Services for my grandfather were held today, at the Bartron-Myer Funeral Home in Montrose. Father Stanis from St. Joseph's presided, and my father gave an excellent and moving eulogy. Friends and family traveled from all over to attend, process to the cemetary in Mill City and back to my dad's for the wake.
It's hard taking pictures at something like this, but I thought Bompy would be happy so many friends and family were spending time together. Here are the pictures from the wake.
Two more of our friends have started keeping blogs, which we're very excited about since they're so far away now. It's very nice to keep up-to-date on the events in their lives and see their pictures so easily.
It sure would be nice if John and Chris started keeping blogs, I bet they'd be funny.
On the sidebar under 'Friends' you'll find links to their sites, Matt & Ashleigh and Jennifer & Kelly. Stop by and wish them well!
We're not a football family and don't usually follow the game, but I'm excited the Steelers made it to the Superbowl this year.
When I was little we used to watch the Superbowl, and I remember having big Superbowl parties at our house. My neighbor was a huge Cowboys fan, so the obvious rivalry was there for us to engage in. And of course this was back in the days of Mean Joe Greene, the Cowboys cheerleaders and a level of excitement I don't think the event has reached since.
By first grade I was starting to collect Steelers gear that included an alarm clock, a piggy bank and a very grand yellow bathrobe. One Friday shortly after Superbowl XIV (Steelers beat the LA Rams 31-19) I got a Troll Book Club order for a Steelers book. Quite exciting, since I was a big reader even then; a book about my favorite football team fit the bill quite nicely.
That night, before I had a chance to read the book, our house burned down. I lost the book and most of my gear, along with my interest in football and bathrobes. I don't think our family ever had a Superbowl party after that, but there were plenty of other reasons not to in the years that followed.
In the past few years though, my dad has started enjoying football again. He actually gets season Giants tickets, and went to their playoffs game this year. I'm looking forward to watching the Superbowl with him this year, especially on his bigass new widescreen HDTV. (Sorry Geoff, I couldn't talk him into a projector but that'll give him a reason to come over to our house and watch movies.)
My grandfather Norm passed away at 8:20am today. He suffered what appeared to be a stroke shortly after Thanksgiving, and was moved into a Skilled Nursing unit after leaving the hospital. He continued to deteriorate until he lost the ability to swallow Friday evening.
He was a great friend and inspiration to me. I used to get on and off the school bus at his house, and often had dinner and lunch with him in high school. We talked a lot about hiking and camping and travelling. Ten years ago, when he was almost 80, we scraped and painted his two-story house together. He came to visit me in California several times, and once stayed with Brandie & I for two weeks in our apartment in San Rafael.
My grandfather loved to travel, and was very adventurous. He often talked of going to the 1939 World's Fair in New York (where one of his wood models was on display), riding the subway and getting off at random stops just to see what was there. He also traveled very late in life, with frequent trips to DC, Ohio and Florida to visit family.
He was also an insatiable Penn State football fan, and a lifelong supporter of Joe Paterno. He was very happy with the team's performance this year.
We were fortunately able to spend a lot of time with him in his final months, days and hours. He died peacefully this morning, with family around him.
At risk of jinxing ourselves (and annoying all our friends who are still experiencing sleep difficulty), we're happy to report Sophie has been consistently sleeping 11-12 hours a night since we stopped letting her fall asleep while we were holding her, and while she was having a bottle. She's also been napping a solid 1-2 hours during the day, usually with a single nap-time.
We're sure there are other factors involved (we also bought one of those white noise sound machines on eBay after using one at Scott & Roi's, she likes the rain sound) and she may start sleeping poorly again as soon as teething resumes in earnest, but the past two nights she hasn't even cried when we put her to bed! She just lays in her crib with Big Bird and her fuzzy blanket and watches us shut the door; not even a whimper!
Prior to this, she'd usually wake up for the third or fourth time of the night between 4 and 5am, and we were just so tired we didn't bother trying to put her back down in the crib. Instead we'd crawl back in bed and try to get another hour or so while she flopped around and often cried in protest. Now we can get up (rested!) and have a half hour or so to wake up before starting her day. I'd forgotten what it's like to wake up on my own!
The sidebar 'Tiny e Videos' link wasn't working out very well for a few reasons, so we've scrapped it in favor of Plan B. Forthwith, whenever we have new videos I'll make a new post under the 'Videos' category, and they'll all be grouped there. Eventually I may go back and break down the older entries into their respective dates, but for now here are the new ones.
High Chair Chat
From a recent snack-time with Sophie.
Swim Class 2/2
Our first swimming class at the YMCA, Part I.
Swim Class 1/2
Our first swimming class at the YMCA, Part II.
Today Sophie attended her first swim class at the Y here in town. It was a lot of fun, and the weather outside helped make everything seem that much more summery.
Starting the week before Christmas, when Sophie had croup, an ear infection and three teeth coming in all at once, we all stopped sleeping more than an hour or two at a time. Since her previous bout of croup resulted in a trip to ER with Stridor, we both lay awake listening to her breathing most nights. Then once the croup passed the ear infection got worse, and after that the teething seemed to get worse.
When Sophie's over-tired, rather than be more likely to crash and sleep hard she digs in and pushes on with a resolve that would impress any veteran all-nighter. At her age most of the resources say she should be getting between 14-16 hours of sleep a day, and she was lucky to get seven or eight very broken up hours.
So finally, in a desperate sleep-deprived haze we ordered a book from Amazon called The No Cry Sleep Solution. (This is where you, faithful reader of our blog, expects the miraculous revelation that allows us all to start sleeping again. Sadly, we are both disappointed.)
I'm almost halfway through the book now and the only thing I've learned is to feel really, really guilty for the times we've tried to let Sophie "cry it out". (Of which at least two efforts resulted in 45-55 minute Herculean efforts by Sophie to stay awake and prove herself the victor in our contest of wills.) So not much help there.
But wait! There's still hope. The Sunday paper carried a '15 Things You MUST Do For Your Infant or Toddler' article, and #2 (something like, "Don't Let Your Baby Fall Asleep In Your Arms") resonated with us a bit.
We've always used a bottle to put Sophie down for naps and bed, and after she was asleep gingerly try to get her into her crib without waking her up. Lately we had experienced a zero-percent success rate, where as soon as Sophie started the descent into the crib her eyes would flutter open in shock and a few moments later the crying would begin. We'd try to tell her it was time to go to sleep and leave the room but she'd often just get madder and madder over time, once even throwing up all over her crib in protest.
So we tried not letting Sophie fall asleep in our arms while having her nap- or night-time bottle. We read to her and let her have the bottle until she's almost asleep, then pick her up and put her in the crib while telling her "ok, it's time to go bed".
It's probably just a coincidence, but immediately after we tried it she started sleeping almost twelve hours straight at night (from roughly 7:30pm to 7:30am) and napping regularly (twice, about 30-45 mins each) during the day. She'll cry a little after we put her in the crib, but nowhere near as much as she used to after falling asleep in our arms. It may be fleeting, but I'll take whatever sleep we can all get.
After enabling video support in August we scattered a few short Quicktime videos in different folders, but they're kind of hard to find if you're just browsing. I'll keep updating this post when we add new ones, and add a link to it on the sidebar so they're easier to get to. Don't forget to login as username 'friend', password 'friend'!
Walking and Shaking!
A short clip of our multi-tasking fiend doing her latest trick, walking and shaking an object. In this case a (clean!) pair of mom's undies.
Carseat Antics
A short clip of Sophie practicing "Da" and then giving me a raspberry.
With Mom at the Lake
An even shorter clip of Brandie and Sophie saying hello to me at Lake Tahoe.
Sophie Six Months Montage
A bunch of clips from Sophie's three-six months ages, mostly her eating and playing peek-a-boo with a washcloth.
Eula & Nepali
A 30-second clip of Eula and Nepali playing out at Helen Putnam Park, compliments of Matt & Ashleigh and their nice camera.
Sorry it's been so long, we lost our battery charger sometime during the relocation nightmare and finally decided to upgrade our six-year-old digital camera for Christmas.
In the process we downloaded some image sequences from our videocamera that we had accidentally taken (see below, 'Tiny e Videos'). Art by accident! Enjoy.
We recently spent a bunch of time upgrading to the latest version of our weblog software so we could instantly swap stylesheets and do some fancy things with our layouts. The default blue and gray had served us well, but I was ready for a change.
Like everything else it turned into quite a project, requiring a long, often-interrupted download and lots of checking on the support forums to debug what had gone wrong with the upgrade. Then after we had gotten it all working again it turned out all the applied stylesheets hosed our layout, so we're not even using the feature we upgraded for!
I'm sure it's just something we need to figure out, but in the meantime we've just started tweaking small things by hand within the current stylesheet; thus the special Valentine-themed red background. Enjoy!
This is a couple days late but we were in Baltimore for Sophie's 13 month birthday so I have an excuse.
Since her first birthday Sophie has become quite the walker. She now loves to run, mostly away from us with objects like pens in her hand. She also loves to play chase now. If we say "I'm gonna get you!" She will turn and run, squealing with delight while waving her arms in the air.
Her temper is becoming more apparent as well. Now if you tell her "No" or take something away from her she will glare at you and bang her chest a la King Kong. She is also experimenting with hitting me and her father. That results in a severe scolding which prompts her to then hit herself.
She talks a lot! I am going to try and list all the words that she says on a regular basis but she will pretty much try to repeat any word that you say. I really need to start watching my language.
Mom (Hooray! Finally! Jake still tries to get her to call me Bob though.)
Dad
Boo (This is usually to scare her Grandpa and Grandma)
Dog
Woof
No
Uh-Oh
All Gone
Don't Touch (I was wiping her face the other day and she told me "Don't touch".)
Yuck
Duck
Neigh (The sound for a horse)
Up
Bottle
Tickle Tickle
Hello
Bye Bye
Nigh Nigh (at bed time)
Tree
Balloon
Ho Ho Ho
Moo
Boots
Some other things she enjoys are singing, pointing at things as saying "uuhhh?" to ask what they are, dancing and holding anything cloth like in her hands and waving it frantically. She still has three teeth although we thought a couple more were breaking in the other day.
If you could bottle this kids energy maybe George W. would have an alternative to his brilliant plan to bring coal back. :)
Since Sophie had been sick and not sleeping very well over the holidays, we had postponed our trip to visit our friends Scott & Roi-Lynn in Baltimore several times. We had already missed seeing both Myrna and Joe, my god-parents, on their respective visits and would soon be past anything that could be called a "holiday" visit. Even though Sophie still wasn't sleeping very well, on Tuesday night we checked with Scott to make sure we were still welcome and decided to try for the next day.
Wednesday morning we packed up and prepared for the five-hour drive. As we packed we debated the slight wobble that had appeared with the Passat after its 30,000-mile service here in town. Should we take it back to the dealer and risk having them introduce a new problem right before our trip? We decided to call George and get his opinion.
"I'd call the dealer and see if they can look at it before you go," he said. "Driving all the way to Baltimore on unbalanced tires would ruin them."
Brandie called and the dealer offered to try and squeeze us in right away. Looking at the problem would take half an hour to 45 minutes, they estimated. We decided it was worth the risk and took the car in. Sue's office is nearby, so we walked over to visit her rather than sit in the dealer's waiting room. After half an hour we called for an update.
"It's next on the rack," the man on the phone said. "It'll be another hour at least though."
We waited a while longer with Sue, then walked back to the dealership. The Passat was now up on the rack, and a technician had one of the tires off. Things looked promising, so we took our coats off and took turns escorting Sophie around the showroom. Finally we got some news from the appointment desk.
"They couldn't find anything wrong with the tires, so they're just going to rotate them back how they were," she said.
That didn't sound right, so I went back to talk to the manager. He spoke with the technician, and found that there was a broken belt in one of our tires. Moving them onto the front of the car had exposed the problem, but not introduced it. More importantly, driving all the way to Baltimore on the broken belt would run the risk of a blowout.
Now I enjoy changing tires, and used to race my friend Matt to see how quickly we could change them, but the prospect of changing one with Brandie and Sophie standing in the snow roadside wasn't very appealing. We opted to have two new tires put on the car. They could get to it right away, but it would end up taking another hour. Sophie had already explored the entire showroom several times over, and was bored of playing with the big red balloon one of the technicians had given her. She had gotten to run around a lot and tire herself out, but after three hours of waiting she was also near the end of her rope and we hadn't even left town yet.
As we drove away from the dealership, Sophie fell asleep. In spite of the delay we still had a chance of getting to Baltimore by six or seven, so we decided to make a run for it. We called George, Sue and Scott to let them know we were finally on our way, and settled in for the drive.
On the way, Brandie called our insurance agent. Due to the mail-forwarding mixup our auto policy had lapsed, so we had called to make a pay-by-phone payment. Our credit card had been charged, but we decided to make sure everything was back to normal just in case.
As it turned out it was fortunate we did, because we had no insurance. Our credit card had been charged, but our agent in California couldn't reinstate the policy without a new round of paperwork. She was going to start it, but would need several faxes back and forth to complete the job. After Brandie got off the phone I exited the highway and we debated our options. Should we try to find a fax machine in New Milford, or just give up on the trip and finish up the paperwork from home?
Frustrated, I called the agent back to see if there was anything else they could do. I had been a good customer for almost ten years, and figured it was at least worth asking. It was also at least a half hour drive back home, and I was paranoid about driving at all without insurance. Unfortunately the agent couldn't help us, but she referred me to an 800 number that might be able to. I called and ended up having to wait half an hour, but finally they were able to get us coverage without any faxing or additional driving by us.
We now had car insurance again, but had lost almost another hour. We were only in New Milford and Sophie was awake again. Should we just turn back, or push on to Baltimore? What other hurdles might be in our way once we got on our way?
We decided to keep going, and fortunately ended up making it to Baltimore without any further delays. Sophie got to watch both of her favorite shows on the portable dvd player Geoff & Erin got us (thanks again!), and we reached Scott & Roi-Lynn's a little after 7pm.
Appearing here with his lovely wife Judy on a wintery day a few years ago. We're painfully missing some more recent pics, and need a visit to amend the problem!
Apologies to Dan that I couldn't find a more recent picture, but this one does the job. Happy Birthday Big Guy. It's not every year you get to wake up to Alice Cooper screaming "I'm eighteen and I like it!"
