in my neighborhood yet.
Anyway, we started the year with snow on the ground, a baby in the crib, and Andrea winning at Scrabble. I think this may finally be her year.
Felix is cuter than ever and more gifted and talented and advanced than any other baby on the planet. We're already interviewing recruiters from various ivy league schools. It is a little tricky because so far Felix is undecided about whether he wants to focus his extra-curricular time on intramural lacrosse, judo, chess club, or advanced robotics and industrial design. He's pretty much undecided all around. We won't know for sure until he learns English.
In 2006 Andrea started working on her own magazine, ran an entire design studio essentially by herself (due to high turn-over in all other positions and an ever increasingly insane, bitchy, and wholly unreliable boss), ditched that job for a promising new position at a small furniture design company only to find out she got the old bait-and-switcheroo there(worse position, possibly worse boss), promptly dumped that steaming pile of pucky, went freelance and cranked out a monstrous product catalog for the worst client ever, all before delivering Felix in record time (something like 6 hours, start to finish). And that just brings us to July. After July she went full speed ahead on the mommy path and scaled back her designtrix-extraordinaire efforts just a tad. She joined the local printmaking co-op so that she could screenprint her work rather than shelling out money we don't have for sub-par digital printing. She sent in a poster to a movie festival/art gallery in Cincinnati which sold, and again submitted the same poster at the MCAD artsale where it sold as well. She completed the first in a series of ironic deco-modernist posters and hopes to finish the series in 2007. And of course she has survived being cooped up in our house day-in and day-out due to a very precocious Felix and a separation anxiety ridden german shepherd (more the latter than the former). All in all, a banner year.
Felix spent Jan-July in-utero then joined us on the outsid mid-July. From that point on he's been steadily leading the pack by a several lengths. He regained his birth weight in 2 days, doubled his birth weight in 2 months, and is constantly outgrowing clothing that it one to two age-sizes away. He's a very healthy and robust lad. He is interested in the world around him and he is very keenly aware that we have a dog, though he's not sure what it is for, yet. He reads and writes at the 3rd grade level and is just finishing a series of monographs about "My Pretty Puppy".
It has been a banner year for me as well. I started 2006 with a promotion at work, which included a nifty raise and a move to new new team. Then February I received a great annual review and another happy raise. Both of these played a big part in our ability to finance a house. So we started seriously looking at houses in January, put it on hold for about 2 months, then started again. On May 31, we closed on our house. Yay. We were moved in by June 15th. A month later Felix came flying out like cannonshot. I was present as partner, coach, and clenching-post. The summer seems to have been mostly uneventful aside from googling at Felix every chance we got. Little did we know those were the easy days! As he became more aware of the world, he became more demanding of us. It was no-longer feed me, change my diaper, put me to sleep. It became feed me, change my diaper, entertain me, take me out, show me things, let me watch TV, and I don't want to go to bed yet, I'm just going to wake up in 2 hours anyway so why not cut out the middleman and just let me stay up til then. Andrea and I worked pretty well as a team and the "lack of sleep" really didn't seem to be an issue for the first four months. In September I turned 31 AND made it rain in my kitchen while attempting to DIY some plumbing on the baby room's radiator. In October I got my 3rd raise of the year during the mid-year review. This one appears to be a "industry norm" level-set by HR (i.e. based on your reviews and your current position, we feel we should start paying you what the going rate is for people being recruited into this 'same' position across the industry), but who cares, its mo'money (sorta). Then in November/December I installed a new radiator in our car, saving us hundreds of dollars and gaining 5000 experience points, split between my auto-mechanic skills and manliness attribute. I think I went up a few levels in the process.
So that's 06 in a nutshell.
07 looks to be more of the same :).
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