Experiments in Life

This past month has been super-busy.  Between Ashley and I going to Nashville for our anniversary in mid-May, me working every weekend on cleaning up our yard, a work trip to Orlando last week, prepping for our trip to Gatlinburg for next week, two (count’em two) birthdays, and a toddler who has two speeds (Stop and Tornado), I cannot seem to get enough time to do things like post.  Hopefully having a bit of a break for a week will help things.

On the Emily front, everything seemed fine at her checkup on Wednesday.  She did not care for her shots one bit and she had to get a finger prick.  She kept playing with the bandage on her finger by squeezing it, looking up at us, and then squalling.  We would get her calmed down and then she would repeat.  Such is life with a child, I guess. Her daycare class has basically transitioned into a young toddler class.  They have taken away the cribs for the older children and they now take naps on cots.  Also, they eat their lunch and snacks at a little table instead of high-chairs.  She almost exclusively eats non-baby food now; however, she still is struggling with the cup — the daycare still winds up having to give her bottles during the day.

That is not everything that has happened in the time I have been silent, but it will have to be enough for now.  Will try to do better in the future.

Well, it had to happen. Emily has had her first boo-boo. Roughly three weeks ago, Emily decided to take her first steps without holding onto anything. She made it a whole three steps. By the next weekend, she had begun walking halfway across the room. Now, she can walk pretty much wherever she wants, so long as she is not too tired. That is where the boo-boo comes in. When Mama (Ashley) came home, Emily was so excited that she decided to skip her afternoon nap. Hours later, while trying to walk, Emily takes a tumble into the chair and obtained a nice little goose-egg for her effort. Luckily, she is not going to get pictures taken for another two or three weeks

Well, it has been a wild couple of weeks. Between all three of us having a stomach bug, Emily and I having the flu, me being in San Diego and Ashley and Emily going to Columbus, there has not been a whole lot of time for the whole website thing.

However, I have had some time to take some new pictures (Internet Explorer-friendly link) of Emily. Above, you can see her expressing her displeasure to being put in an N. C. State onesie (Hi Randy!). We all know she was crying cause she wanted to be put in maroon and white. In the past few weeks, Emily has starting chewing on everything with her two partial teeth, crawling around the floor, and pulling up on everything and everyone that she can. I tried to get shots of all of that, but I was not able to get pictures of her crawling towards me — only away.

After a few months delay, I have finally gotten around to taking and posting some new photos. Yes, I know that I am a slacker, but I have been busy with the not sleeping. You see, Emily has decided that she does not need to sleep through the night any more. Sunday night, I spent the whole night going upstairs to try and get her to go back to sleep, trying to read my self tired again, then trying to fall back asleep. Repeat this twice and I slept somewhere around 3 non-consecutive hours Sunday night. Luckily, she slept better last night…

Update: If you are trying to get to the photos and cannot get it to work, rest assured, I know about it. You can got to the photoset on Flickr to see the photos.

As promised, here are the rest of the pictures from Thanksgiving.

Although it is almost Christmas, I have finally gotten pictures up from Thanksgiving holiday. The rest will be coming soon…

OK, so I am being lazy and not uploading the pictures that Ashley and I have taken. I will get them uploaded when I get a chance. However, Ashley took Emily over to Misty and Stephen’s house for a “play date” on Sunday and Misty took some pictures.

I have been quiet on here lately. Between the holidays and going full steam ahead on two-count-’em-two projects at work, I have barely had time to think, much less come up with anything to write about. Ashley and I had a busy, but enjoyable, Christmas break in Columbus. I got to meet my nephew for the first time. Playing with him has made it really sink in that I will have one of my own very soon now (T-minus 5 months and counting!).

In fact, I had my first oh-my-god-what-have-we-done moment while trying to play with Jake. I believe it was the third day we were there. All of a sudden, Erin needed to go to the restroom so she gave Jake to me to hold for a few minutes. Since he had no problems with me earlier in the week, I thought that it would be no big deal. Only, Jake started crying almost immediately and would not stop. Granted, we figured out after Erin got back from the restroom that he just wanted to be held by his mother, since he had been passed around for most of the past two weeks. However, I realized that I have absolutely no idea what to do with a child that age. While I feel better about it now, at the time I was very overwhelmed.

So, for the time being, I am putting it out of my mind. I will figure out what to do when the baby gets here. Right now, the best thing that I can do to prepare is to get the house ready for the baby. To that end, I will be fixing up what will be the nursery very soon now. Unless the ultrasound comes back that we are having a foot, we should know the gender of the baby on Wednesday. Here’s hoping, anyways. Stay tuned for more updates and I promise to post another pregnant picture of Ashley soon.

You are in your twenties

You can still hear reasonably well and you can play this without my old fart colleagues hearing it which makes you feel kinda good. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 15.8kHz

Find out which ringtones you can hear!

Every day and every night, spirits would communicate with us by flickering the lights in the house, sometimes so much that the fluorescent lights would cut off momentarily. Daily, the faint *beep* *beep* *beep* of the UPS could be heard from the office as the spirits tried to communicate using the computer. Unfortunately, the 1998-era technology was just too much for them — the lights downstairs would just flicker more with their frustration. The haunting had been going on for the better part of three months.

Bound and determined to figure out the cause of the flickering, I scoured the house searching for an explanation. I came up with obvious, logical hypotheses: the water heater is shorting out, the new heat pumps are having problems, my UPS is defective. None of these hypotheses turned out to be true, so I decided to call in the experts. Either the power company would find a problem with our feed or our house was truly haunted.

The first time I called, I waited and I waited. Eventually, I forgot about the call and weeks passed by. At my wits end with the spirits inhabiting the house, I called again two weeks ago. Apparently, the foul demons did not want to be driven out; they had gone so far as to erase any record that I had ever called the power company and put in a maintenance request. However, this time the maintenance request went through and I had two service representatives on the way out to the house. All I had to do was meet them there in a half hour.

I make it to the house and the demon decides to intervene. “THOU SHALT NOT DRIVE ME OUT,” it exclaimed angrily. Minutes later, I receive a call from the power company saying that it has been unavoidably delayed by an emergency call; they will try to be out to the house as soon as possible. Cursing the demon, I settle in for what turns out to be a three-hour battle of wills until it weakens enough to allow the service representatives access to the house. However, the demon was still too strong to be beaten; it blinds the service representatives with ignorance and disbelief, clouding their minds against the true cause of the problem. They insist that the problem is not on their end; I must hire an electrician to battle against the demon inside the house.

Help in the form of the Electrician arrived around noon on Halloween. The Electrician is a powerful force for good in the world; the demon had no power over it. He easily disproved the web of lies and deceit that the demon forced the service representatives to utter. The Electrician determined that the problem was not in my domain, but rather that of the power company. Only they had the tools to successfully drive the demon out of the infernal transformer at the edge of our property. Working as a powerful advocate, the Electrician convinced the power company that it needed to come out and look at the transformer as soon as possible.

Later that night, service representatives once again appear at the house. The demon quickly clouds their mind with disbelief of everything that I relay to them. Even staring the evidence in the face, they dismiss the claim that the problem could possibly be on their end. At that very moment, my neighbor arrives and confirms that the demon has been active in their house as well. Reluctantly, the service representatives agree to shut off the power and trying to exorcise the demon from the transformer. A short time thereafter, I got out to check on the progress off the service representatives. They admit that the demon has defeated them and that they must remove the infernal transformer and replace it with a clean one.

Fast forward several more hours. It is just after midnight on All Saints‘ Day when the power goes out. After a furious battle outdoors, the power comes back on forty-five minutes later. The power company has replaced the infernal transformer. It has now been several days and there appears to be no sign of any spirits or of the demon. Our house now appears to be clean.