August 2006 Archives

"...here comes, Daddo!"

Sophie loves playing Hide'n'Seek now, thanks in part to some rousing matches with her cousins and also to the 'Where's Ernie?' Sesame Street regular sketch. Here's some video of her playing in the woods by the firepit here at my dad's. There's some really great light that streams through the trees here at sunset, and she just looks magical in it.

Sophie Sunset

Sorry for the orientation problem, we use the digital camera for video and pictures and often forget you can't easily rotate video after you've shot it!

To appease the grumblings from certain family members (that's her on the right), here are some news pics of the now very animated and interactive Josie. Also, here's some pics of Sophie sculpting the playdough her mom made for her.

It's hard to believe that our little Josephine is already 4 months. She has enjoyed her summer so far by swimming in Pop Pop's pool and hanging on the screened porch.

She recently had her 4 month check up and here are the latest stats. So far so good!
Weight: 13 lbs 1.5 oz Height: 25 inches Head: 40.5 cm
90th percentile for height and 50th percentile for weight and head.

She is also finally off the colic medicine and seems to be adjusting well. She's very close to rolling over and seems to be trying harder and harder every day.

She loves seeing her daddo and smiles and coos at him. She is spending the majority of her time with him now that I am back at work. It's hard being away from her but I just wanted to make sure that I had TWO Daddy's Girls. :)

She is sleeping through the night (knock wood) and has been for about the last month. Man, this second kid is sooo much easier!

She is a sweet baby and we love having her in our family!

Here's an update on Sophie's most commonly-used phrases.

"Monkey.. jumpy.. bed"
Courtesy of the Five Little Monkeys book and song, Sophie loves jumping on the bed. With parental guidance, of course.

"Sophie like it."
Sophie's not shy about telling you she enjoys a certain food or event.

"More, some!"
This phrase always follows a session of jumping in bed, as well as everything else Sophie enjoys (singing, rolly-polly, flying, etc.)

"Howbout um.."
Often in the middle of Old MacDonald Sophie pauses to reflect on which animal is in fact on the farm.

"Daddo, eat it.. all."
This came out unprompted one time Sophie asked for a cookie, and Brandie answered there were no more cookies. Hee-larious. Time to start that diet.

"This is Sophie's!"
Sophie's become quite possessive these days, hopefully it's just a phase.

A Big Happy Birthday to Sophie's friend Gram shown here on the right with his Dad. We hope you have a wonderful birthday surrounded by friends and family.

Our friends Clint & Dawn's guest room is so comfortable, one can sleep so deeply they wake up and have no idea where they are. We know this because both Brandie & I did exactly that on our recent visit to Austin.

For my turn, I woke up disoriented and needed to use the restroom. I got out of bed and stealthily felt my way along the wall (right-hand rule, you level designers) to the door. Both girls were sleeping in the separate Pack'n'Plays Dawn had procured for our use, and I hoped to slip out without waking either of them. Alas, it was not to be.

My first clue that something was awry was the fact that the door creaked when I opened it. The door to the guest room was usually very quiet. I stepped out into the hall and tried to close it more quickly, hoping it might make less noise. It didn't, but I almost had the door shut again when I backed into a wallful of wire shelves.

Ok, I'm not in the hallway, I think to myself. No harm, no foul. I open the door again ('creak!') and step back into the room. Sophie stirs in her Pack'n'Play, then stands up and starts to cry. Rats. Chagrined, I pick her up and put her in bed with Brandie, apologize and exit the second door on the right and go down the hall to the bathroom.

When I get back everything is quiet. I carefully close the door, slip back into bed and fall asleep. I wake up a while later when Josie cries and needs to nurse. Thankfully (sorry hon!), not my task. Brandie climbs out of bed and gets her, and I fall back asleep. A few minutes later I wake to the sound of books hitting the floor.

"What was that?" I groggily ask Brandie, who is nursing Josie on the floor. "Sophie!" she retorts in alarm.

At home Sophie still sleeps in a crib, so she's not used to open space at night. She tosses and turns a lot, and winds up in some pretty silly positions. Tonight she had rolled herself right off the edge of Clint & Dawn's very tall guest bed, hit the bedside table and knocked off her books, then fallen to the floor.

I somehow (I'm pretty out of shape) leap from one side of the bed onto the floor on the other side where Sophie is laying on the floor silent but building up a cry. I pick her up and hold her as she lets loose a wail. That's one of those times you're happy she can cry, but I was still feeling the back of her head for anything wet. Fortunately she wasn't even bruised, just badly startled out of her sleep.

Still having a little trouble with orienting my photos, but we got a bunch of great pictures this weekend. Starting here, here and here. Enjoy!

That's her in the middle, my big sister - Happy Birthday Aunt Sarah!

Living with you has made shopping for your presents so much easier! Thanks for all the support, love and Rummy games this past year, and Happy Birthday!

Seen here on the right with her mom, during her brother's senior prom photography. Congratulations on the new job Lauren, and Happy Birthday!

I had such a good time visiting Austin in June we decided to take the whole family there a few weeks ago. Brandie hadn't seen Clint, Dawn & Lily for almost three years, and I couldn't wait to go back for more Salt Lick so we booked some airline tickets and went.

Compared to our last family trip, this one got off to a good start. We made it to our local airport with plenty of time to spare, remembered to bring the carseats and even made it through the first flight without having to resort to using the portable dvd player Erin & Geoff bought us before we left California (the ace card in my bag of tricks).

When we landed in Atlanta however, things started to seem more familiar. First we spent half an hour on the jetway waiting for our gate to clear, while our flight attendant repeatedly berated and threatened a retired lady for getting out of her seat to use the bathroom. The plane couldn't move while she was out of her seat, and we could have missed our opportunity to make the gate, but the flight attendant could have demonstrated just a little bit of sympathy. We both felt she should have just peed in her seat and let him clean it up.

The delay on the jetway ate up a good part of our planned two-hour layover in the Atlanta airport, but we still had time to grab some lunch and let Sophie run around in the nice play area they had across from our gate. Some of the other parents were taking the opportunity to catch up on their cell calls, feet up and facing away from the play area, and didn't notice their kids bullying or even spitting on others (call us over-protective) but we managed to have a good time anyway.

While we were busy keeping Sophie spit-free and Josie fed, we noticed our departure time had changed. Apparently the plane we were supposed to fly out on hadn't left Charlotte yet, due to some maintenance problems. Well, the shorter version of the story (we're on paragraph #5 and we're not even in Austin yet) is that our two-hour layover turned into an eight-hour layover. Our gate changed five times, usually without anyone notifying the passengers. Fortunately none of us got sick, but we were all exhausted and on our last nerve by the time we met Clint at the Austin airport.

Thankfully the rest of our trip went smoothly and we saw a lot of Austin in a very short amount of time thanks to Clint & Dawn's tireless efforts, even with a 2-month-old, a 19-month-old and almost-3-year-old in tow! I enjoyed revisiting and seeing Brandie experience the Whole Foods Flagship store, the Salt Lick and Amy's Ice Cream (this time I got Key Lime Pie ice cream with Ginger Snaps crushed in), and loved seeing the Austin Children's Museum and the Congress St. Bridge bat colony for the first time (video coming soon). Sophie loved riding her first train at Zilker Park, and running around endlessly with her friend Lily (video also coming soon).

We were also treated to some of the best food I've had in recent memory, which on top of the Salt Lick and Amy's included Gingerbread Pancakes at Kerby Lane Cafe, Pollo Tequila at (help, Dawn!) and the portabello crepes at La Madeleine. If you have one of these bistros nearby (it's a Houston-based chain but they're in quite a few places now, including DC) I highly recommend going!

Thanks again to Clint, Dawn & Lily for sharing their beautiful home and city with us! It was great to catch up, and amazing to watch our kids play together. As I joked to Clint, it reminded me of our first days working together. Also in case anyone didn't already know, Clint & Dawn are the ones to credit with our whole happy family, as they introduced Brandie & I one evening at their apartment over seven years ago. It took them about six months of work brokering our mutual interest, but that's a story for another time!

We're now both devout fans of Austin, and intend to go back as soon and as often as we can! We'll just try to avoid the Atlanta airport from now on, it seems to have something against us.

We love you, Big Guy!

Our hard drive died right before our trip to Austin, but we're finally getting back up to speed and posting all the pics we had just sitting on the camera. Here are some of Sophie at the park, Josie reading with her sister, and our trip to Austin (more from that coming soon).

That's right, Mark - minivan!

We're a little behind in our updates. We traded in the Passat a few weeks ago, right before our trip to Austin (pictures coming soon!), for a 2006 Honda Odyssey. So far we absolutely love it and are very happy with the purchase. It handles great and is a breeze to put the kids into - Sophie & I both love those keyfob-activated automatic sliders. There's tons of room for strollers and groceries and everything else we travel with. The dvd player has come in handy a few times already, and the third row gives Brandie & Josie a lot more room to nurse when we're on the road (not to mention a view of the movie). One minor annoyance is that the daytime dash display is so bright it's easy to forget to turn on the headlights at dusk (something I've done a few times already.)

A little plug for our local dealer, go see Terri at Miller Honda and tell her Jake & Brandie sent you!

Yesterday afternoon around 5pm we loaded up the minivan and headed over to Otsiningo Park for this year's Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally, one of the bigger annual events in the area. I had never actually been to one and was looking forward to finally seeing what all the hubbub was about. Sophie was very excited to hear about balloons so big people rode in them, and stated several times on the drive over that she and her rabbit were going to ride in the balloons.

Sophie was also very excited to finally get a chance to ride on a big yellow school bus, of which several were used to shuttle attendees between the park and Broome Community College's parking lot. All in all it was a fairly effecient process, and we made it to park in time for the scheduled evening launch of the hot air balloons at 6pm. We grabbed a shady spot on a hill overlooking one of the launch fields and waited expectantly (ie. collected sticks, kissed trees, fed the bunny grass, crawled around on the grass like a puppy, etc.)

The weather was gorgeous: sunny, breezy and even a little cool after the big heat wave of last week. It felt very much like an early fall day, with very little humidity and a nice sharp feeling in the air. The breeze apparently made ballooning dangerous, risking the pilots getting caught in treetops, and we thought for a while the launch would be canceled entirely. While we were waiting our friends David and Karen showed up and shared some spiedies and hard-won (thanks Dave!) funnel cake with us.

Around 7:30 two balloons finally rose up over the trees, one shaped like a turtle that really caught Sophie's fancy. (It was all she could talk about as she was going to bed, and thankfully there are pictures of it online this morning as we forgot our camera last night.) Quite a few more started filling up around us, and pretty soon we were surrounded by swaying towers of balloon fueled by roaring fires. It was a little scary, actually.

Around 8pm we decided to head back to the shuttle, which despite a long line got us back to the campus parking lot and home fairly quickly. Next year we'll definitely try to hit more of the ground-based events like face-painting and crafts, but this was a great primer.

Seen here with his sister Tess and niece Sophie, Uncle RD turns 11 today!

A little belated, but with no less love!