another update

Yup. Been a while. We’ve been busy.Jacob caught his first ear infection last week. Joy. I’ve been sick more weekends than not, and something finally waylaid Laureen, even though she finally kicked the nagging cough.

Jacob has a lovey now, a blue dog carpet/towel thing that was a gift from our church baby shower. He wrestles it on the floor, takes it everywhere, etc.

Baby names: yeah, we have a name, but we’re keeping it to ourselves for a bit still. It’s a matter of deciding if that’s what we want it truly to be or not. No hints, either.

I’m trying to figure out what I should do to exercise. I’m not a big fan of aerobics, but I need to do something like it. Suggestions gladly taken.

The other upcoming concerns are getting Jacob to go to sleep without our being there. He slept through the night for the first time in a while, but he still needs someone to hold on to him. We have to break that dependency before the new child arrives. Jacob also needs to go to sleep without us around.

A bigger concern is the lack of options we have for taking care of Jacob when the time comes to go to the hospital. If she should come early, we don’t know who we could ask (or should ask) to help us.

A sad joke

A store that sells husbands has just opened in Dallas, TX, where women may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates.

“You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights.
There is, however, a catch. You may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!”

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband . . .

On the 1st floor the sign on the door reads: Floor 1 – These men have jobs.

The 2nd floor sign reads: Floor 2 – These men have jobs and love kids.

The 3rd floor sign reads: Floor 3 – These men have jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going. She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:

4th Floor – These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead good looking and help with the housework.

“Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads:

5th Floor – These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor and the sign reads:

6th Floor – You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor.. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

Thank you for shopping!

Yeah, it’s been nearly a month

Christmas has come and gone, but instead of some pithy ramblings about life (like I’m wont to do on more somber occasions), I’ll share something with you:

I cried yesterday.

I don’t normally cry, even though I am a sensitive new-age guy. I normally hold things in and wait until my stomach dissolves into puddles of acid before admitting that there’s something on my mind. But I cried yesterday, because our second child became very, very real to us.

Laureen had a Level 2 ultrasound, so we traveled to Hello, Frisco! to the doctor’s office for it. We get in, wait a goodly long time, but then we see the baby…

It wasn’t a 3-D ultrasound, which I’ve heard is very nifty, but you could see brain lobes, the cerebral cortex, the valves of the heart… everything to indicate that this child was healthy.

And we also found out it’s going to be a girl.

That’s why I cried. Tears of joy, right there in the medical pavilion’s parking lot. This new child finally became real to me, more so than when Laureen first told me she was pregnant.

The rest of the day wasn’t pleasant, due to some unhappiness in my stomach, but as far as I was concerned, everything’s great.

Jacob’s still doing well. He’s being a superboy right now, and also a toddler. He’s started random tantrums if he doesn’t get his way… Just wait it out, deny the attention he wants, and he returns to normal in about 10 minutes.

Chuck – thank you so much for the Starfarers game! That was totally unnecessary, but we’re going to enjoy figuring it out tonight.

Okay, I’m wiped out. Been a long day getting back into the work grind, and I’m sleepy. Gotta get home.

And now I find some jerk posting ads in my comments. They’ve been deleted, but I want to go blow up some sites now….

Updates from the field

Updates from the field

Well, we survived the move. Here’s how things stand:

1. My parents, brother and sister-in-law came in and helped us get the job done. It’s extremely hard to do anything with a 19-month old, but they managed to drag Laureen and my rears out of the mud on moving.

2. We had a very nice visit from Laureen’s mom at the new house. Anita, thanks again for coming up. I hope you get to do it more often.

3. We got DSL working at the new house. I really want FIOS, though, just because it’s that cool. The DSL connection itself was painless, and the supplied modem is pretty nifty.

4. Most of the downstairs boxes are unpacked. “Most” is a term that encompasses “some”. We got the majority of the kitchen unpacked, but there’s still some pantry items to contend with.

5. We’re getting the broken chair fixed. The welding shop finished it. Yay.

6. We rerouted one of the seven foot bookcases to the downstairs play area and I secured it to the wall, only putting in 5 extra holes. (Babyproofers and other handymen have earned a great amount of respect for their skill in doing things QUICKLY).

7. Don Coomer, as usual, went above and beyond with the fan transformation, plus he brought over the spackle to repatch the walls.

8. Dad and I managed to level the washing machine. It ain’t perfect, but it’s way better than it was, and I’m willing to leave it as-is.

9. We’re still doing the change of address dance. That’s fun, let me tell you…

10. Jacob’s play area is complete. It looks very nice. Mom and Dad bought a cheapo light from Wal-Mart that fits perfectly in the corner and ties into the wall switch.

11. We still have a lot of unpacking and sorting to do in our master bedroom. That’s mostly books and music and other electronica, but we should be able to deal with it.

12. We found the pegs to our shelves. While this may not seem like a large thing, it allows us to unpack said boxes of books and other detritus.

13. We still have one more trip to IKEA for one piece of the couch that wasn’t included. It’s a small thing, and the couch is actually in place and fits together well.

14. I’ve got to figure out what to get people for Christmas….

Shocking headline of the week

Shocking headline of the week

From Us weekly magazine:
Britney and Kevin: in trouble

Shocked, I am. Shocked, I tell you. Kevin Federline, that man who ditched his pregnant girlfriend to be with Britney, not being a fine upstanding man? Wow. I didn’t see that one coming.

More on the move later. Let’s just say that the $150 plus tips we spent on the movers was money extremely well spent.

The move

The move

First off, thanks to Janet, Darrell, Larry, Melinda, Frank, and my parents for helping us begin the move this past weekend. My dad especially put in a ton of effort, and it isn’t going unnoticed.

How it’s looking: we’re getting there. The majority of the boxes in the garage and attic have been transferred to the new house. We have a lot of empty boxes and junk in the attic that needs to be tossed out, and that should happen this evening. Dad got started with shredding a bunch of old receipts and financial documents, and that will continue hopefully tonight.

We moved a lot of the furniture from the downstairs bedroom over yesterday. We only have the file cabinet left to do, and there’s probably going to be a discussion as to where it should go. The bed is going to Darrell’s house after he finishes sanding/scraping/refurbing his floor, so that’s taken care of.

As far as the upstairs rooms go, there are three areas of “concern” as far as I’m concerned:
Getting the snoopy mobile fan down.
Getting the upstairs closet top shelf cleaned off.
Getting the under-the-sink stuff out from the bathroom.

I’m also moving the computer over tonight. We’re going to be without high-speed connections for a while, simply due to the fact that we live in area serviced by what I’m believing is an inept company, Verizon. Basically, we need to save money on internet connectivity, so going to DSL would be a good thing for us, since cable internet is roughly $58/month. There’s no cable line run to the house right now, so we’d wind up spending around $60 to have a line fished to where we want the modem to go. SBC is promising that DSL will be available in our area in January. Verizon can’t tell me when DSL will be available, stating that they don’t release timelines for business and competitive reasons. What I’d like is FIOS, but that’s Verizon again, and they won’t be able to tell me when. A phone call said that “you’ll know when they start digging up your street.” Sigh. So, if I’m going to switch to DSL in January anyway, I don’t want to pay the extra $10/week premium that running the cable line would cost me. So, it looks like we’ll be taking advantage of those 985 hours free discs for dialup for awhile for Laureen’s computer.

The good news is, I found the Windows XP disc, so I can resurrect the home computer. No telling how much stuff I’ve lost, but hopefully we’ll be able to piece it all back together eventually.

We’re hiring 3 guys for 2 hours this Saturday. They’ll be coming over to move certain heavy stuff: fridges, piano, our bed from upstairs, plus whatever else needs to be done. I’m hoping they’ll be able to move what little yard ornamentation we have over as well. The hammock stand, the compost tumbler (yes, we have a compost tumbler. No, I don’t know when the last time was that we used it), etc…. It’s all gotta go.

We’ve had some interesting experiences dealing with the previous owners. They’re nice people, but my impression is that the two of them need to communicate more and present a unified front in their dealings. They asked if we wanted the couch. We said, “call us with a price.” We don’t hear from them, and when we call them back, the story is that “well, we didn’t hear from you, so my nephew’s coming to pick it up.” We also thought we had an agreement about the lawn furniture in the back yard, but that was the husband making a deal without talking to his wife first. I don’t have a problem with that, but it just makes it a bit harder to plan.

The kitchen is almost completely packed, except for the dishes that were in the dishwasher. That’s a good thing, simply because we have plates to eat on 🙂

Jacob’s room isn’t packed yet. The master bath needs to have it’s shelves and drawers excavated. We also need to move the junk that’s stacked in the tub. We need to move clothes over. We also need to measure the hanging rods in the new place to see how to make things fit. We need to clear out the guest bathroom downstairs as well. We need to remove the babyproofing from the kitchen, especially on the now-empty shelves. I don’t know how easy it is to remove Tot-Loks and replace them in a new place, but I’m certain I’ll find out.

Mom had food poisoning Saturday, but by Sunday she felt well enough to come back out and be the figure in charge of His Highness.

Poor Jacob. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and I think (well, Laureen thinks, and I trust her opinion) that a lot of it has to do with the change going on around him. His toys are now split between the two locations, so he at least has play stuff wherever he goes.

We’ll be taking the second Cyberball over to Ft. Worth to its new owner on Wednesday. We’re also probably picking up a couch at that time. I don’t really know. We must bring Jacob. Not bringing him is Not An Option (thus sayeth the grandparents).

Onward and upward.