Day After Yesterday

Check out the baby blog for all the details…

the holidays are over, and so it is. Everything went well, but we ran around like idiots visiting family, etc and I would have preferred more time to be lazy and work on projects, etc. But such is life.

We did christmas eve at my parents. It went fine, we were there for 7.5 hours, which is kind of long, but it was nice. Christmas day was at Rebecca’s parents, and we were there for 11.5 hours, also a bit long, but it was nice.

Even though I was annoyed by my change of plans, even though it was never to be, I went to work on wednesday. And sure enough, one of the staff’s hard drives died in the AM, forcing me to quick rebuild the machine. So even if I HAD gotten the time off, I would have been in the office anyway. So it worked out…

On new years we went to the party at kieran’s and it was super nice and chill. I had a great time. Rebecca drove and dropped D and Sarah off and went home. Yesterday we chilled out until we had to go pick up mason, who spent the night at the dugan’s. We got to sleep in until about 12:30. it ruled.

So back to work tomorrow.

So we found out wednesday we are having a second child. Perhaps we will get a girl this time? Nothing against boys, but having one of each would be cool. But 2 boys would be cool too.

So the rough date should be end of august.

I am stoked. It is going to rule.

As many of you know, I drive a loud audi. It is actually probably too loud, but I enjoy it, so I am not feeling too bad about it. Anyway…. last night I drove home from work, as I tend to do, and I parked in front of the house. I parallel parked it in the spot in front of the house, so I was making a decent bit of noise. I parked and got out and as I was pulling out the keys to unlock the front door, it opens and rebecca is there holding a smiling mason. Not used to being greeted at the door, I asked what was up.

Turns out as I pulled up and was parking, mason was hanging out on the 3rd floor with rebecca. Mason pointed at the windows and said ‘daddy’. That is awesome, my child recognizes my car by sound.

The joys of being a father.

so I was thinking I need to blog more on mason more often. Time goes by too quick, and it is worth noting the stuff he does. So without further ado..

he recently discovered pointing. it rules. like in the last week or so… so you can say ‘where is mommy?’ and he’ll point at rebecca. kitty, daddy, etc. it is cool. so now he is posting at everything. it is really funny.

so big… you can go up to mason and say ‘how big is mason?’ and he’ll smile all big and put his arms up in the air. ’so big!’. that is in the last 2-3 weeks. funny stuff.

he is still talking up a storm, not that we can’t understand most of what he is saying. But his first word was kitty. that was about a month ago I would wager. He LOVES the cat. He loves the cat, he loves the cat magnets. he loves the cats in the books. ‘kitty kitty kitty’. it rules.

he is still crawling, army crawl style. he will get up on all fours and bounce around, and will occasionally crawl around for a few steps, but then he is back to the army crawl.

he likes standing but he isn’t super good at. he can’t pull himself up, but in the last week or 3 you can pull him up and lean him against the couch, ottoman, whatever and he can stand there holding on for a little bit. and if you hold him up and walk him around, he will step. he is getting the balance thing down.

so lets play some catchup…

mason: doing great.. talkative (but just no in english) and almost always in a good mood. he is always smiling and can be so easily entertained. As I type this he is scooting around on the floor playing with a piece of paper he pulled off an empty box. Funny stuff. He is pretty social, and he still sleeps really well. We are beginning to ween him and we have started giving him formula as well as the solid foods, and he is all about that. He is also getting big enough that we need to get him into a normal car seat, as we aver overdue. He isn’t crawling yet but he scoots around on the hardwood on his belly, which is fun to watch, primarily because he can only really go backwards.

house: we are making progress on the house, in preparation for mason’s first birthday party, which we will be celebrating on 10/28. We have hung a bunch of stuff on the walls that we had been meaning to get up, and we got some black tile for the basement bathroom. Unfortunately, I haven’t finished pulling up the glue from the linoleum yet, which is a pain, but is coming along. We have a grocery list of stuff that we need to finish though, amongst them is tile for the front entry, which will likely be a slate. Should be super nice.

cars: I have been busy enough that my free time hasn’t been spent at the garage, which is too bad. the jetta is really close to ready… check out that blog for more on the project. The Audi performed very well Blackhawk Farms with the ACCCC last month and it was great being on the track. I have a short video that I stole from josh and edited down to just the part I am in, which you can watch if you want, even though it is long… check it (warning, 20mb). I have only been driving around in the city lately, not pushing the car much. I had noticed a few thunks in the rear lately, I assuming it was stuff in the back of the car rolling around. I happened to be driving the camry home the other night and as I pulled behind the audi, I noticed something hanging down. Sure enough, the swaybar was BROKEN. Kinda nuts, I’ll get some pics tonight. but it is odd. Needless to say, the camry is doing fine. I’ll likely buy some better tires for it next summer, as I hate these RE92s, and one has a slow leak. But whatever. I am still impressed by the gas mileage for a car of its size.

computer stuff: I still think my macbook is dope. still very happy with it. The move to the intels was a great move by apple. I also got a nice case for it that fits in my backpack, very nice.

side stuff… I have been inspired a bunch of times readin the MAKE blog and I have a few little projects I am going to work on, but I have been so busy with side web work and other shit I haven’t had time to play. I finally got around to learning layout with CSS vs. tables, and that has worked out well for me. I am by no means an expert, but I am getting the hang of it. I don’t know why I had such trouble figuring it out in the past, it is easy. I think I just wasn’t motivated enough.

Other than that, nothing super amazing to make note off… off to hang some more stuff on the walls. or back to the basement bathroom. And I need to go to the garage to talk with dylan about websites we are working on. And I have some work to do for work work. awesome.

Airfare has been booked… Roughly $1,000 for the 3 of us to fly to oakland… add in a couple hundred for the rental car, and that is one of our 2 summer trips this year. We will be staying with Caroline for a week in the Arcata area of northern California. I am excited, it should be a great trip. Ocean, nice weather, nice area… etc… Should be a super nice trip… We are also going to Seattle in early September to hang out with Rebecca’s brother who lives out there…

So Rebecca, her brother Jon and I went to the movies last night. We saw Nacho Libre and it was funny. It wasn’t AWESOME or anything, but I was amused. If you like jack black, you’ll enjoy it.

It was funny cause we actually hired a BABYSITTER! How old are we. A coworkers daughter came over and watch mason. Mind you, she got there after mason was already asleep, so it wasn’t that she had to do much aside from hang out and make sure the house didn’t burn down. It is just odd to think I have to hire a babysitter. Funny shit.

My toe hurts. I cut it a while ago, like over a month ago if not 2 months, and it is beginning to not feel right. The skin was kind rough, like it was flaky or something, I dunno. But today it is annoying as my other toe rubs against it when I walk. I guess I should find a doctor. Weird.

So this weekend is over… Friday night we walked over to Pacific Cafe and had sushi, it was nice… saturday was the ACCCC autox at maywood, which went quite well. I drive, just ran the event. Just under 50 cars, 14 runs each, done by 3:45pm. Not bad. Although there was this annoying kid that was both creeping me out AND driving me nuts. It was awesome. He just kept talking. I won’t bother writing the whole thing out…

After the autox, I got home, washed the car (it was filthy). I like it clean. And it is so easy to do… it just looks so much better. Mental note: wash the car more than once every 6 weeks.

Then I drove over to meet Rebecca and Caroline at Yitca’s house. Yitca’s baby Ellie (sp?) is 3 weeks older than Mason, but she is like little super developed baby. She started walking last week (so at 8.5 months). She talks (mommy, daddy, shoe, etc). She waves, etc. Crazy. But good for her. It is weird cause you can’t help but to compare your own kid to other kids… and it is such a weird macro view of time at this point. You need to relax, and let some kids walk before others. In 2 years, you won’t care what month your kid walked. In 10 years, you won’t even remember how long it took. But now, in the 6-12 month range, it seems to be SO important. It is not indicative of anything in the future. Got to remember to leave the charts and graphs alone, and focus on the baby. He’ll figure it out on his own in due time.

Sunday got up, picked up dylan, and we met scott and kieran at the old shop. Loaded up a ten foot uhaul box truck (that had NO brakes, likely due to the fact that it had no brake FLUID. We filled it up and it improved. A little) and moved a bunch of stuff to the new garage. Then we swapped the old truck for a slightly better truck and made another trip. The new shop is nice. We cleared out the little room in the basement and loaded a bunch of our stuff in it. Having storage in the basement rules. Once we get everything cleaned up, organized, put away, etc, the new shop is gonna rule. RULE. ROOL. I am excited, but since I am still sick of moving, I don’t care about it. For now. Also big plus: MUCH closer to Mr. Salsa, so I will get to eat there more often.

Cali is still at the old shop, and I am hoping we can get her running soon so I can drive her to the new shop. We still have some stuff there, but it is all small stuff that can either fit in a car, or is required to finish Cali up.

Rebecca’s brother was over when I got home and we hung out and chatted and shit… when I first started dating Rebecca, we didn’t get along SUPER well, but I think we have both figured it out and now we can chat about this and that tech shit, it is pretty nice. So we hung out a bit, then I drove him to the metra station to catch the last train to glen ellyn… and man, was it pouring. I forgot how the tires on the camry aren’t awesome in the rain (Bridgestone Potenza RE92)… but they were better then taking Audrey, which is on Rs still. That would have been hydoplane city.

So overall, things I learned. I hate moving. I forget that sometimes. I also didn’t get to spend enough time with Mason, which sucked, I want to hangout with him more. Having a clean car is nice, wash it more often. Kids develop at different paces, and that is not a problem, no need to compare yourself to every kid on the block. Rebecca’s brother is cooler than I had realized.

It seems we are always busy… so what is new? I’ll do it in some list method…

• Mason is doing great. He is smiling lots, has begun laughing on his own, and is eating like there is no tomorrow, so I would imagine another growth spurt soon.

• I got my new glasses. I don’t have any pictures come to think of it, but they are nice. I am totally used to them now. They are dope. I picked them up on friday, 6/2. The place was nice, urban eyecare on milwuakee. Close, insurance covered them, and I like the glasses. Can’t beat that.

• Gardening… so we planted some flowers. And by we, I don’t mean me. Rebecca and her folks did the plant buying and the planting. The backyard looks great. I think we are going to do some new sod. I need to read up on what is involved, time windows, etc. I REALLY want to build an in ground sprinkler system, but everyone tells me it is over kill. Which it is. But I still want to build it.

• Outings… we went to the Chicago Botanical Gardens with Lisa, we have gone out the burbs a few times, hung out with Robyn a few times… been busy, but nothing too awesome too report…

• I am still not drinking pop… well, I have had like 4 cans in the last month…

• We worked on the house a bit… I may have mentioned it, but we did a bunch of touch up, I laid peel and stick vinyl tile in the laundry room, hung new lights in the basement hallway, hung some more shelves in the den, hung the projector screen in the den, bought the chair rail for mason’s room, painted clouds in mason’s room, etc… Slowly but surely…

• The jetta is getting close to done… the list of things to do is pretty small, and I am getting excited. Check the Cali The Jetta blog for more on the progress. Once I can drive that, the Audi goes to Al’s at Chicago Performance and Tuning for the A/C repair. THAT will be nice too.

• Been doing some more side work, which is nice money, I like money. I haven’t gotten paid on much of it yet, but we are getting there.

• Rebecca and I both got sick, and it sucks. On Sunday AM we both wokeup commenting that our throats felt weird. Well, now it is wednesday and I am home sick. I am feeling a bit better, but rebecca is still moving along. I stayed home to babysit and recover so rebecca could get some sleep. Being sick sucks, especially when both of us get sick at the same time.

• Autox on saturday, and we are planning on moving all the shit to the new garage on sunday. Busy Busy.

• I hacked one of the tivos. I am still playing with it, so it is not 100% awesome yet, but progress is being made. It is cool.

I think that is all for now… I think. I will try to be more current with my posts, I swear.