Thursday, February 27, 2003

Monday, February 24, 2003

Whew!

Today was a heck of a project for us - the boy woke up around 8:30 (I went and fed him), and then we went out around 10:30 to get breakfast and do errands. He was running around 90 mph all day long, I must say. We were at the mall for a while looking for some stuff for Jane, and he was sitting forward and unsupported in his stroller - he was also reaching out and grabbing or chomping anything that passed near him.

When we came home, he was still going strong - the only naptime he got at all was a brief snooze while we were driving. He ate a little extra food today, too, and didn't go to sleep until around 10:30. He really didnt even want to go to sleep then.

Boy, that was a lot of work today! I think that having teeth made him think he was an adult - he had more energy than we did today. We're exhausted!

So now the next milestone we're waiting on is actual crawling. Right now he rolls and occasionally lunges forward, but he can't sustain the motion or anything. His 9-month birthday is tomorrow, with the next doctor's exam on Friday afternoon, so I'll have more numbers to post then. I think his growth is now slowing a little, and his little body is concentrating on maturing and gaining strength. At least that's how it's supposed to work, I've read.

Saturday, February 22, 2003

Ladies and gentlemen...

...we have teeth.

Two of them have broken the surface simultaneously down on the lower jaw. I discovered this earlier today at Kelly's Roast Beef, when he stuffed my finger in his mouth and chomped.

Biting definitely hurts more than gumming does.

Friday, February 21, 2003

Guilty pleasures

Jane has been watching the Bachelor and Bachelorette series faithfully. The only glitch that this habit caused was that our Tivo decided that we'd like virtually all dating shows as a result. So it records them every chance it gets.

The reason that's a guilty pleasure is because they're actually kind of fun to watch - you can watch an entire episode of Blind Date in about 10 minutes (more or less), and Shipmates has been a particular hoot to watch - though it takes more like 15 minutes per episode.

Of course, the only thing more fun than watching a date that goes well is watching one that goes spectacularly badly. On one episode of Shipmates the couple took turns throwing their drinks at each other, then the girl went after the guy with a steak knife.

Needless to say, the camera crew intervened that time.

My voice is slowly returning to normal after the cold I just had - but that's OK. Jane and the boy didn't get it at all, so I don't mind a little suffering under the circumstances.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Great wresting lines I wish I had an excuse to use

"My god - the carnage!"

"Holla if ya hear me!"

"He was suplexed right through the Spanish announcers' table."

And my all-time favorite:

"It looks like she's using a modified chicken wing!"

A note on dress code

I'm at work today, but because I wasn't plowed out yet I walked in and I'm wearing old carpenter jeans, sneakers (my boots are in the corner, drying), a t-shirt, and an old denim workshirt.

Anyone who gives me any crap about dress code today is going to get a Jeff Jarrett-style guitar over the head.

Monday, February 10, 2003

By the way - the boy likes reading

Well, it looks like reading, at least. He actually took a pretty good run at eating the Sunday Boston Globe yesterday, but he occasionally held up the sections and looked at them before trying to stuff them in his mouth.

His favorite sections were the Automotive and TV sections. He liked the Circuit City ad, too, but he thought the Best Buy ad needed a litte salt.

Then he rolled around on the floor a lot. He's trying to kind of crawl forward now, and can usually get about 6 inches or so of forward movement in a surge before flopping on his side.

Sunday, February 09, 2003

Tough weekend

I have a cold that's left me feeling icky, and destroyed my voice. However, being voiceless will probably be considered by my co-workers tomorrow to be a Good Thing.

That's difficult enough, but then I had to try and decipher how to get qmail to work with the good old .forward files that we know and love. I spent several hours wrestling with it, then finally gave up in favor of using a tricky dash file to simulate our published BNUG e-mail address. Now that it's working, it should let me feed all the exec board's e-mail through Spamassassin and eliminate most of the junk we get.

It would have been easier, but e-smith (the server distro I use at home) uses qmail in a somewhat nonstandard way, as far as I can tell. So I had to combine reading man pages, Googling, and raw guesswork.

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

Ouch - teething hurts

Teething pains are proving to be a drag on the little guy. As the day winds down, he starts getting a lot fussier - usually around 7 or so. He's been going to sleep a little earlier than usual lately, too. Night time has seen him wake up occasionally lately, and when that happens Jane goes in and comforts him for a little while to get him back to sleep. That usually works.

He's trying to learn sitting up and crawling - I'm not sure which skill he'll master first. He can sit unsupported for about 10-20 seconds if you put him there, but he can't get to a sitting position quite yet, as he hasn't realized his hands can push him up. He rolls around (and travels quite well that way), and he's making most of the right motions to crawl, but he can't get the grip on the floor he needs in order to move.

As far as his other skills go, he's feeding himself the bottle, and his tongue-thrust reflex is gone so he eats much easier. We're exposing him to some new foods every couple of days. Feedings are now 4 bottles daily (that's been the number for a while now), and 2-3 jars of food/cereal. He's gotten very strong for such a little thing, and pinning him down for diaper changes can get Jane and I to work up a sweat pretty easily.

Lastly, we've started to keep the TV off in his presence most of the time, because he gets distracted too easily by it and we want him to be focusing on other things first. We do have him watching his Baby Einstein DVD's every day or two.

For those of you who like to go view them, I posted new pictures over the weekend, covering pretty much all of January.