Friday, March 23, 2012

Isaac helps Daddy

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Yum! Yum!

Yum yum gum gum!

Gum yum!

Yum gum yum!

Says Isaac after pilfering his big brother's stash of gum.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Use Your Words

Overheard from the back of the car: 

Yuck! Yum! 

Issa Yuck!  Isaac Yum!  

Yuck! Yum!

"Moooom!  Isaac keeps calling me yuck!  Make him stooop!"

Sure enough, Isaac was pointing to his sister and calling her yuck.  He grinned back at me, pleased with himself for getting a rise out of Melissa.  This is the first time Isaac has teased Melissa verbally.  And so it begins! 

Everyday Isaac finds another new word to test out.  A few days ago his word of the day was gross.  Throughout that day he looked for things he could appropriately label gross, and did so with great relish.  

Friday, March 16, 2012

9 months old ...

..and some change.

At nine months Corinna weighed 18 lbs 14 oz.  99% of that weight is breast milk with a few cheerios, mushed bananas, and bits of foraged paper tossed in for good measure.  She's getting long at 29 inches, which puts her in about the 90th percentile.

Corinna is still our happy baby bubbles.  She's pulling herself up to standing, cruising the furniture, and crawling lickety-split all over the house.  A few days ago I caught her attempting to climb up the brown relining chair and making good progress!  Currently she has six teeth, four on top and two on the bottom.  She squeals with delight when tickled, loves to scatter books and toys, and chase the big kids.  Corinna coos, makes "ma ma" "ba ba" "ga ga" sounds (but I don't think they are actual words yet), chatters with you, gurgles, and sticks out her tongue, spits and laughs.  Her laughs are infectious belly laughs.  When she smiles, her eyes turn to crescents and smile too.  She absolutely loves bath time and splashing in the water.  I'm usually thoroughly drenched at the end of her baths.


Her strong personality is becoming more apparent now.  When you take something she really wants away such as colorful paper, itty-bitty lego pieces, or car keys, she throws a fit, yells at the top of her lungs, and tries to reclaim it.  While crawling does increase her opportunity for mischief, it is still a godsend.  She is very pleased with her new motor skills and finds plenty of ways to entertain herself.  This gives my back a much needed break!

Matthew, Melissa, and Isaac dote on her and sometimes smoother her in their affections.  She's pretty good-natured about it, but she will squawk if she is being held when she really wants to crawl around and play.  Isaac has discovered that Corinna's new skills means that she can now get his stuff.  He'll tell her "No baby! No baby!"  Paybacks, young man, paybacks.

9 months postpartum update:

To my relief, I've stopped losing gobs and gobs of hair.  I think that ceased at 5 months?  My hairstylist assured me that I still have a lot of hair and not to worry.  Most of my clothes fit again, yay!  However, I still have 10 pounds hugging my hips, belly, and thighs.  The whole 9 months on, 9 months off thing didn't work for number four, so  I'm going to have to put in some real sweat equity, I think.  Up until Corinna's teething started, I got a full nights rest.  Going back to fractured sleep is rough.  Boo teething!  Corinna will also take a bottle occasionally so it is time to take a night a week to do something I enjoy.  Perhaps I can join  one of local orchestras and start playing again.  Or maybe take a night class, just for the fun of it.  Hmm...the possibilities.

Some days having four kids is totally doable.  No problem!  Everyone plays well, is pleasant, smells clean, and is cheerful.  I love those days; they are awesome!  I start to think that I've got it all together.  Haha...hahaha!  Then I get whacked with the humility stick.  There are days when there are four emergencies happening simultaneously, two bottoms needing attention at the same time, so-and-so is doing something, tears, no more clean socks, the dirty laundry is piling up, it is dinnertime and I haven't had a chance to cook, Corinna is tired and wants to be held, and there are dishes in the sink still from breakfast; on those days I wonder if I should change my occupation to air traffic controller.  They at least get guaranteed bathroom and lunch breaks.  And I'm pretty sure they don't clean up any bodily fluids or wipe anyone's bottom but their own.

Most days however, I wouldn't trade for anything.  The pay isn't great, but the benefits sure are nice.  Now if I could just lose that last 10 pounds...

Thursday, March 15, 2012

PyCon

I made it back to PyCon this year. 2011 was the first year I didn't attend PyCon since my first in 2005, so it was good to go back. PyCon is still my favorite conference, although it's lost a bit of its small-town feel with about 2400 attendees this year, double what it was last time I attended.

I gave a talk on What Python can learn from Java. I set out to be controversial but the only boos I got were when I told the audience to use a modern IDE instead of emacs and vim. Either I made a good case or I wasn't controversial enough.

I also had a poster session accepted about the Cassandra database that I work on. This was the third year of posters at PyCon but my first time to bring one. I built the poster from 10 Keynote slides, and Andrew at work stitched them together in Illustrator. It turned out pretty well. Note for next time: add QR codes that people can scan to learn more.

DataStax sponsored the conference. $3000 got us two passes and an exhibition booth. We had a pretty good stream of attendees by the booth, enough that (even with Paul and Tyler doing yeoman's work at the booth) after three days of speaking and explaining Cassandra I was as hoarse as I've ever been in my life -- more than when I used to do our all-day training classes. I think we got some good sales leads out of it.

poster
Yours truly manning the poster



IMAG0894
The keynote hall Friday morning



IMAG0899
Lunch!

Isaac did Not poop his pants

(Dad, this one's for you.)

Today when I put Isaac down for his nap, I locked his door since he didn't seem inclined to stay in his room.  Then the plumber arrived to fix a broken toilet in the master bathroom.  While showing the plumber the problem, I *thought* I heard Isaac calling out from the opposite side of the house.  Since I was busy, I paid no attention.  After a few minutes, I left to check on Isaac.  I opened the door and was smacked in the nose by a pungent sent.  "Mama!  Poooop!"  and he held out both hands completely covered in poop.  His underwear and pants laid neatly on the floor beside him, clean and unstained.  Apparently the lesson "thou shalt not poop thy pants" has been impressed on his mind.  Now we just needs to work on the whole timing/not touching poop thing.  Really can't fault him though, since he didn't have access to the bathroom.

Today Isaac got a bath instead of a nap.  He didn't seem to mind.

Also, I am a big fan of clorox cleanup wipes.  They rock.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

Kids Workshop

Kids Workshop by jbellis
Kids Workshop, a photo by jbellis on Flickr.

I usually help Isaac follow the instructions for putting the kits together, but he has sole responsibility for the decals. I think it has more personality that way.

(Isaac is at that age where he scrunches up his face horribly when a camera is facing his direction. I tickled him to get a natural smile... but he also turned away. Best I could do.)