Home Improvement

Ugh, I was not a fan of that show. But go ahead and grunt if you want; it's cool. Those kid actors, especially the middle one, were totally going to be the next big thing, right? Sure. The only career I've seen for anyone beyond that show (save some terrible Santa Clause movies), is "I don't think so, Tim" on the Family Feud. Now there's a good show! We're playing the feud! I was always kind of a Ray Combs guy for the host. Or just the cartoon version.

Oh, and speaking of TV shows. LOST. WTF? So it's over and I guess good riddance now. As suspected -- wrote its way into a corner and very awkwardly escaped through the floorboards (and out the lighted toilet tunnel). Weak. Here's what I said to our viewing party by email:

Thanks for viewing with me last night. As I ate lunch I began to
search for those who best summed up how I felt about "The End." I
think these two are pretty good. Basically the island was the main
part all along and that was the adventure we watched for. But we got
the TV movie version of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven."
That's fine too I guess, and a perfectly fun plot device to mirror the action
this whole season as it did, but it came at the expense of being able
to wrap up why the first 5 seasons on the island (you know, in REAL
life) even mattered. As those bloggers note -- you could have had 5
seasons of disparate people struggling at work or an Outward Bound
trip instead of a mystical island. If you're going to pick mystical
island, then you better tie up its loose ends since it was (debatable)
the most important character in the show.

But, whatever. I didn't come here to talk about LOST. What happened, happened. Unfortunately. We here at the ranch actually have been busy of late with some home improvement. Gracie said her digs just weren't cutting it. So we've begun some projects outside just when it gets really unholy hot in Austin. Brilliant. First, an update to our backyard centerpiece. It can go by two names -- the Ollie Garden (like Olive Garden -- it's funny!), or the High Life Garden (for it's shape, as you'll see below). We started it last year after we lost "Ollie" (our embryo, pre-known-gender nickname; Gracie, as you may remember, was dubbed "Iggy" until the ultrasound showed us otherwise). Anway, just after completion last March:

You see the High Life resemblance now!

And now after some growth and the usual scorched grass :(


We've also gotten closer to a new driveway. You may recall we had them pour concrete under the carport to give us a solid surface to park the cars and keep dirt/gravel/etc. from tracking into our cars like it has been doing unfettered for 4 years. We bought what we thought was enough river rock gravel to lay down over the crappy gravel that had eroded for the rest of the driveway. Upon laying it and breaking our backs last weekend, we found we came up well short. So another big delivery truck of gravel should finish the job in a couple weeks when the temps hit triple digits! Before:

And not so much "after" but "during" I guess:


Meanwhile, Gracie's just hanging out inside in her ez-chair. As soon as she can figure out those opposable thumbs, she's grabbing a shovel.


Happy Memorial Day weekends to all! Austin was #18 this year for Memorial Day destinations across the U.S. Bam!

Gratuitous Cuteness

It's Friday! And Fridays are happy-happy times, so it seems fitting to post gratuitous Gracie cuteness and leave it at that. First a load of pics from her first (and our first) Mother's Day. We played it pretty low-key with a mid-afternoon indulgent Italian feast and some hang time back at Nana and Pops' house.


Then some sleepy pics and one where a bunch of us new parents got together and took the obligatory lined up babies picture. Awwwwwh.


And finally a couple videos of Gracie the last couple days where she got excited about her bath (a recent and welcomed development) and then went Rocky on some tummy time as her head starts to stabilize.

Have a grand weekend wherever you are! We'll be raking rocks all over the place to create our new driveway and hanging out with our Geneva buddies who are expecting their own baby (Euro) girl in the fall. Yay!

3 month report

Well, since Gracie is nearing the end of the "fourth trimester" we thought we should give you a progress report. Of course she passes with flying colors (she is a genius after all), but in case you're wanting more specifics...

-she weighs somewhere is the vicinity of 12 pounds, and is about 23 inches long. She is right around the 50th percentile for height, weight and head circumference.

-she can hold her head up pretty nicely now, thanks to all that tummy time training (Jason is her personal tummy time trainer and is kind of a nazi about it)


-she has pretty much made it out of the fussy phase and really only cries when she wants something (hungry, diaper changed, etc)

-she is sleeping great (knock on wood). Usually, she goes to sleep around 9pm and sleeps straight through until 4 or 5.


-she is finally starting to like bathtime and even has even splashed around a bit

-she loves to "talk" ... she is cooing and oohing and aahing all the time and likes to experiment with controlling the volume of her voice


-is generally much more interested in the world around her. She will follow an object from right to left and up and down, and she loves to watch her mobile, hang out on her exercise mat, and look all around when we go outside


- and best of all... will give you a giant gummy grin when you smile at her!

V

Yeah, like the show "V" for "Visitors." No, I don't watch that. I stick to one fantastical ABC show at a time that overstays its welcome, writes itself into several storyline corners and, seemingly, with a couple episodes left has no way to cleanly conclude itself. But I digress.

We've had a few more visitors. Some for several days, some for not even 24 hours. And more are coming . . . just like the smoke monster. Stupid 'Lost' with its stupid unanswered mysteries with stupid non-inquisitive castaways who have yet to even ask the most basic questions to their captors/saviors/leaders and with stupid perma-cologne-model ad Sawyer (credit to Andrew) and his "son of a bitch!" catchphrase. Anyway, where was I? Right, visitors.

So the Cornhuskiest chick in DC - Jill - came down for a few days a couple weeks ago. She was welcomed by some cold, cloudy skies and a home project that was thought to be quick and easy but took all day -- laying some concrete for a mini-driveway under our carport. Witness the colossal cement trunk that wet itself all over our property:


The crew didn't leave until literally night fall (almost 9p nowadays), but in the end they did a great job and we no longer have to drag 4 pounds of gravel onto our cars' floorboards daily. Hip hip, huzzah! Anyway, the weather and excitement (what's worse than watching paint dry? watching concrete dry!) picked up the rest of the week. The ladies and Gracie headed into the Hill Country for some wine tastings
and we all enjoyed some good eats in town. Plus just some hanging-with-Gracie time. Look: the Nebraska fan gets to sit in a big red chair! Yes, amazingly not all of our furniture is burnt orange.

But, speaking of burnt orange, Gracie (we swear...on her own) has declared her fandom for the Horns already. Witness her soothing herself with a message:


Later in that same week, our favorite Cock ...err South Carolinian... Gavin (sorry, co-favorite Emma) came to town for a very quick bidness trip and we caught lunch. Gracie has now seen her tallest person ever at 6'7" and probably won't break that record for a while. Witness:

In between and since then we have been so happy to field continual local visitors too. Nana is visiting twice a week to watch Gracie now that Kelly is back to work full-time and dad is staying home two days a week. So far, so great. One of the ongoing tasks while at home is to figure out what we do or do not need in the house anymore as we start to fill up with another growing member of the household. Case in point: my giant Simpsons beer mug. Sure, it recalls very fond memories of the "big ass beer" at Salerno's in LexVA. (Yes, there's a yelp page for Lexington VA!) But it is a less practical piece of barware these days. So I used it up one last time for fun. Recipe: two tallboys of LoneStar...
One moron to drink it all...

And I'll let Gracie do the dramatization of passing out on the couch not long after...


And with that, the Simpsons mug is retired. And I'm jonesing for some baked ziti and semi-gruff service. MMMMM!

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Well, it's been sweet, but the fun and games are almost over. I'm back to work on Wednesday. My take-away from maternity leave is not so different from normal life.... try to do one thing that scares you every day. And when you have a new baby, lots of things are scary at first. Driving the baby home from the hospital. Walking to the end of the street. Figuring out how the stroller folds to put it in the car. Taking the baby to a restaurant. Trying to walk with baby in the stroller and dog in tow. Breastfeeding in public. Figuring out how to wear your baby. Our motto has basically been... we'll try anything as long as we have the option to bail.

So what have we accomplished over the past twelve weeks? Here's a tally of Grace's outings thus far:

Wineries: 3
Movies ("Date Night" at Alamo Baby Day): 1
Book Clubs: 1
Strawberry Farms: 1
Outlet Malls: 1
Beer Socials to celebrate the opening of a beer co-op opening in our neighborhood: 1
Free Happy Hours at this great motel in our neighborhood: 2

Not bad for being only 10 weeks old!

Away I Went

So two weeks ago tonight I was settling into the Residence Inn in lovely Man-ass VA outside (unfortunately well outside) DC. I had gone away for work for the first time in Gracie's short life. I had attained Gold status on American (not nearly as much as the dude in "Up in the Air" but a lot of flying nonetheless) thanks to this same trip to a windowless secret facility full of dweebs, germs and long shifts trying to figure out what had gone wrong now with our overly complex software. But, I had a reprieve for the end of the pregnancy and birth. It had been lovely. Alas, the first time back was not terrible (only 3 nights away and the weather there was actually lovely) but certainly not easy. Of course, I got cute pictures of what I was missing, which was the best-slash-worst. Gracie laughing at her reflection.

Pops bonding with his granddaughter.

Nana bonding with her entourage.


Clearly, as they have all along, the grandparents have been dynamite and so helpful in relieving the load. They'll be called on even more starting next week when Kelly goes back to work and I go to part-time.

Anyway, the trip back was fun for me. I went with BWI for the direct flights to Austin and was rewarded on the return side with a brush with Mitch McConnell in the bathroom. There was some weird looking police guy right outside the bathroom and I was busy looking at him while walking in when I nearly ran into the very nicely dressed dude with a perma-scowl on his face. So, yeah, he was leaving; no stall foot tapping or anything like that. Then I stopped at the bar for a beer while the guy next to me literally downed 3 shots and a beer in no more than 10 minutes. Being a fan of the Wire and being near Baltimore, this was quite fun.

When I got back, we decided to treat ourselves and yet again Nana & Pops helped by babysitting while we had a date night at Zoot. It was good enough, but we'd rather stay closer in and hit up Wink instead. In the following days we tried eating out a few more places noting that we needed to step it up with Gracie and get her out and get comfortable taking her with us places. Man, taking kids/babies to restaurants is tricky. We tried this neighborhood place that's kind of bar/restaurant that used to be very family friendly and lots of outside seating. But it had clearly become more bar, less restaurant. That was awkward. You're the people with a baby in a bar. Felt like that scene from "Sweet Home Alabama" (yes, I watch Reese Witherspoon rom-coms!) where she's back in AL and she goes to a bar and this girl's in there with her baby and says something like "yeah, it's hard since she's still on the tit!" Exactly. Anyway, we love eating out and definitely don't want to give that up now that we're DISKs so we have to rework the fav list and cross-check with family friendly. Extra work, dammit!

Of course going out to this bar (let's just call it that now; I'll provide the link for Child Protective Services later) also reminded me that I didn't just physically go on a trip. I've gone away in another sense -- I've started to slowly lose my mind. We walked out of that bar forgetting not only the diaper bag, but also I apparently had dropped my jacket somewhere between the car and the bar (we're terrible parents!) and it was lying there as we walked out. The night before when we went out for date night alone, we got all the way (20 minutes) to my parents' house before realizing no breast milk in the bottle. I had to drive back to the house and get it just in time for our reservation. Then the following Monday, I left my travel bag with my work computer at home. We also got lost in our adjoining neighborhood at one point. Son of a bitch! This is not me. Back in college I smugly (but tacitly) walked around with a bit of self satisfaction about my ability to manage and remember everything without some elaborate datebook. You know, back in "those" days a lot of folk had these thick appointment books with a calendar and they had all their assignments, upcoming tests, etc. in there. We didn't have Google Calendar or widespread use of Outlook with reminders and shit. No, we had thick datebooks and they were clunky and awful and we liked it! Anyway, I didn't use one. I kept nearly everything straight in my head just fine. So to see now that I can't do it anymore and that I need to post reminders all over the house and my office (in addition to leveraging all kinds of digital tools) is a tad depressing. 32 going on 73...

Well, that's all for this installment. We had another visitor in town last week that we'll recap soon. Here's a hint, she loves Big Red. Not just the gum... Oh, and I finally wore and subsequently threw away my last pair of boxer shorts. Saved the gaudiest for the last!

Ciao! Now where's the damn laptop power cord?

Of Resurrection and Regression

Well, it's been a week since Easter and we had a whale of time with guests in town, visits to BBQ shacks and wineries, and many a glamour shot (seriously, I used to love going by this place in the mall growing up; there were always rumors of someone from school being one of the featured "models" tacked up on display in the store) session with baby Gracie. But the post had been delayed this past week because the aforementioned little one had a bit of a regression in the sleep department. We had become accustomed to her sleeping pretty much all night from around 10p to 6a'ish. Experienced parents, baby books and our own notion of Karma told us to keep this more or less to ourselves, not to gloat, and just thank our lucky stars and continue to knock on wood. Which we did! But early in the week, I rolled over at 12:30a expecting to see more 6's and less 12's to the sound of someone waking up, fussing and demanding some milk. Then again at about 4a. Oof! I had forgotten this lifestyle. And it continued through the week, so arriving at home at night left little energy to giddily recount the previous weekend's events. But, alas, Grace has strung together a couple longer nights and we've rested up so the look back to last weekend is ready.

So, Auntie Janel and Uncie Mike (pictured here in their own glamour shot way)

decided that instead of spending yet another weekend enjoying freedom and all the delectable delights of Denver, that they would spend it with us mostly sitting around and watching a fairly undeveloped human cycle through her sleep-defecate-eat routine. AND! they would help hold, rock and expertly photograph said lady as well. God bless 'em!

They arrived Friday and mostly hung out around the house capturing some great photos of the GRAPEs. Proof:

Then, in an effort to show our guests more of a good time and to prove to ourselves that we really can take our daughter out in public without a major catastrophe occurring, we hopped in the car and traveled to our favorite BBQ haunt that doesn't involve getting up at 7a. Grace was excited

and so were we. The ribs are exquisite, the sausage unique and the fatty brisket was actually better than remembered. But, the deliciousness comes with a wait...always. Witness the line out the door

But finally after waiting and drooling as we saw the firepits and the meaty goodness being prepared, we were rewarded with a record $60 worth of meat. We promptly consumed nearly all of it with Grace watching on seemingly jealous.

Feeling drunk on the meat and buzzed on the Lone Star, we brazenly set off on a hill country drive en route to the as-big-as-Texas Mandola winery. Upon arrival we found that while Grace did not eat the BBQ, she pooped as though she had. We had leakage; new outfit needed stat! And so we cleaned her up in the back of the Subaru only to find later that the swanky winery had a changing table more plush than ours at home in the men's room. Doh! Daddy lesson #317. Nonetheless, we lingered and indulged on the larger sampling session while little Texas debutants, excessively tanned middle-aged men, and other folk hovered around us.

We returned back to Nana & Pops's house for an evening of frivolity to cap a busy, enjoyable and parentally successful day.

On Easter day itself we took it a little easier. We started with the Easter tradition of breakfast tacos (?) and egg-themed chocolates. I particularly enjoyed those.

And after the requisite Whole Foods tour and a bath for Gracie, we headed out for an obligatory spring-time Texas wildflower photo shoot. On the previous day's drive we had noticed the impressive crop this year so we knew the photo gettin' would be good. Observe the impressive results thanks to Uncle Mike photography skills.

Then they had to go back to Denver :( THE END!