Week 28-29, Camping, First Week at CMU

Posted on August 28, 2009 by David

Lest you think I have been remiss about posting on this blog, I have an excuse: I have been quite busy! Last week we went camping. Of course, there was no internet, so there was no way to make the normal posting

More pictures here

It was wet, and not just because we were on Lake Michigan – it rained nearly the whole time we were there. Still, it was nice to end the summer. On the last night there, the clouds finally cleared off just as bedtime hit. We were able to see tons and tons of stars. I used an application for my iPhone to locate items of interest, and we were able to find Jupiter and other constellations.

Week 28-29

During camping the baby was spending her time developing wrinkled brains. Apparently, they start off smooth like a rock on the shores of Lake Michigan, and later develop the wrinkly look that we think of when we think of brains. She’s also getting fatter, and should be head-down now. Some people say that during this time the infants start to get REM-sleep patterns, which means that she might be dreaming. Not sure what she’d have to dream about. I don’t think there’s any movies being screened in there or anything.

My First Week at CMU

Everything went pretty much as planned. Parking wasn’t an issue. I found my classes ok. I am pleased with most of the rest of it.

BIS 228 – COBOL Python Programming

This class was intended to be COBOL programming, a language that’s from the stone age. Nobody but big banks really use it anymore, whereas Python is actually actively used. The professor in this class seems nice, and on the first day he told us that we could do the entirety of our classwork online and didn’t need to show up. Also, he refuses to teach COBOL, hence the switch to Python. Sounds good to me.

FIN 302 – Integrated Financial Analysis

An interesting professor and class, we started off with a chapter on ‘what is finance’ and have finished the rest of the week off with some Net Present Value of money equations. All review, basically. I don’t have the calculator he demonstrates things with, but my trusty TI-84 has all of the functions. I just need to figure out how to best use them.

MKT 304 – Integrated Marketing Management

A very friendly professor from Romania. The book is, as you would expect from a marketing book, slick and to the point. This class will be very involved with active participation, I think. I’m not really ‘into marketing’ so it’ll be interesting, for sure.

MGT 303 – Integrated Supply Chain Management

This class hurts my brain. What I’m being told in here goes against what I’ve learned in the past.

BUS 301 – Integrated Business Experience

This is where I’ll learn SAP, work on simulations of running a company, and more. This takes place in the DiamlerChrysler computer lab, which is one of the nicer ones. I’m not going to enjoy how late at night it is, though – I will be getting home around 10 PM on Thursdays.

I’m told at the end of my integrated business experience I am going to have to present my company to 90+ people in an auditorium, including the dean of the business school.

Week 27 – Cauliflower, or a Boot?

Posted on August 16, 2009 by David

Cauliflower.

Yup, the baby is apparently the size and weight of a 2 pound cauliflower head. The baby sites always, always seem to concentrate on the fruits and vegetable stands at the supermarket.

I’m not the only one to notice this.

Thankfully, someone has taken the time to setup a new, guy-friendly measurement metric.

I present to you, this weeks guy-friendly fetus-equivalent:

A boot. A 13 inch work boot.

Ok, I can jive with that. However, he doesn’t go into much more detail (nor should he) about the development during the weeks. So I’ll still have to look at pictures like these…

… which (I assume) is what our baby would look like if they were a who from whoville.

Anyway…

This week the baby is beginning it’s slow turn around. Soon, she’ll be loaded into the chamber and ready to be fired!

Sorry, got carried away with this ‘guy’ stuff. She can fully breath now, so she’s more viable now than ever.

We started registering at babies-r-us, and are getting all the final stuff in place for the arrival. It’s getting exciting!

The Decemberists and The Heartless Bastards – 8/11/2009

Posted on August 16, 2009 by David

The concert finally arrived! The day I had been waiting for. Early on that day 11th I was sitting at the computer and saw a couple of updates at twitter.com. I basically use twitter as a means to follow updates people of interest to me. Two of those are members of The Decemberists.

They had gotten to Royal Oak early, and decided to pass the time busking for dollars

It’s not every day that you see a major-label signed band play on the street. They earned two dollars.

Then, they got busted for busking! Apparently the cops took a dim view on them playing on the street. This was kind of odd, because when we arrived there was an italian street festival going on.

We drove down to the Royal Oak Music Theater later and got there just as the doors were opening. Because of our pre-printed tickets, we got to enter in the VIP entrance rather than wait in the line. This secured us a spot right up next to the stage.

The first band was called “The Heartless Bastards”. Interesting name, but they definitely put heart into their playing

I was looking forward to seeing their opening act, since I have quite enjoyed their newest disc, ‘The Mountain’. They played a reasonably long setlist, with lots of songs that I knew and had heard from that album. There was only one issue – the vocals were fairly low and we had a hard time hearing what she was singing. We were so close to the stage that we were underneath the big PA system that the venue had installed, so we were worried that we weren’t going to be able to hear the concert from where we were.

Finally, the Decemberists came on stage after a short break.

They played The Hazards of Love in it’s entirety, from start to finish. It’s better in person than it is on the CD, for sure. An interesting thing to note: we were close enough to the performers to see their eyes and what they were looking at. It was interesting to see that they were basically people watching throughout the performance. I guess I didn’t expect that.

The entire concert was high energy, even though the theater was extraordinarily hot. The crowd up front was closely packed. After drinking 3 bottles of water and standing in the heat for several hours, we decided to retreat to the relative coolness of the middle of the theater after the intermission. The full setlist for the concert was:

01. Prelude
02. The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
03. A Bower Scene
04. Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
05. The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)
06. The Queen’s Approach
07. Isn’t It a Lovely Night?
08. The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid
09. An Interlude
10. The Rake’s Song
11. The Abduction of Margaret
12. The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing
13. Annan Water
14. Margaret in Captivity
15. The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)
16. The Wanting Comes in Waves (Reprise)
17. The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)

Second Set:

01. Intro
02. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade
03. The Sporting Life
04. Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)
05. The Bachelor and the Bride
06. The Calamity Song
07. Dracula’s Daughter
08. O Valencia!
09. Crazy on You*

Encore:

10. Eli, the Barrow Boy
11. Sons and Daughters

The second hour of music was amazing. The band commented on the Royal Oak police force being kind of a drag. The entirety of the concert was recorded and can be found online here

All in all, it was an amazing concert, and definitely ranks up there with my favorite performances I’ve attended. This was a most amazing way to finish our summer vacation.

Does the baby not like Tori Amos? Concerts Continue, Week 26

Posted on August 9, 2009 by David

Finally!

I’ve been waiting for a kick from my daughter seemingly forever now. She’d kick, I’d put my hand where it was, and she’d stop. She seems to be a very contrary baby!

Last night Jolene went to a Tori Amos concert in Detroit, about two hours away. After she got back late last night, we started dozing off to sleep at the late hour of 2:30AM.

Suddenly, we felt a ‘thud’. She was up, kicking, and had miraculously kicked the exact location my hand was in. Finally! I was half asleep, but it was sudden and obvious what happened. We waited for a second one, and she delivered yet another to me.

She must’ve missed me, or didn’t like Tori Amos or something.

More Music

The night previous to this, Jolene and I and some of her friends from work all went to go see Lacuna Coil again:

We had all seen them previously as an opener to Disturbed, but everyone in the group felt that they didn’t play nearly long enough. We got our full dose of Lacuna Coil Friday, as they played a regular length set. The opening bands were local groups that were pretty good as well. As you can see in the pictures, it was a small club event and not a large stadium event like the Disturbed concert. This is a good thing – you get much closer to the artists and see how they really are.

It was a great concert.

We’re going to our last scheduled concert this Tuesday – another Decemberists concert. I missed the last one, and so I just had to get tickets. I’m looking forward to it very much!

Week 26

No more fruits or vegetables – I am having a harder and harder time finding posts about fetal development that deal in the metrics of fruits and veggies.

However, this week she’s developing eyebrows and fingernails and the like. Also, some hair might be starting to grow on her head. More importantly, her blue eyes are opening. They’re blue because all infants eyes are blue at this time, not having a chance for the pigments to take hold yet. She can see around her now, and knows when it’s dark and when it’s light. Now she truly knows her mother likes to stay up too late at night!

Everything else is going well, we excised the desks from our house and I have built a new desk to make room for the chair that we’re going to be using a lot in the next few months

It was quite a project. When I originally put it together, it was far too tall for use as a computer desk. I would’ve had to sit on phone books or something to get high enough to use the computer. In the end, I had to jigsaw off the bottom ‘kick plate’ area of the cabinets. It all came together nicely in the end.

The Summer Doldrums, Week 24, The Divine Proportion, Week 25

Posted on July 31, 2009 by David

Well, the summer is officially ‘on’. All of the kids activities and vacationing that we did in the beginning of our summer vacation are now decidedly over. The beasties are very much always around, which makes writing in this blog difficult. As I write this, one is arguing with the other about chore duties; a mere foot away from me.

There’s only so much room in a 1000 sq foot house.

Week 24

Week 24 was last week, in which fingernails were completed, nails were done, and the lungs started secreting a fat that allows for easier inflation. Movement-wise, she’s been quite the little jumper – kicking and bouncing quite a bit. I have yet to feel any kicks or anything of the sort. Usually she stops doing it as soon as I put my hand there.

At some point during this week we passed the divine proportion. The divine proportion is of historical, mathematical, and artistic significance. Numerically, it’s approximately .6180339887 – but what does it mean?

The Divine Proportion, Week 25

Essentially, the divine proportion it’s a ratio that’s derived from the Fibonacci Sequence. It’s also called the golden ratio and the golden mean. It has been used by artists, and observed in nature since about 300 BC. It really came into it’s own during the Renaissance in Europe, most famously used during this time in the Mona Lisa

monalisa

The face in this painting makes up almost a perfect divine proportion rectangle, with her eyes making up the line that delineates the portions. It’s also used in architecture, and seen in nature in things like beehives and leaf patterns in trees.

What it has come to mean is a pleasing, natural beauty that is apparent to everyone. Humans, and nature itself seem designed around this number. From what I can surmise, it’s true. Is it any coincidence that the majority of the development is completed in this week, with the remaining weeks concentrating on building up mass and developing the nervous system? Is it a coincidence that survival rates of premature infants past the point of this ratio are reasonable?

In the upcoming week, the baby will start to gain lots of weight. It’s the ending section of the pregnancy, and the baby is getting more and more strong as the days go by. 14 more weeks until her journey is complete.

Week 22, Home Renovations, Week 23

Posted on July 17, 2009 by David

Week 22

Week 22 brings a bunch of things – it was this previous week that these things happened. I can verify these things:

The baby reacts to loud sounds
The baby starts having regular sleeping and waking rhythms
The mother’s movements can wake the baby

In talking to the baby (yes, face to stomach) Jolene has felt the baby move after I speak loudly to her. She seems to wake up every night around 10 o’clock. This might be because of what we’re doing at 10 o’clock (sitting at the computer) or perhaps because she’s decided that she likes to be up at night.

Mom is doing well. The baby seems to like to jump up and down a lot, literally bouncing off of the walls.

Renovations

We’ve begun the final ‘chore list’ that needs to be done before we end our summer vacation. I’ve installed a rack of baskets for additional storage in our room:

We also got a new loft bed – given to Ben by Aunt Carissa. He loves it, he can have his computer in his room now:

I think the lesson is, when you can’t build out, build up.

Week 23

This week the baby will reach 1 pound in weight. The baby will have her nostrils open for the first time. I didn’t know they were closed. The baby is now ‘working out’, as they say, by bouncing back and forth. We know this is already happening though. Finally, a full nervous system is now being created. Most amusingly, the baby has wrinkly skin right now. She’ll ‘grow into it’. I guess this is like putting on a clean shirt from the dryer that you left for too long before hanging.

Week 21, Ultrasound and Genetic Test Results

Posted on July 7, 2009 by David

We went for an appointment with the doctor on Monday – one of the ordinary checks to make sure all is well for the baby. We found out that the ultrasound results were completely normal, and the genetic tests that we took are also normal. This is especially good, because these tests tend to have false positives, which would make further testing necessary. We heard the heartbeat again, and when the doctor pressed against Jolene’s stomach to get the reading the baby kicked at the sensor.

The baby, she has an attitude! Excellent!

We also got a new chair and have begun some other changes to our house to better hold all of us. Shelves are planned, a new desk, removal of more furniture, and on and on… It all sounds so tiring…

Week 21

They’re still talking about bananas. This time, plantain-style bananas.

Her skin is no longer translucent, and is starting to get pigmentation. Movement is becoming more coordinated, and it has a greater facility for it’s own locomotion. Some sites are talking about how they can do backflips and stuff, but that all seems far fetched.

What doesn’t seem far fetched is that the tongue is becoming more and more strong. It’s nearly fully formed. Would it surprise me if it stuck it’s tongue out? Absolutely not.

It’s a girl!

Posted on July 1, 2009 by David

Well, we went for our second ultrasound today. The tech confirmed what we thought might be true last time – it’s a girl! Grandma Cooke got to come along this time to see the baby, which was very nice indeed.

It’s late, but here’s some more pictures for our album of our new little girl:

Not labeled, but it’s a face looking right at the ultrasound spot:

A foot:

A profile:

Now, to finalize on a name….

Branson, Weeks 19 and 20

Posted on June 28, 2009 by David

I never made an update post regarding the branson trip that we took. The last few days that we were there were a flurry of activity, trying to get the most out of the last days of our vacation. We traveled back in a single day, and that traveling took a long time:

Yes, that’s correct. 17 hours+ on the road on the final day. We were slowed by a 1 hour tie-up in traffic on the way back through Indianapolis, and actually became trapped at a freeway rest stop while traffic backed up.

Overall though, it was a very good vacation. We got to spend time with family and relax a bit. Three generations of our family was there, which made it even better.

Week 19

Week 19 was actually last week, but I didn’t have time to write about it. Between decompressing from the vacation, a business law paper to write, and my new 12 year old constant companion (yay summer vacation) I had a lack of quiet time to write up anything. I’ve finally found the quiet time, and so here I am.

PFO8931

Last week, the baby was “the size of a large heirloom tomato”, or at least so say the baby sites. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Is it a old, dried up tomato that gets passed down from generation to generation?

Anyway, the baby is developing regions of the brain used for smell, touch, taste and vision. Most places agree that the baby will start hearing – and perhaps recognizing voices.

Week 20

During week 20 the baby is no longer measured from head to ‘rump’. Instead, they’re measured from head to toe – like a real person! Predictably…

banana

they’re using fruit again to demonstrate the length. This time, the baby is about as big as a banana. Perhaps bigger news than this, though, is that it’s the halfway point in the pregnancy. Yes, that means that every day from here on out we’re looking at a fast dwindling time of pregnancy. The baby will be here before we know it! We’re looking forward to the next ultrasound that we have, scheduled for the 1st of July. Perhaps we’ll find out if it’s a boy or a girl? I’m not holding my breath, but I’m hopeful.

Graduation! Vacation! Chicago! St. Louis! Branson! Week 18! Too Many Exclamation Points!

Posted on June 15, 2009 by David

Well, it’s been a busy weekend and beginning of the week.

Friday, Graduation Day

We started off our festivities with a graduation from grade school. This marks my third and final graduation I would be attending this year. Maddie earned a presidential award for academics. It was a nice time, and afterward we left for Chicago to begin our vacation. The kids wanted to buy things at the Lego store and the American girl doll store.

We left and arrived in Chicago in the evening. We checked into our hotel room, which we pricelined for $50 downtown. It was literally right downtown. We were within walking distance from “the Magnificent Mile,” known by that name for it’s shopping and other items of interest. The room was nice, and it had a flatscreen tv. But it had to have a flatscreen tv, because a regular tv would not have fit. You couldn’t walk from one part of the room to the other without running into someone.

Behold:

The queen size beds were actually twins. It felt like we were sleeping on chiclets. Still, the price and location couldn’t be beat.

We brought food but decided to eat out, since there’s TGI Fridays all around the area. We stopped by the Apple store, which is always neat to go in and play with the new toys they have.

Saturday, Traveling to St. Louis

We woke up Saturday to a rainy rainy day:

Still, there was shopping to be done. After eating some in-room breakfast, I drove the girls to the girl shopping store. The valet was very nice and held the car at the front of the hotel for me, since the garage was blocks away. Afterwards, we picked them up and I took off to the ‘boy store’, the lego store. This was only a few blocks away, so we walked it. Driving in downtown Chicago isn’t the easiest thing, with the construction, traffic, and a GPS system that can’t find satellites because of tall buildings.

We departed after shopping at noon and proceeded on to St. Louis/Collinsville.

We arrived at our room. This was another $50 priceline special, but this one was quite a bit better appointed:

This was a new hotel, and walking in wearing my ‘driving outfit’ made me feel hideously underdressed. The rooms for this were likely four times the price we paid, and there was a wedding reception being held there. Everyone was wearing gowns and formalwear, I was wearing reebok gym shorts and sneakers.

There was a Ponderosa up the road, which is reasonably priced for kids to eat at the buffet, so we decided to eat there. The she-beastie though is now 12, and doesn’t get kids discounts there anymore. It ended up being more expensive than we thought, but filling and convienent.

Then, we went swimming and enjoyed the complimentary free WiFi internet access.

Sunday, Catsup, The Arch, and Branson

The hotel was actually in Collinsville, IL – just 10 minutes from downtown St. Louis. Interestingly, the town is known for having the largest bottle of catsup in the world. It’s actually a water tower, but still… being just 2 miles away from our hotel, I had to get pictures.

while my family looked on disinterested from the car

I guess they don’t get the allure of large bottles of catsup (sigh)

We headed down to the St Louis Arch, and took pictures of it and the Mississippi river:

Then we got on the road. 5 hours later, we arrived in Branson and ate at one of our favorite locations there, the Hard Luck Cafe. The waiters and waitresses sing to you as you eat, and have cd’s for sale in the gift shop.

Afterward, the kids got to spend some time where they wanted to be most – the pool

It was nice, and a welcome sight.

Pictures

There are lots more pictures that I didn’t put in this post, but you can look at them. There are some other nice ones.

Week 18

This week, the hearing of the baby is supposed to be getting better and better. It’ll try to cover its ears when it hears loud sounds and can start to hear voices. It’s going to be gaining weight and size from here on out, having developed almost all of it’s final organs. Mom is doing well, though is feeling ‘very pregnant’ now. The long car rides aren’t optimal for her, but she’s doing very well overall. Sometimes ‘flutters’ can be felt, but the baby is still a bit too small to make the movements felt very often.

The Cooke Family Website

Author Archives: David