Ryan was 2 yesterday; pretty amazing to think that it's only been 2 years, and so much has happened with him. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was 100% dependent on Katie and I for entertainment, food, clothing, etc... But now, at 2, he's completely able to entertain himself - we can leave him alone while we go to cook or take showers or something, and he's ok playing with his toys or watching a movie. He can feed himself pretty much anything, he can make decisions on what he'd prefer to eat, and even get it himself if it's on a low shelf in the pantry (this isn't a good thing). He talks up a storm, but goodness knows what he's talking about a lot of the time, but when he really wants you to know what he's saying, he usually knows the right word to get you on the right track, or at the very least can do the 'I'll take you to it and show you' pull on your hands....

It's been a really amazing last 2 years; and it'll only be more amazing as time goes on...


We took Ryan to see Sesame Street Live: Elmo's Green Thumb yesterday at Philips Arena. Parked right at the arena, so we didn't have to walk anywhere, and parking was cheap enough... We had really pretty darn good seats too; as good as the ones that were twice as expensive, I'd say. Though, the way it was setup, I'm not sure there were ANY seats that weren't great in there.
We went to the 10:30a show, figuring that traffic would be easier, and since we were having his party on Saturday, we just thought it would be a nice 'on your birthday' treat. He was utterly transfixed the whole time. We were worried that we'd be too far, and Ryan wouldn't be able to see well, and he'd get bored and whine and cry -- not a bit! He kept up with where everyone was at all times, and danced with the music, and made sure to identify all the characters for us. "Big Bird", "Abbie", "Bert", "Elmo"! He'd occationally want to know "Where'd Abbie Go?" or "Where's Big Bird?" - it was such a hoot.

Took him to Applebee's for lunch, so he could effectively have ice cream and cookies for lunch, since he didn't want his chicken fingers after all... Got his haircut at Pigtails and Crewcuts again, and they did a great job again.

After all that, it was naptime, which turned into "I'm going to play with my new truck in the bed for 2 hours and not actually nap" time... Then we did the rest of his presents, dinner - Pizza - he loves pizza, and cake, which made him uber-hyper, and then played with him new trainset for the rest of the evening while Katie baked, iced, and decorated Ryan's party cake. It's a Giant 3-D Lightning McQueen cake, and Ry's pretty excited about it.

Leads us to today - we're hoping that it doesn't pour this afternoon for Ryan's party, if it does - we're in a pavilion, but I still don't want my friends or family soaked getting in and out of there.    We didn't invite many people, just a few friends, their kids, and our families - so I think there'll be plenty of room to stay dry.

Rant - I know when I was younger that I wasn't very good at RSVPing for everything. But now that I'm older, married, and in-general more responsible, I try harder. Why exactly certain parts of my family cannot manage a simple invitation/rsvp response system, I have no idea. My mom ended up being the one to tell me two nights ago which of my Aunts and Cousins were/weren't coming, because they opted to call HER and tell her, instead of calling me directly. Because my number is on the invitation.

Then again, these are the same relatives that never invite us over - they just tell my mom to invite us. Unfortunately, it always ends up like an afterthought (because it's the day of or a day before) that we ever hear about it, so it's just weird to us to show up.   To me, it's acceptable to say "bring your kids" when said kids live in the same house.  But when your kids are nearly 30, married and have children, invite them your damn self and RSVP directly!
End Rant

Tags: family, ryan

I found a new gizmo for my Blackberry -- http://itookthisonmyphone.com -- basically it's a free app that installs on the Blackberry (don't know what else it supports) that gives you online webspace where you can upload your photos and videos on-the-fly or ad-hoc from the phone to online space, supposedly eliminating the need to store stuff locally on your phone.   Not sure yet if it preserves full resolution or not in photos, but it retains geotags and a few other things.  Videos get converted or scaled or something...   But the neatest thing to me is that it will automatically upload from itookthisonmyphone.com over to your facebook, photobucket, flickr, etc without manual intervention.  Which is neato to me.

Tags: geek, ryan

Katie, Ryan and I went down to Panama City/Seagrove for the Labor Day weekend to stay with my mom ('Mimi'), sister ('Antie') and her boyfriend, Nick. Got down there pretty late on Friday, since I had to work, but it gave us 2 whole days at the beach. It was really pretty nice, we stayed in a 3bed/3bath condo about 5-10 minutes walk from the beach that was really really nice - everyone pretty much had their own space, though Ryan pretty much needs his own room since he won't sleep in a room with anyone, so he got to sleep in the bunk beds in one room (with his new bedrails), and he seemed to really enjoy that. Mom and Amanda are beach bums, so Katie was in good company and got to do what she really likes when at the beach -- sitting on the beach all day. We went down in the morning on Saturday, stayed until Ryan's naptime, had lunch and then put him down. Ate at Boon Docks for dinner on Saturday. Bonn Docks is a local seafood hole in the wall, that happens to be on the water under the bridge into the PCB area. The food was really excellent, and not too expensive, compared to eating at Red Lobster or something...

Sunday we spent the morning at the pool, then went down to the beach for a few hours, and then came back for naptime. Went to Margaritaville for dinner, which we decided we needed to do, since we avoid the crows there like the plague when we go to Myrtle Beach (there's no restaurant I want to eat at bad enough to wait 2-3 hours to eat at), but the wait was only quoted at an hour on Sunday, so we waited it out by giving Jimmy some money in the gift shop. The food was actually really good, and not too expensive, which I was surprised about. Evidently before the playing of 'Margaritaville' or at the end of 'Jamaica Mistaka' , not sure which - they fire cannons, and have a pirate and his wenches (on stilts) come out to lead the diners in the singing of Margaritaville. Fun, sure. The cannons combined with really tall people scared the crap out of Ryan, and he required sitting in my lap for the duration of dinner. To make things better (before they got worse, then better again) the tall pirate-man came over making balloon animals. He talked to Ryan and made him a monkey. During dinner, the monkey spontaneously popped - which sent tears of distress/surprise ringing out across the restaurant, fortunately Pirate man came running back to make a new orange puppy dog for Ryan. He carried that puppy around ALL NIGHT, "Orange paa-paa". Even wanted to sleep with it... After dinner it started to storm, which killed our chances for a night walk on the beach, but we still had a good time; we just went home so Ryan could play with Mimi.

We all had an awesome weekend, Ryan really enjoyed having all the attention from Antie Amanda, Nick ('Nyuck') and his Mimi.

Though -- we didn't consider the commute home... It took ~7 hour to get down there, which is normal... But it took over 11 hours to get home!
Evidently, since checkout time is 11am everywhere, and tehre are really only 2 ways out of PCB, and neither of them are 11 lanes of expressway, traffic was retarded. It took us about 2 hours to get the 17 miles out of PCB out to Defuniak Springs and the highway. Then we got to hit bumper to bumper in every damn town we hit on the way home. We bailed from the expressway in Newnan and took backroads back to our house, and got home a little after 11 last night. Mom and Amanda left a couple of hours later, and got home around the same time as us. So the key is either to leave BEFORE 9am, or after 2pm, or you'll be in crazy retarded traffic...

Tags: family, ryan, vacation

Took Ryan to his first Braves Game today with Nick and Rachel. He had his company tickets, and was nice enough to invite us to join them.

I didn't know you could bring in kids without a ticket if they sit in your lap! That's NICE! We had 4 tickets, and 7 of us came in. Ryan and Angie had a great time hanging out and cheering/clapping as the Braves beat the Marlins 7-5 to take 2/3 games with them this week.

Lots of fun today; need to go see the Braves more often.

Tags: family, ryan

Last Thursday bright and early we took Ryan over to spend the day with my Dad, who hasn't really ever had the opportunity to have Ryan on his own for a lot of quality one-on-one time. We loaded his car seat up into his car for the day, and off we went to go do adult things without The Boy. Dad took Ryan to the Yellow River Game Ranch, to visit/pet some animals, and then had lunch, went to the park, and just generally had a great time. Ryan slept like a log Thursday night.

Katie and I decided that we were going to go car shopping. We finally paid off the Camry a week or so ago, and have decided that we need to replace the aging Escort that has no a/c. After looking at lots of vehicles at CarMax, I finally had an idea of what I wanted. Decided I really wanted something with a 6cyl engine, and that would be reliable for my goal to keep the car of at least 8 years. Meaning it needed to be pretty, fun, and reasonably practical, and reasonably fuel efficient. It really came down to either an 04-06 Maxima, or an 06-07 Honda Accord Coupe.

After a little more shopping around, I was still really tosssed on Maxima vs Accord, when we found the perfect car. After test driving an 06 Accord EXL V6-6 speed, I was hooked. Managed to get them to a price I was happy with, and spent the rest of the damn day doing paperwork. The mileage was a little higher but the 6-6 is somewhat rare (at time of buying there were 43 EXL 6-6's nationwide on Autotrader, vs 260 EXL Auto's), so I took it as I found it, in a really pretty Silver, with Black Leather interior. Goodness, it's so much FUN to drive!

I haven't taken any pix of my own yet, but here's a few that I saved from the dealer listing (Can't really see the black pinstripe in these photos, but I had that taken off):


( Couple more photos, and a few details behind here... )

And yes, we DID have an adult dinner out, had some fun hanging out. Went to visit my mom after dinner, show her the car, and then picked Ryan up around 8 or so. Right before we left Uncle Steve's house, Ryan fell and hit his face on the edge of their coffee table, and has a nice bruise on the bridge of his nose and under one eye now, but nothing else. Poor baby!

Tags: family, ryan

Katie and her mom went to see a movie on Saturday and do some shopping, while I hung out at home with The Boy. I worked on getting my laptop up and running OSX (project x86), but never got it to completely install, and after several hours I gave up. Might have worked better with a newer laptop maybe, I'm not sure if I had the right drivers or patches, and information on the project is pretty sketchy, due to all the different computer configurations there are out there...

I installed my newly acquired 3000VA UPS and Battery Pack that I got from a decommissioning at the office.   It was about 2 years old, and the batteries should be good for 3-5 years, so it's perfectly overkill for holding up my fileserver, and all my network gear that I keep down in the basement.   I hope I never have to move it again, the combined weight of the 2 parts is ~200lbs.

Ryan's decided that he's comfortable getting himself out of bed now.   He knows that he can get in and out on his own, that's not new, but he's always just sat in bed and waited for one of us to go get him out.   This weekend, when i heard him stirring I just called out to him from our bedroom -- he hopped out of bed, came out of his room, closed the door behind him - and came to see us.    Same after his nap on Sunday.   So, he's currently still waiting to be /invited/ out, but more than happy to come out on his own.   It's hard for me to believe he's not even two, and already really acts just like a normal person, doing so many of the things big people do...

On Sunday, we noticed after church that Ryan wasn't saying "GiGi" when referring to his friend Angie -- he actually had "Angie" down. They walked out of church hand in hand, between Rachel and myself. We didn't get a picture, but it was really cute.

My Mom and sister came over in the afternoon to visit. Ryan belted out another surprise calling Amanda "Auntie" (very clearly) - so she was super excited about that. "Grammy" doesn't seem to agree with him, so we're working on "MiMi" which is working better.

We went out to dinner, and they left around 9:30. So we watched Coraline after they left.
That's a pretty freaking weird movie, but we really liked it. It was a little creepy to watch right before bed, but we survived the night.

Tags: family, geek, ryan

So, after Ryan pooped in the potty last night, we asked him if he was ready to start potty training...   He looked excited, and said "Potty Train"!.   Promptly after that he said "Potty Choo Choo?".   Potty Choo Choo, Potty Choo Choo!   That was his fun phrase for the rest of last night.

Tags: ryan

The boy had a rough night last night - we night he might be coming down sick, he was all sniffly.

I rescued a turtle in the road this morning a few houses down from mine out in the middle of the street.   Funny how he started moving fast when I started walking up.   I took him a good distance off the road, and set him down in some tall grass.  Hopefully he stays out of the road!

The Sims 3 is really addicting.   I was late to work this morning because I stopped to play for a few minutes, that turned into an hour this morning.  

Seagate sucks, they charge $15 for non-advanced RMA of their hard drives (+20 for advance) -- so, 5 year warranty, but I have to pay to use it.   I had one 750 in my raid5 array die, so I really have no choice but to RMA it.

I put my old Eclipse on Craigslist - anyone want to buy a non-running 94 eclipse?   I've gotten a couple of scammy looking e-ails offering to send me a certified check for it.   After a while I decided it can't hurt to say "go for it, send me money" - and see if I get any.   I guess I'll sort out how to sell by mail IF i get a check, and IF it's not a counterfeit.

Ryan made me a neat picture holder and a really cute/sweet Father's Day card in a workshop at Gymboree and Katie's getting me new grill - I just haven't decided which one yet.  

Watched a couple of movies this week:
Gran Torino last night -- Clint Eastwood will be Dirty Harry until he dies.   I thought it was really good, I liked it a lot.
Australia -- Really long, but we liked it a lot.   A little sad, a little boring at times, but it was really good over all.

Tags: geek, movies, ryan

Night # 2 with Ryan in the toddler bed was rougher than the first night -- he rolled out twice.   Once while we were watching, and we heard the 'thump', but he didn't cry or anything.   He rolled around on the pillows on the floor, and then onto the carpet, and just parked himself there.  I think he was tring to get comfortable there, so I went and put him back in the bed.

Katie said he did it again a couple of hours later, but cried when he couldn't get comfortable on the floor, so she put him back.  

So - we invested in a toddler bed 1/2 gate, so he can climb in and out, but there's still a little railing there to let him know there's an edge.


Movies:
Cloverfield -- I really liked this.  I'm a fan of JJ Abrams.  And just the dynamic of how it was put together and everything, with a fairly interesting story (while not really original) to go with it.   Didn't like the ending really, but after I did some reading about the movie, there's a TON of little hidden things throughout the story that hint at some forshadowing and possibly other solutions.   

The Day the Earth Stood Still (the new one) -- Eh.  Independance Day rehashed, but not as exciting or interesting.   The characters were boring, and the story generally moved too slowly.   In fact, I'm not 100% sure that I saw the last 10-15 minutes, because I was fuzzing out and starting to go to sleep.    Sorry, I had higher hopes for this.

Books:
Still reading my bible cover to cover, but have put it on a short break.   I've read up through 1 Colossians, and am somewhere in 2 Col.   Didn't do any reading in Sioux Falls or Myrtle Beach, and when I got back I have wanted to start the His Dark Materials books.   So, I started The Golden Compass on Tuesday.

Tags: books, ryan, the list

Back from Myrtle Beach on Sunday night around 8pm.   Its funny how you're exhausted after vacation - but we had a really good time.
A couple Quick statistics:
Number of days/nights in MB: 5/6 (in at Dinnertime on Monday, left after lunch on Sunday)
Number of trips to Friendly's: 5 (3 meals trips (with ice cream) and 2 dedicated ice cream trips) - we had Ben and Jerry's one night.

Yes, we got Ryan his Conehead sunday on Monday night after dinner, and then we had dinner there with Brian and Amanda and her whole family on Wednesday after B&A arrived in town.   Ryan got the Monster Mash (is that right?) that night.   Lots of assorted ice cream scattered throughout the week.

Took Ryan to Ripley's Aquiarium on Friday - he's still too little to REALLY appreciate it - but he got a huge thrill out of the reef tank where all the fish from Finding Nemo reside.   He saw the clownfish and said "Nemo!", then we picked out Dory, Deb, Gill and Bubbles (I had to resort to asking for some help with some of the names from some little girls that were also talking about Nemo near that tank), but Ryan did get a huge kick out of seeing all the fish "Fish, Star!, Where's Nemo?".   He wouldn't let us carry him, he just got angry and frustrated, and got super freaked out getting too close to the tank glass, but it was a fun time either way.   Expensive, but it was worth it I think.   We went with Brian and Amanda, and her nephew Will, who's 8 or 9.   I think it was neat for him, he seemed to have a good time.   Ate Tony Roma's @ Broadway on the Beach that night since we were over there - yummy.   Hung out @ BotB and walked around after dinner, got Ben and Jerry's, watched them make fudge, bought fudge, and then left.

Only got to eat Seafood one night, but we went to one of the popular all you can eat deals that had lots of fresh stuff.   Katie ate Snow Crab legs for the first time (I think she got our money's worth out of those alone :) ) - and I ate Fried Frogs Legs for the first time.

Frog legs...   The cliche is that is tastes like chicken.   And -- well, I really can't think of anything else to compare the taste to, but the texture and tastes are very similar.   Katie wouldn't try it, and wouldn't let me let Ryan try it.   he wasn't happy eating anything but peas anyway - good thing his buffet was free.

We spent a fair amount of time on the beach and at the pools.   Ryan LOVES the beach and the ocean, as long as he's not getting splashed, or being pulled off his feet by the receding waves.   He's good with standing at the waves edge, and he's good with wading in a little, but the waves were rouch, and splashed a lot - so, that kept him out of the water mostly.

We taught him to make stuff in the sand, but mostly he just wanted to fill buckets with sand and dump the water around our site.   But - he had a really good time.   

We need to take him swimming more though, he really had a good time at the pool, and even more in the kiddie pools since he could walk around and visit the other kids.   he's NOT a fan of all the splashing sprinklers and waterfall mushrooms that were in some of the pools, (it's just splashing water again - he doesn't like it unless HE'S the one doing the splashing) so we were limited to just a couple of the kiddie pools at the resort.

Being at the beach with a toddler is kinda rough.   You want to spend more time outside or at the beach, but naptimes in the middle of the day put a damper on that.   Course, it didn't help that we kept him up until 10 or 11 each night, which consequently lead to us sleeping in til at least 9 each day (and then an hour of beach prep to put sunscreen on us and him before going out - coupled with breakfast) meant that we didn't actually get to the beach or the pool or whatever until around 11.   Naptime at 1 or 2 - then dinner afterwards.    Hopefully next year we won't be napping quite so much, and can be a little more flexible so we can spend more time outdoors.

We bought Scrabble to play while we had downtime, and sofar, I have yet to beat Katie at all.   I got close once, but still lost by about 30 points.

We officially confused Ryan's vocabulary too.   He can say "Beach" like a pro -- it's definitely the clearest word he can say - not to insinuate that other words aren't clear, but it's got a couple of harder sounds together that he hadn't done before.   So - when we got there, we tried to teach him what the Beach was - so, we can point outside and say "What's that?" and he'll say "Pool!" or "Beach!" -- it took a little while to teach him the difference, but we managed.   little did we know that while he was identifying the object "Pool" as a pool, he was equating "Beach" with what we refer to as "outside".   We didn't realize this until we got home, and he stands in the back door saying "Go Beach" and pointing into the backyard...   Cute.

We pretty much threw the diet out the window.   Full on caffeine sodas, and a terrible diet of fried food and ice cream.  
Weigh In on Monday morning: 221.  So, between Sioux Falls and Myrtle Beach, I gained 6 lbs back.   probably not as bad as it could be, but I definitely need to get back on track.

Oh, and Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback were yummy (too bad that the production cycle was only 3 months, and I didn't find out about it until the last week - it made it hard to locate them in stores).   It's amazing the difference that REAL sugar makes in a soda, vs HFCS.   It just doesn't leave that fuzzy taste behind.    It's back to No caffeine diet sodas now that I'm home though.

Tags: family, ryan, vacation

We converted Ryan's bed into Toddler Bed mode yesterday, and surprisingly, he's really OK with it. He took his nap in there like that, and slept overnight, and I don't think he fell out at all - but he did look like he was sleeping a little lighter than usual, making us believe he's subconsciously  more aware of the danger of not having rails on one side of the bed.    Katie peeked in on him later in the night, and it looked like he was kinda hanging off the side of the bed, but was still asleep.

Jeez, he's getting big.

Tags: ryan

Went to the doc yesterday about my bites/allergy or whatever.   Though; it had basically stopped happening by yesterday morning.   Doc says it's hives (weird, I've never had that before) not bites.   So, gave me some meds and told me to be on the alert for allergens.   Yay.

The lawnmower needs a new battery, dang it.  Going to autozone on the way home so I can FINALLY get my grass cut, it's too rediculous right now.

I think I need a higher gain splitter on my cable to the bedroom, because the cable modem hasn't been stable since I split off to the bedroom - so I'll try one GOOD splitter before I come have Comcast sort out the nonsense that is my lack of ability to split cable.  So, the cable's back out of the bedroom for the time being.

We went out to Lawerenceville last night to watch my youngest Burns cousins (Laura and Stephanie) graduate from high school.   That officially means that there are no Burns kids in the Gwinnett county system anymore.   I always forget how small Central Gwinnett is - they only had about 450 kids graduating, compared with the nearly 1000 in mine.   The whole affair took only an hour, and then we went to visit with everyone at their house for a little while.   My other cousins Rich and Shona were there too - as they're in town for the graduation, but then off for other destinations in life - Rich is moving to England next week.   I'd like to travel at some point, but not sure I'd want to live overseas.   Best of luck to all of them in the next leg of their lives.

We got home around midnight, and we ALL pretty much crashed -- Ryan being mister energy won't sleep in the car anymore.  He just sat in the back babbling and imping for the while 90 minute ride.   We're totally going to have to find a cheap car DVD player for the trip to MB; I think Katie will slay someone if he carries on like that for 6+ hours.   It's cute for a little while, but then he just gets impy and grumpy, and then it's not so cute.


Oh, and I bought a Logitech Bluetooth to IR converter for my PS3 - so now at long last I can retire the last "extra" remote from my entertainment center and command it all from my Harmony!   Screw those custom solution guys with their $150 solutions.   Maybe I should invest in Logitech, I seem to have enough of their stuff.

Tags: family, geek, health, ryan

I just got my flight itinerary for my upcoming trip to the mothership in Sioux Falls -- I'll be leaving at the crack of dawn on June 2, and won't get back in to ATL until about 10pm.    Bunch of crap.   I know they're trying to maximize my time in the office there, but jeez - lets take the 2 crappiest flights ever.   Part of what makes it sucky as that I have to change planes in Minneapolis with an hour between flights each time.   Eh, I've never been through MSP, so that should be a new experience.   
At least I'm not going alone this time.   And then right after that is vacation!   So, I'll have a couple of days to mow the lawn and get packed, then driving off to MB on Monday morning.

Got my mower belt yesteday, not without trial.   Went to Sears, looked at the 25 belts on the wall - all of them said "see reference chart for sizing" on the package.   I couldn't find said chart - not noticing the little parts computer that was a few feet down on the wall...   So, I went seeking help.  At the employee station in the hardware section, there were 2 Sears employees standing there, talking to a customer.   One was in sales floor attire, the other in warehouse attire.  I figured he was just out of position, but still waited patiently near the other customer.   Warehouse guy's cell phone rang, he looked at me, then answered the phone and walked back toward the warehouse.   Sales guy kept talking to customer.   Customer paid for his purchases, and then they proceded to start a new conversation about lawn equipment.   I went away to seek someone else to help me.   After not finding anyone remotely near hardware, I returned to stand next to Customer.   Sales guy glanced at me a few times, but never acknowledged that I was there.   After a while, I realized that they were just shooting the shit, and he wasn't actually trying to help or sell anything to this customer.   I thought about getting a little rude and rambunctious, but then figured he would just not help me find what I needed, so I just waited.   After about 10 minutes (total), another Sales floor guy came around, was polite and helpful, found me what I needed and showed me where to find the answers next time, gave me a lot of helpful pointers about my mower's parts, and checked me out.   All the while, Sales guy #1 just kept chatting with Customer, and they conveniently broke up their conversation right as I was checking out.   Then he just stood there with his thumb in his bum like nothing else in the world was going in around him.   I held my tounge again as I walked past him to leave the store.
I really don't understand people sometimes.

My bites didn't seem to bother me yesterday at work, though they were fairly bad and swollen yesterday morning, then they got swolled and aggrivated again last night before bed.   I had originally planned to make a doc's appointment for this morning, but today when I woke up, there's no signs of them except a coupe of small spots - I figure it won't do any good to show the doctor my problem if it's not actually happening...   So, maybe it's just getting better...   I'll have to keep an eye out, and if they swell up again, try to go in to see the doc so I can show him.

Lastly, aside from needing benadryl to sleep at all last night, Ryan decided that he just wasn't going to sleep more than an hour at a time.   Katie had gone to her leadership group at church last night, so I put Ryan to bed.   At 7:45p, he broke down into tears, sobbing and squalling.  I attributed it to the lack of a nap, and decided to put him to bed.  We did Bedtime Routine without much incident, but then he went back into hysterics right as I put him in the bed.   I left, and 5 minutes later, he was out cold.  It was a little after 8.   Right at 9, he woke up sobbing inconsoleably again.   I went and tried for 15 minutes, nothing worked, so I took a break, let him yell.   Finally got him back to calm around 9:30 after an abriged "Teething medication treatment" (some Tylenol, and teething tablets) and some gas drops - right before Katie got home, and then he broke out sobbing again.   This was basically the pattern all night long, sleep for a little, sob for a long time.  I know Katie was pretty frazzled, I was too knocked out to really know a lot about what was happening, but he was loud enough to wake me up a little bit.   I think she eventually dosed him with the rest of the arsenal of teething remedies, but I don't know if it was the issue or not, but he DID seem to sleep for at least a couple of consecutive hours after that - and then my alarm went off.
Damn I -teeth, I don't know if they're the issue, but I know all 4 of his are not completely in yet, so I'll blame them for now.

Tags: health, rants, ryan, work

It rained, my grass grew - I still haven't gotten a belt for the mower yet anyway... Probably will go check with Sears today for what I need.

Friday we rented the Golden Compass, but we haven't watched it yet... Too much going on this weekend.

Saturday we basically just hung around the house and did some chores; I ran a coax to the bedroom so we could hook cable up to the TV in there. We have "Basic Cable" with our cable modem service and full on HD service with our DirecTV. Since we don't have 3 receivers for the DTV, we decided to just see what we actually get on "Basic Cable" with Comcast.

It took the TV about 30 minutes to scan all the digital and analog channels... 34 analog, and 104 digital.
104? Wow! We basically found that we get HD service on the networks (abc, nbc, cbs, fox) and we can get a poop-ton of other channels in SD (boo, no bonus HD out there). The catch is that they're bizarre channel numbers - some are like (can't remember, guessing at them) 82.100-82.120 and then they pick up again later in the channels with 101.10-101.25 or something. So, if you wnat to watch ABC family, you have to remember what channel AND decimal it's assigned to. Good for surfing, not really for finding something specific. Then, probably about 40 of those channels that it found were just "no signal" on them.

Saturday night I couldn't sleep, I got eaten up by some kind of bug(s), probably down in the basement or something, and was super itchy. I got tired of counting at about 40 bites, but then couldn't really count them because they all swole up together. So, I was a red and puffy blotchy mess... Took some benadryl, and got knocked out until nearly noon on Sunday. Itchiness came back after lunch, so I took more benadryl, and loaged around the house for the rest of the day while Katie went cleaning and reorganizing happy.

She rearranged Ryan's room - we took out his changing table and put it in the basement (does it say on the benedryl box not to do heavy lifting while under the influince?) and I think I about had a heart attack or something. My ears started ringing and I got really nausious. Fortunately, that was the only furniture that had to go downstairs.
She put a couple of different bookcases and his toy box in his room, so now that's officially his toy room, but he still has some of his bigger stuff in the den. It really looks like a big-boy's room now... Next step is converting his bad into a toddler bed - we haven't done it yet since he's really showed no interest in climbing out of the crib at all.

We missed small group - I think I was busy being passed out from benadryl.

I'm at work today with no benadryl , and really no signs of the bites getting less bad, but I don't think they've increased in number either... So, if I get where the benadryl creme doesn't do the job anymore, I might just go home.

Tags: geek, health, ryan

Ryan likes Corn on the Cob!


 

So silly...

Tags: ryan

Last Week started out rough - I didn't get my BP meds filled until about Tuesday, so I'd been out for a few days - and I THINK it was causing me to have chronic headaches until I got it filled. Or maybe it was psychosomatic or something.   Got those filled, and now I feed normal again.  Whatever.

We got the Camry back, it looks really good.  There are a couple of nit-picky things I want to take it back to Bradly about, hopefully I cna do that in the next few days.

LodgeNet stock has gone up nearly 300% in the last week (making that 367% since I bought last year), thanks to positive first quarter earnings, so - I'm trying to decide if I want to pull my money back out now, or roll the dice to see if it goes up more.   Wish I'd have had more money to spend buying in last year - but oh well.

Dad was in town on Thursday to visit with family and Amanda before her tonsil surgery on Friday morning; he was bearing good news for us.

He'll be Santa at Northlake Mall (Tucker) this year (pending contract finalization) which is pretty cool - it means he'll be in Atlanta for Christmas.  Last year he was at a mall in Memphis - he really enjoyed being Santa, but really wanted to get a position in Atlanta, but none were abailable for his rookie year.   So, he's pretty excited that this slot opened up this year.
Santa's hours are pretty rough, he works from Mid November until Christmas Eve, with /only/ Thanksgiving day off.   So, he's basically there from a bit after the mall opens, until right around closing - every single day that the mall is open.   Last year we celebrated Christmas with him the weekend after, since he was travellling from Memphis to ATL on Christmas day.
So, we'll actually be able to take Ryan to Santa, and he'll very likely not have the 2-year-old fit in Santa's lap (we hope).

Amanda's tonsil surgery went well, short and smooth and she's recovering well now - we went to visit on Saturday morning.

We had Date Night last night, Ellen babysat Ryan while Katie and I went to Ted's Montana with a $25 off $50 order (thanks 70% off restraunts.com coupon that cost $3).  While it didn't make our bill less than it probably would have been without a coupon, we ordered things that we wouldn't normally have.  we got their super yummy Onion rings as an app, Katie got Beef Fillet steak, and I got Bison Ribs, plus a dessert, it hit $54, so we got our coupon to discount it.   Bison ribs are really good, but the portion is pretty small - you can get a full rack of pork ribs for that price anywhere eise, vs the 8oz portion of Bison at Ted's -- but they were REALLY good.   I don't know if I'd get them again just because they're so expensive for such a small portion, but we were both super stuffed after the app and dessert with our meals.
Then we went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- which we both loved.   

There are another 10 movies or so coming out this summer that we want to see in the theaters; hopefully we'll actually get to some of them.  I need to lay that schedule out for my calendar.

Ryan's getting to be more and more of a ham, doing summersaults and doing this wierd rolling twist flip deal on our bed that just makes him laugh like a madman.   He's also started climbing himself in and out of his booster at the dinner table -- jeez :)   He's getting so big so fast!

Finally caught up on BBC's Robin Hood; so now I'm waiting for the weekly episodes.   Watched the last laft of the new Knight Rider series -- which I didn't really think was a /terrible/ series, and was entertaining for the first dozen or so episodes, but they basically rebooted the series at about the 13th (of 17) episode, and completely lost me.   I watched it out, but I think I agree at this point that this series needs to die.

In Books:  The new Sookie book comes out this week - yay!  I'll have to go pick that up.   I'm read through Ruth in the Old Testament, and just starting 1 Samuel.

Tags: books, date night, family, movies, ryan

No posts for April sofar...   So - this is what I missed, I think.

On April 1st, our car got attacked again -- Katie was pulling out of the pediatrician's office parking lot, and was deceived by someone signaling that they were turning, but was not -- so she got hit in the front left fender.   technically our fault, no big deal, nobody was hurt, everyone was going pretty slow, and we have insurance and stuff.   So, I filed 2 claims with the insurance people on 4/2, and had it sent over to Bradley's to have the work done.  Hopefully I'll get that back soon.   We went and bought a new car seat (same Britax that we already had) and threw out the old one (kind of, it's in a trash box in the garage) since you're not supposed to use an car seat after any kind of accident.  Insurance said they'd buy us anything we wanted as long as it was comperable to the old one, so - we got the same one since we like it a lot.

Amazon finally sent me all my refunds.   I'm so lost in the process, that I'm almost sure they sent me $300 too much back, but - I might just be miscalculating.   Those people were so confused by their convoluted process that I'm surprised I actually GOT the refunds.    They sent me 3 checks (in pounds, naturally) - which my bank evidently doesn't have any CLEAR process how to handle.   They have to mail the check to the corp office, who "verifies the funds with the foreign bank" and then deposits the money.  Process takes 7-14 days.  No big deal.   The checks came weeks apart - check 1 took about 10 days to post, check 2 is outstanding 14 days today and still hasn't posted - I guess I need to call about that, check 3 posted 24 hours after I took it in.   Thinking that was wierd, I called the bank, and the lady just couldn't explain the process to me, so I gave up.  

We finally caught up on Chuck and Life from the DVR, but now NBC's talking about not renewing both of them, which makes us sad.  I think those are our favorite shows on TV right now.   We've started catching up on Heroes, and are still way behind on House...

Crossed Max Payne off my list of movies -- it was pretty much the steaming pile of poo that I expected.

Amanda and Brian announced their pregnancy right before easter, so we're really excited about that.   They're figuring that the baby'll be due in December.   We went out to dinner with them and their families on Saturday night after Easter service (we usually go to the off-peak services around Christmas and Easter since we get so many visitors on Easter Sunday AM service, it gets crowded) - they announced it to their families then, Brian's mom was bawling, it was sweet.   She's had a Willow Creek figurine in her trunk (Pregnany Mommy) for "a long time, waiting for this day" that she was finally able to proudly present to them.   We'd known already for a couple of days, so Katie was semi-prepared to get some candid pictures of their moms getting the news -- it was pretty cool to be a part of that with them.

Then Easter - we had our Moms and my sister over for lunch.   Katie cooked Ham and veggies and devilled eggs and lots of yummy stuff.   This year was pretty fun, Ryan's old enough to understand his easter basket - he got a new firetruck (woo, woo, woo) with lights and sirens - but Ryan really likes making his own noises - a snuggly lamb, Gymboree bubbles (the best bubbles in the world), some new cars and lots of candy.  After lunch, we took Ryan out in the back yard for his first easter egg hunt.   He had a ball!  He did get a little hung up with wanting to OPEN the eggs and eat the candy, rather than finding more, but with a little encouragement, he rounded them all up.  

James and I took a long lunch (just 2 hours) last week and went to see Fast and Furious.   It was about as good as expected, since our expectations weren't high.   I put in on the rung with Tokyo Drift, which I wasn't a big fan of - but I liked the first 2 a lot.  

Went to Jump 4 Joey's on Friday since I was off.   That place is a lot of fun!   It's basically a warehouse that they've converted to a play yard for kids with 7 or 8 big bouncy houses/slides and stuff.   Ryan has a ball in them, and parents are allowed to go with their kids in them (I'm sure crowdedness becomes a factor at some point) but since it was a Friday at 11am, we pretty much had the run of the place.  My abs still hurt.

Saturday we helped Brian paint his upsairs and downstairs hallways and the 2-story staircase hallway.   Manuvering a tall ladder in a staircase to paint way up high...  not fun.    But, over the course of the day we DID end up having fun, though we were exhausted by the end, but I think it turned out pretty nice.   We met up with a couple of other friend of theirs afterwards for dinner and mini-golf at Monster Mini Golf over off Barrett.   It's indoor mini-golf, completely black light lit.   The theme is monsters, of course.  Mostly silly looking ones, but there were a couple that really freaked Ryan out -- notably the one that looked like a normal guy, until it reached up and peeled its face off...   That creeped me out a little too, but Ryan got really clingy after that.   They had good music playing - and Ryan was rocking out with it.   He REALLY likes Aerosmith "Walk this way"...   Too funny.    Arielle and Evan went off to do their own thing after that, but we found out later that night that they got engaged - so that was exciting.

It needs to stop raining on my days off so I can actually cut the lawn, it's starting to get rediculous.   I also want to do some kind of weed treatment - but not really sure what to do yet, trying to get motivated to do research, but I'm just not THAT interested in my lawn - even though I should be.  The Ants invading my kitchen also reminded me that I need to get out the DemonWP and do my spring insect treatment.   That stuff works wonders for a long time, it makes me forget to do it in the spring...

We got a new thermostat that I installed last night - one of those semi fancy $30 5-1-1 programable jobbies, only because I couldn't really justify buying the $100 touchscreen one with the remote, even though it was hotness.   So, we replaced our old manual mercury filled one, and now we need to paint.

Books - I finished the New Testament, which was really exciting to go through.  I wasn't going though studying, just reading the words and the stories.   The Gospels are really interesting to read back-to back, comparing how the authors told many of the same stories, but from different perspectives.   Acts is fantastic, it starts slow, but the story is amazing.  After that it goes into Paul's letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Collosians, etc - and Paul kinda drones a bit.   Those books make for good study material.   Katie wants to read Revalation with me, so I skipped that for now.   Started the Old Testament now.   It's really amazing the stuff that I /thought/ I understood, but really just never heard.   Genesis is so much more than JUST the Creation - it accounts for thousands of man-years and lots of stories.   Exodus is more of the same.  At some point, not sure if it's Exodus or Leviticus, God describes in great detail building the Ark of the Covenant, its coverings, the tabernacle, and lots of other stuff.   That kinda drones unless you happen to be skething what they're describing - that could be an intersting place to go back and study a little, or at least look at more research.  Leviticus is pretty dry -- it's laws.   A lot of them.   Hundreds of them.   Not Covenant Law style like on the tablets - but they're laws about clean/unclean animals, sacrificial offerings, how offerings are made, what offerings to make in what cases, different kinds of offerings, how to make oneself "clean" after handling something "unclean", etc.   So, I'm currently in the first chapters of Numbers...   Numbers - is, well, numbers - sofar.   It's an account of a census that Moses took in the land, just how many people are in the tribes.   It's brutal to wade through this part... 

Tags: books, fix it, lawn, movies, ryan, the list, work

Finished The Green Mile the other day.   I guess I haven't seen the movie in about 9 years, but from my recollection, I think the book and the movie were pretty close.   It was a fairly fast read, and the serial style was interesting -- I think I definitely would have been frustrated with it if I'd been reading the books as they came out; each one being about a 1-2 hour read...   Now moving to a more concentrated effort to read the New Testament.   I've always wanted to, and never made the time.   Then do the Old Testament later.

Watched Twilight with Katie this week.   That Stewart girl seriously needs to learn to close her mouth.   Her face hanging open 98% of the time was too distracting for me to hear what the rainbow glowing vampires had to say.   Seriously - glowing vampires?   I won't go as far as saying it was a bad movie, but it's not one I have any interest in seeing again, nor does it spark my interest in its upcoming sequel.

Ryan's been a bear for the last couple of days, ever since this weekend.   I think we kept him out too much, and fed him too much sugar.   Saturday we went to Angie's 2nd b-day party; Ryan had a ball playing with the kids that were there.  The closest to his age (other than Angie's 3 month old brother) was a little girl about 4 or 5 years old, then there were a couple that were maybe 6 and 10 or something.   So, lots of variety of ages, Ryan was the only boy, so he had a great time.   He ate a lot of cake, ice cream and candy, and then laid in bed for about 2 hours before passing out at bedtime.   He didn't really sleep well at all though, so we didn't either, and missed church as a result.

Katie's mom took us to a Japanese steakhouse on Sunday for Katie's [early] birthday, so Ryan got more cake, and again bounced off the walls for a couple of hours before bed, and then twitched in the bed for another couple of hours after bedtime.  

Monday and Tuesday he was just generally grumpy and whiney ALL DAY, which really tested our nerves.   He finally slept ok on Tuesday after a bunch of orajel and Motrin, so maybe he's teething his i-teeth in...   Today was much better, he was his happy self as far as I could tell.

He's the absolute authority on Yo Gabba Gabba now; he can pick the commercial out from across the house, and then run into the playroom to watch the commercial until its gone.   he ran in earlier tonight saying "Gabba Gabba!", and I said - "No, That's not Gabba Gabba, that's another comm...  Oh, so it is, nevermind"   What do I know?

Looks like Jack Black is the next big thing on Gabba Gabba though, he's on the show season premier in April, and they're playing the commercial for it about every 10-15 minutes.   DJ Lance and Jack Black...  That should be interesting.  

Crossed off the list:
Song of the South - Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, Uncle Remus, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and all that...   I guess I don't understand why Disney banned this movie's release to home video in the USA.  The movie was cute, pretty stereotypical Disney family movie for the time, had some lessons to learn from it, and was generally a good movie.   I know it's because of the potential racial undertones (it's a post civil-war plantation setting), but I kinda thought Gone With the Wind would have caused more uproar - yet it's not banned.
I bought it imported from the UK on VHS (mainly for my Disney collection), knowing it was PAL and I wouldn't be able to watch it.   I downloaded a version I /could/ watch.   I'd like to find a PAL/Multisystem VCR so I can convert it to a NTSC DVD, but I may never get around to that.

Tags: books, ryan, the list

Looks like the 2.5mg of Lisinopril has brought my BP down to about 130/80; so I faxed in my results this morning, doc will likely call me back about it tonight or tomorrow to let me know if I need to change doses - I'd expect not, but I'm no doctor.

Katie and I went out on a mini-date (with The Boy) on Friday out to Macaroni Grill (which we don't do often because it's expensive by the time we're done there) and then We watched Burn After Reading on Saturday night.  I'm just not sure what to say about that movie.   It was funny, and I enjoyed it, but at the same time, the movie had a pointless story, and a general "Well that was wierd" ending...

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet; we relaxed at home.   Katie went and volunteered for the All 4 Kids sale at the fairgrounds on Saturday for the afternoon while I hung out with Ryan; she sold a bunch of Ryan's old stuff too, so that'll be a nice little chunk of cash to have around to offset his current season's wardrobe.

Ryan's new favorite TV show is "Yo Gabba Gabba" -- I don't know what it is about the show, but his attention gets GLUED to it when it comes on.   It's sorta funny...   "GabbaGabba" is now part of his vocabulary of ever growing words.  

He's endlessly amused with the oddest things nowadays.   I flair my nostrils at him, and he doubles over laughing!  Then he comes up blinking his eyes like crazy (I guess he thinks he's copying me) and giggling like a mad mad.   I love the way he laughs.

He's got more "Looks" now too that are impossible to catch on camera.   He does "What'chu talkin' bout, Willis" eyes out the side of his head [while scowling], and his new favorite "If I close my eyes and mouth super tight and look way up in the sky you can't see me to make me eat" -- and then it's just priceless when he open one eye a slit to see if you're still there with the fork...

Mealtimes are a consistant battle now.   He will eat his vegetables (corn, peas, carrots, green beans, whatever), but when it comes to the meat - whatever kind, doesn't matter, he just doesn't want to eat it.   He hides it in his cheek while he eats other stuff, and waits til you're not looking to sit the meat back out.   He /eventually/ eats, under his terms -- but it's frustrating...

Victory with Amazon today.   They sent me an e-mail to let me know that they're processing the final chunk of my refunds (for my missing $400) and that I should expect a check from them in about 3-4 weeks.   Ugh.   Well, I guess I'll have to take that - as long as I get it back, right?   So, they're putting about $100 back on my credit card, and two checks for 200 and 400 within a month to square me back up.

Confirmed with Verizon that the ETF credit had been applied to my account (they didn't lie to get me off the phone) - so that's square too!   now I just need to get the old VZ Blackberry SOLD, and we'll be back where we started with T-mobile.

Finished reading The Stand last week -- that was fantastic.   Gripping until the end.   Started The Green Mile, and am already about 1/3 of the way through that.   That movie seems to be a pretty good adaptation, actually.

Tags: books, movies, ryan

We went off on our church marriage retreat for the weekend, left on Friday afternoon -- Left The Boy overnight for the first time with Grandma. We rescinded the No Pacifier policy, realizing that it probably was not fair to grandma for her to have to deal with that for the weekend. We'll revisit that some other time. We got to Chattanooga around 5 or so, got checked in to our room at The Chattanoogan. The place was pretty nice, but had a lot of little nit-picky things that bothered me. ( Read more... )

Getting back home, Ryan had come down with something; he had a rash all over his body (Katie's mom called us while we were gone, we knew) but he hadn't had a fever or anything, so we assumed it was from changing laundry detergent a couple of days prior.   He had a doc appt on Monday anyway to follow up on the Ear and Upper Resp infections.

Doc gave us a little surprise:  Ryan had Strep Throat.  Great.   Now Katie's throat is sore, and I'm just waiting to get it too.

Ryan's new trick:
Turning on and off light switches, which he discovered (ok I helped him realize it) that he could reach while standing on the couch.   So, all night tonight he was turning on and off the overhead light in the living room.   This will get old.

Tags: date night, ryan