Monthly Archives: September 2009

Weeks 32-33, He-Beastie Birthday

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It’s been busy.  I’ve gotten about half of my Python programming class completed, and have recently taken my first tests at CMU.  It seems like if I’m not driving to and from school, I’m doing homework or work or some other thing that keeps me from posting.  Yesterday we went to the CMU Vs Akron football game, for example.  Since we’re not going to be able to make the homecoming game because of childbirth classes, we took the kids to see their first CMU game before we wouldn’t be able to.  It was lovely, and rainy throughout the entire game.  I think only I and the she-beastie enjoyed it.  No pictures, since it was so very wet out.

Weeks 32-33

Jolene is doing well, though she has acquired some of the more common issues that a pregnant woman has.  Braxton-Hicks contractions are NO FUN in the middle of a soccer field, behind the CMU Kelly/Shorts Stadium.

We’ve delivered our birth plan to the baby’s doctor.  It’s such a detailed document and contains stuff that… I couldn’t believe was on there.  Jolene doesn’t know, but I scribbled “I want to wear a grass skirt to deliver the baby” on the bottom of it before handing it to the nurse.  What a surprise that will be!

I guess right now the baby is between 4-5 pounds, and is starting to get more normal looking skin colors.  She’s putting on weight, and generally making mom uncomfortable.  Also, she’s losing the wrinkly “alien looking” skin texture.  Which is good, because the alien birth look is so 90′s.

The he-beastie turned 10!

He is now officially a double-digit individual.  He had a birthday party with family all coming over to have lasagna and give him his presents.  I missed half of the entertainment, having class through the beginning of the dinner party.  No pictures here, but he made off quite well.  It almost makes me want to turn 10 again.  It was nice having everyone over all at once, even if our house is so tiny.

We have these wonderful friends that live in our computers!

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Yesterday, we had a get-together with a few friends that we met on a message board.  Most of them, we have met in person before, but a couple we had not.  We feel very blessed to have these people in our lives.  Even though our face to face contact is rare and brief, we consider them very dear friends.

These amazing and generous people threw a little shower for our little lady!  Heather and Kate did the planning!  Kate and Bill got to the chinese restaurant early and decorated everything.  She brought an adorable cake!

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She even brought clay so that everyone could play a shower game.  Everyone had to make little ‘clay babies’ and I had to pick the winner!  My friends are not artistic.  Not with play-doh, anyway.  The results were HILARIOUS, though.  Nothing like a roomful of grown adults playing with clay!

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They traveled from all over the state.  All the way from Kalamazoo, Detroit,  Muskegon, Lansing, Grand Rapids and even Alpena!  And they brought the baby-beastie gifts!  David even got his man-bag diaper bag!  LOL (this was a big concern for him- Thanks again, Jim!  LOL)

I just want to thank you all, again.  I don’t think I could possibly thank you all enough.  It meant SO much to us.

CMU Week 3, Baby Week 30-31, Beasties Week 1 at School

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CMU

Things are going well at college for me – things are getting routine.  Instead of bringing my GPS with me to Mt Pleasant, I’ve started leaving it at home.  I figure the iPhone can handle anything I need to find anyway.

Supply Chain Management: I can now say that I don’t think this is something I’d like to do for a career in the future.  It’s gone past the first chapter introduction information and has moved on to ratios and the like.  Nothing mindblowing, but the way it’s presented is not the way I would think if I were in the situation in the business world.

Python Programming: I’m 40% complete with the classwork, and have been doing it from home mostly.  I plan on hopping in for some assistance on the next chapter though, some of the syntax in this language is a little off.  This is somewhat challenging since I’m basically teaching myself.

Financial Analysis:  Easy so far – still doing annuities and perpetuities and the like.  So far it’s mostly been review.  I had to buy a calculator since my graphing one isn’t what the book is based on.  I’m not really that pleased with the BA-II calculator as it’s kinda janky in the way that it requires input.  Then again, I didn’t want to use the graphing one because it too has a bad input method for uneven cash flows and other finance items.  Stuff like this, but longer since this is a small example: NPV(12,0,{100,200,300,400,500})*1.12^5.  Yeah, I don’t want to do that on a test.

Marketing Management: I’m enjoying this class more than I thought I would.  I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.  I recently received the outline of the final project and started compiling data for my company, Urban Outfitters.  Everything is group-work based in this class so far, it seems.  As a veritable hermit, that’s challenging.

Integrated Business Experience: SAP.  So we’ve started to use the industry leading Enterprise Services product.  I’m actually very excited about this class.  Good experience with this product is very marketable.

Week 30-31

She now weighs about 3 pounds, and is starting to become quite the boxer.  I can now sit back and watch Jolene’s stomach’ jump’ at me.  She’s regularly kicking, both her brother in the head as well as my hand.  The baby is gaining weight still, and this is making Jolene more uncomfortable.  She’s dealing with it well, however.  We also got a new Pack n’ Play (thanks mom and dad!).  It’s got some rather unique features.  Putting it all together felt like I was a soldier putting together an M-16 for the first time – it was harder than some of the content of the classes listed above.  It comes with a vibrating device and a light as well, plus changing table, plus a napping pad.  This is really what we need, given our little area we have.

Beasties 1st Week at School

The other two beasties had a successful first week at school.

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“Yeah, yeah, whatever David, I’m off to school…”

I didn’t get to hear much from the kids since I’ve been going to school during the times that they’ve been getting out.  All of the exciting news gets simmered down by the time I hit the house.  I missed both of the orientations because of school too.  Things seem to have gone well though, and adjustments have been successful: Ben for not having his sister at school with him for the very first time, and Maddie for going to a new, more grown up school.

More pictures here…

Overall, everything is going exceedingly good, but also exceedingly busy.

A big day for my big girl!

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Probably nearing 2 years ago, I made a deal with Madalyn.  If she stopped sucking her thumb, I would let her get a couple streaks of color put into her hair.  At the time, she wanted purple.  Off and on, she would try different methods to ‘earn’ her hair-do.

This summer, Maddie went away to camp for the first time.  About a week before she left for camp, I went to say goodnight and saw her put an X on her calendar.  I asked what the X’s were for and she told me that she put an X on every day she didn’t suck her thumb.  There were 2 straight weeks of X’s.  I started paying attention during the day and peeking in on her after she was asleep, and sure enough… no more thumb sucking!  She decided that making new friends at camp was SO important that she didn’t want to risk anyone making fun of her because she sucks her thumb.

About a week after she got home from camp, she reminded me about our deal.  I tried to talk her into coloring her hair pink, but she wanted to go blond!  We decided to wait until just before school started so it would still look good for her first day of junior high.

Today was the day.  We had 4 “peek-a-boo” blond highlights put in under the top layer of hair.  When she puts the sides up, you can see 4 definite streaks.  When the top layer is down, you can see a few lighter strands, but it just looks like she spent a lot of time in the sun this summer.  We thought about putting the highlights on the top layer, but then they would show roots when they start growing out.  This is a one time deal.  Mom isn’t paying to do this on a regular basis!

So… today, we headed to the local beauty school.

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She was so excited.  It turned out exactly as I hoped.  Enough blond that the grown up girl is happy, but hidden enough that I don’t have to admit that she is old enough to have highlighted hair!