March 2005 Archives

Tonight, our beloved cat, Astrid, jumped into my lap while I was on the computer, as she often does. I started petting her, only to have her start hissing at me and looking like she was going to bite me. Since I was in pajama pants, and she's not declawed, I tossed her off of my lap brusquely. (We still haven't totally decided if we want more kids, or not.)

A few seconds later, she wandered back in, wanting some more attention. This time, while petting her, I felt something warm and sticky on her rear hip. I turned on the lamp for a closer look...and saw a golf ball-sized hole where her hair used to be. Gross! Apparently, something got ahold of her today, or she got caught under something.

She's not bleeding, which is weird because you can see right down to the pink and slimy subcutaneous tissue. (Whatever got her didn't just get hair--it got the entire layer of skin.) I called the emergency pet hotline, and was reassured that she's going to be fine for the night (they told me to keep her from licking it, if I can--yeah, right). I plan to take kitty to the vet first thing in the morning, where she'll get something to put on the wound, and I'll get scolded because she's overdue on her shots.

If you want to see the damage, I just uploaded a couple of the pics, but they're pretty gross. I didn't put them on Flickr because I didn't want them showing up in the strip to the right of this page.

Astrid licking her wound.
A better view of the wound.

I promise that the wound looks twice as big from the top as it does from the side. :)

Have a nice day!

I posted a few of the pictures we took during the Schneiders' visit this weekend. Julie took many more than I did, and hers are better. But since they're in Florida, I doubt you'll see them online anytime soon.

Just a note about pictures: You'll remember that we switched to Flickr for hosting pictures. Scroll down a few posts if you want to read about why and when we switched. Anyway, thanks to a feature Flickr offers, you can now tell right away when we've uploaded new photos by looking at the strip to the right. It will always automatically show our five most recent pictures, meaning I won't have to post to notify you.

If you'd like to comment on the pictures we put online, you can now do so on a picture-by-picture basis. Just click on any of the thumbnails to the right to go to that picture's page on Flickr, or click on the "More of the McLochlins' photos" link to go to our picture section. Then, you can scroll through the photos we have and leave comments on each one. Use the comments to let us know if there are any pictures you want us to print out and send to you, or just if there are any you really like.

I'll soon be redesigning this entire site to look better and have more bells and whistles. But until that happens (I haven't exactly had a lot of time, lately), you can play around with Flickr and let us know what you think of it.

Thanks!

032405 010
Originally uploaded by Bill in Atlanta.

I uploaded a few more pics tonight. I promised myself that I was going to start doing it on a regular day each week, or that I would at least wait until I had some really cool ones to share. But I wanted to test something out on Flickr (our new photo site), so I put in the ones Alecia and I took today.

What I wanted to test was uploading them in a higher resolution. Now, Mom, you can use them as backgrounds again. Just click on the picture you like once you're in flickr, then look for an icon right above the picture that says "all sizes." Clicking that will let you choose the biggest size, which is what you'll want to choose for your background. Sounds complicated, but once you do it once, it will be easy forever. And you can't break anything by clicking around, so try it.

Also, I'll soon be adding a security feature on my comments. (Tonight, if I can get it working.) No, it won't require a password, it will just ask you to type a word it shows you. This will prove that you're not a computer program, but are an actual person, with eyes. Do I have a problem with computer programs posting in my comments? Oh, yeah.

See, there's this thing called comment spam. It's just like the email spam you get in your inbox--ads for viagra, Texas hold'em and porn sites--but it comes to your comments. It's done by spammers using programs that search for blogs with unsecured comments to drop their evil messages in. You don't see the messages, because they're usually dumped in the comments of old posts, but I probably get about a hundred or more spam comments each day. It sometimes takes me so long to delete them all that I no longer feel like posting my own message by the time I'm done.

Why do I even bother deleting them? Well, they do two bad things: 1) Just by posting them on my site, the spammers are using my bandwidth, which slows everything down and may even make my hosting company charge me more, and 2) I don't want links to viagra and porn on my family site, especially if those links make the spammers money or make them look more popular online.

So I've been trying a few techniques behind the scenes to kill this comment spam, to no avail. The next one I'm trying is the word test I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. It's just like the one they use on Ticketmaster.com, if you've ever ordered tickets online.

I'm not sure when I'll get it launched, but if you're curious, try posting a comment now and see if it's done!

032005 049
Originally uploaded by Bill in Atlanta.

I'm testing out a change in how we're going to do pictures. Rather than needlessly host them on this site--eating up my server space and bandwidth--we'll now be hosting them on flickr, a picture hosting service. Sort of like we used to do with Snapfish, but with cooler features.

The new hosting service will let you post comments to EACH PICTURE, and will let us play with how we organize and label pics. I hope it turns out to be a good service...because I just paid for a year's subscription. :)

Click on the picture above to access the first album to use this new system. (All of the photo links to the right will disappear soon as we migrate the images over to flickr.)

I posted a few more pics from this past week and weekend. Apparently, according to the guy who hosts this site for me, I'm running into some space and bandwidth issues with the way I'm posting pictures. So I may post smaller pics (or less of them) in the future. For now, check out the pics of Josie smiling, Maddie hunting Easter Eggs, and of my sad, empty cubicle at work.

As for the story of the weekend, Alecia will have to fill you in. I've posted 18 out of the last 20 posts on here, and I'm slacking off on my other site because of it. :)

Josie had her followup doctor's appointment yesterday where we learned a few more things. We hadn't seen anyone since she was 2 weeks old so I walked into that office with a whole list of questions. We also got the chance to discuss the results of her swallow study earlier in the week.

The swallow study (which I got to watch and Bill didn't --sorry, sweetie) went well. Josie still has a tiny bit of a leak, but not enough that even thin liquids passed through it when she drank. It was amazing to see the x-ray of her little throat while she swallowed, but I'm also the same person who loves to watch surgeries on the health channel. Call me weird.

As Bill mentioned, the speech therapist gave us the go-ahead to start Josie on thin liquids, which we did on Thursday. She did really well and only choked the first few times. It took her a while to get used to the new consistency and she kept looking up at me like, "Mom, what's this?" In contrast, all evening and today she has been able to drink just fine.

My discussion with Josie's pediatrician included the following:

-Heart/respiratory monitor? (She'll still use it for a few more weeks while she sleeps, but she can be off of it during the day.)

-Baby acne/skin rash/swollen eyes? (It's actually a type of eczema that spread to her eyelids. We got some hydrocortisone cream that pretty much cleared it up last night. She'll continue to get the recurring rash for the next few months. It's a relief in some ways because I couldn't imagine how acne could get that bad for a baby. Her skin was peeling and cracked and raw.)

-Bumps on her gums? (Those are actually her teeth waiting to come in. I never noticed it on Maddie, but you can actually see and feel the little teeth on Josie's gums waiting to break through. Does this mean she'll be teething early?)

-Constipation? (Should be relieved by the fact that she isn't taking 1.5 cups of rice cereal in her formula every day. Now that she can have thin liquids, we can also give her water too.)

-Reflux? (She doesn't technically have reflux, but they're treating her for it to help with the spitting up anyway. She'll continue on Zantac and we can thicken her formula just a little again at night to help prevent it from coming back up. Also, we're giving a lactose-free dairy formula a try to see if that helps with the her gas problems as well.)

Like I said, Josie's doing really well and starting to get a little personality of her own. Even Bill will admit that she's been smiling and cooing/gurgling alot lately (he didn't believe me until he saw it himself). When she's not in pain, she really is the happiest little baby and has even begun to smile when she hears Maddie's voice. Hopefully we'll have a picture for you soon.

Maddie is currently in love with her Disney Princess Sing-A-Long video. Every evening she asks, "Prin-shess? TV? Pweeeez?" I'll turn on the video in her room and she'll lie on her big girl bed, mouth agape, watching the video. There's one song in particular that she loves called "Once Upon a Dream" that Sleeping Beauty sings. For the past few weeks Bill and I have noticed that Maddie has been walking around saying "I know..." We thought she was just saying that she knew what we were talking about. But, no. We just figured out that she's been singing that song. "I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream..." She doesn't say much that's distinguishable past the "I know" part, but it's still cute to hear her singing to herself.

My apologies to Bill, who had a pretty crappy St. Patties Day. But just think, honey, about how cool Father's Day will be this year!!! :)

So do you want to hear a little about my super-exciting Shamrock Day? To tell you what made it so much fun, let me take it from the top:

Monday night: Alecia informs me that we're going to Todd and Carolyn's for corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, along with some other mom's clubbers. Free food, fun friends, I start to get excited.

Wednesday evening: Carolyn calls to tell us that the shindig has been moved to Kim's house (another member of the mom's club) because Carolyn's daughter is sick. No problem, we hope Grace feels better soon. I'm still excited about the Irish food, as well as the promise that Carolyn will be bringing some cider beer.

Later Wednesday night: Alecia mentions that Monica and Kim's husbands might both be out of town, and that Todd will be staying home to watch Grace. Apparently, the party has become a girl and kids thing. I'm disappointed, but I know I have plenty to do around the house. I can use the time at home, alone.

Thursday morning: Alecia asks me if she can have the car while I'm at work, so she can take the kids over to Kim's early. I say no problem, and ask her when she can pick me up. "Well, dinner's at six. Do you mind staying at work later, so I don't have to leave right in the middle of things?" Um, okay. Thursdays are my busy day, anyway.

Thursday night: Alecia calls me at work around 7:30 and apologizes for losing track of time. She winds up picking me up around 8:00, and we head to Kaiser to pick up some prescriptions. I finally get home and take my shoes off around 8:40. I start fixing myself dinner (some lousy homemade Kung Pao chicken), but I don't get to eat it until around 10:30, when super-wired Maddie finally conks out.

Late Thursday: I watch Battlestar Galactica in my PJs and realize that this may be the first St. Patrick's Day in years on which I forgot to wear green.

You know, I knew that Christmas would no longer be all about me now that I'm a dad, not a kid anymore. But I have to lose Saint Patrick's Day, too? It hardly seems fair. :)

In other news, I posted the links to the last two batches of pics my sister sent me (see the Schneider Pics section to the right). Julie, sorry for taking so long to post them, I looked right over the emails. And we're SO envious of the snow you had!

To all of my nieces and nephews:

We just moved to a different area at work, which meant I had to take down all of the posters and pictures in my office. I've decided not to put any of them back up. They're all old and boring. I want new pictures to hang up--colorful, hand-made drawings and paintings.

That's where you guys come in.

I would like for each of my nieces and nephews to draw/color/paint me one thing to hang in my cube. It can be anything, as long as you created it yourself, and as long as it's colorful. (I need all the color I can get in my boring workspace.)

Schneider kids, I expect you to bring your works of art with you when you come down to visit in two weeks. That should be enough time to work up a masterpiece. McLochlin kids, you can mail yours whenever you're done. I'll nag Christyn to make sure you're working on something. McDonald kids, you're exempt due to your advanced age--though I wouldn't mind at all if you sent me something to hang on the wall. (I should note that Mark 2 would also be exempt due to being a teenager, if not for the fact that I know he's an artist, and I still haven't seen any art produced with the set of pencils we got him a few Christmases ago.)

Also, Brandon and Cheyenne, though you're not technically my niece and nephew yet, I'd love it if you guys wanted to draw or color something for me to put in my office. :)

Anyone else who wants to send me something is more than welcome to. I'll post a picture of my drab office as soon as we move into the space, so you'll be able to see how boring it is. We're working from home today so the movers can get us set up, but I'll be back there tomorrow.

Thanks in advance. I look forward to your works of art!

Love,
Uncle Bill

Sorry for the lateness of this post. We got back from the study around 1pm, and I've had several people call or email wanting to know the results. But I've been busy with work stuff (go figure), and unable to update the site until now.

Anyway, Josie's test went okay. Not amazingly so, but better than it could have been. She swallowed the barium mixture, they took a video x-ray, and the fluid seemed to stay out of her lungs. Good news, there. So why am I not overjoyed? Well, Alecia and I still haven't officially spoken to her doctor, so Josie's still on the monitor for an undetermined amount of time. The very nice speech therapist who led us through the swallow study has given us the go-ahead to put Josie back on thin liquids, and a nutritionist talked to us about her problems with dehydration (er, Josie's problems, not the nutritionist's). But we still have to schedule a time to meet with Josie's pediatrician and discuss the monitor and the next steps in her care.

So, while it was good news today, we're still sort of in limbo. We don't know how long our baby will be attached to the box, or what will happen in the next few days, now that we're switching back to thin formula. She still has pretty bad reflux, and we've just run out of Zantec, so it could be rough for a few days. We're hoping for the best, expecting the worst. We'll let you know when we hear anything new.

Oh, and Maddie? When you're sixteen, and I'm a jerk to your boyfriend? It's payback for you being a brat this morning. You may want to write that down so you don't forget. You were a MONSTER.

I just posted some more pictures. They're from our uneventful past week, as well as from the in-laws' visit this weekend. Some are better than others. I really need to start being more selective about the pics I put up. For example, we don't need seven blurry angles of the same bad picture when the best version would do the trick. So look for the galleries to start getting smaller, as I only include the best of the worst.

As for news of this weekend, if there is any, I'll let Alecia tell it. It's 2:37 in the AM right now, and I have to get up with Maddie in about five hours. I need to hit the hay.

I'll leave you with this, the latest Picture People image of Maddie and Josie (and probably the last from those clowns, due to a story that I'll tell later).

Alecia said they took one where Maddie was leaning over the basket, taking care of her sister in an adorable manner. Unfortunately, Josie was making the bug-eyed gas face in that picture.

And speaking of pictures that never were, Alecia got a perfect picture of Maddie in her new shades (yes, I know we--and all of our friends--have posted a million "babies in shades" pictures already, but this was "win a contest" cute). Sadly, I deleted that picture when I was trying to clear space on the camera. I was mad at myself for the rest of the day.

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I'd give Bill a break and update everyone on how the little ones are doing.

Maddie is handling being a big sister really well. She's started being really affectionate with Josie. This morning, for example, Josie's crying woke her up from her morning nap and she immediately ran out of her room yelling, "Jo-shie!" She ran to where Josie was lying on the bed and proceeded to try and feed her with the bottle. It's hilarious to hear her talk to Josie since she can't pronounce her "s" very well. It comes out more like "sh" which is why she calls her "Jo-shie". The only problems we've had have been that Maddie consistently wants to take away Josie's binky, or she tries to give her too many toys while she's in the swing. Otherwise, I think Maddie is handling the transition very well. Bill and I both can't wait until Josie is old enough that she and Maddie can play together. Maddie LOVES playing with other kids and we're sure she'll love having a playmate at home too.

Speaking of playing, hopefully we'll have some pictures soon of Maddie playing soccer. The kid is actually pretty good. After weeks of trying to teach her to kick instead of pick up the ball, she suddenly started kicking the ball across the room this weekend. Now to work on those passing skills so Team McLochlin can be ready for the World Cup...

Josie's leak seems to be about the same. Bill and I haven't noticed any signigificant changes in her eating or breathing, though she hasn't had any more desats nor has the monitor detected that she's stopped breathing lately. But her reflux is still there and she still occasionally chokes while eating. Luckily, she's able to recover from it pretty well. She's gaining weight steadily, which is a good sign that she's getting the nourishment that she needs from her food. In fact, she'll probably be about the same weight as Maddie soon (there's only about 8 pounds difference between them right now). She's still having major difficulties with gas, mostly due to air going into her stomach from the leak (the same way food leaks into her lungs). Her big round tummy will get very hard and she'll scream until she's able to pass the gas. It's frustrating for both Bill and I because there's nothing we can really do to help during these times except hold her and try to bend her legs to help her pass it. She'll be completely content one minute and then let out a bloodcurling scream the next.

We haven't really put Josie on a schedule yet as we're supposed to be feeding her on demand (which turns out to be about every 1-2 hours). She is starting to form a routine with her sleep schedule, though, taking a long nap in the mornings, then cat naps throughout the afternoon, and a long period of being awake in the evenings before bed. I've been sleeping with her in Maddie's room since it's easier to just roll over and feed her every hour, and since it gives Bill a little more sleep at night. Once she's off the monitor we'll work on getting her to sleep in her crib (and move Maddie to her big bed) but until then we'll keep doing what we've been doing.

Speaking of the monitor, Josie's next swallow study will be on March 15th. It was supposed to be done this past week, but there weren't any openings this early so we're waiting until then. Once that's done, we'll know more about whether the leak has healed itself or whether we'll need to go another route such as surgery. That will tell us whether we'll still need the monitor as well.

Otherwise, Josie's progressing like any normal baby. She's gotten her baby acne in the past week or so, which is new to Bill and I. Maddie didn't really have it, so it was a little surprising to see Josie breaking out like an adolescent these past few days. If her cheeks look rosy in the recent pictures, it's actually breakouts all over her cheeks. Also, her hair is coming in a little more and it looks to be much lighter than Maddie's and also a bit more reddish in color.

In all, life is great with both girls. Sure, we could all use a little more sleep right now, but I keep reminding myself what someone told me when Maddie was born (maybe it was you, Julie?) That person said to say to myself, "This too shall pass." That's been my mantra ever since, and I say it to myself in both the good times and bad, knowing that I'll get through the bad but that the good will end just as soon also.

I'm too tired to write a three-page summary of our weekend activities. And I'm sure some of you must be tired of reading them.

So, here are just the highlights, along with some random pictures.

• Friday. Took the kids to Steak and Shake, then Wal-Mart. Learned two things: 1) Maddie loves shakes (duh). 2) Suburban Steak and Shake restaurants are big teen hangouts on Friday nights.
  
• Saturday. Alecia let me sleep in, so I repaid her by taking the kids to the park while she went to Goodwill. Maddie made a new friend (Kyla), whose dad happens to be the manager of the Eckerd right by our house. Later, we ate fish sticks, then Alecia broke a table by standing on it. (It was frickin' hee-larious.)
  
• Sunday. I let Alecia sleep in, then we received a visit from our friends Anna and Jim and their adorable son, Matthew. After the visit, I took Maddie and Josie out for the day so mommy could have "alone time." I kept them out for three and a half hours. Alecia was understandably grateful.
  

There you have it. Our life, in a nutshell. Enjoy the new pictures.

I know we're almost halfway to the next weekend, but I wanted to give a quick recap of the last one, mostly because I know my sister just loves when I break down the boring details of our hour-to-hour activities.

Before I get to that, however, Alecia just called to let me know that one of her mom's club chums just brought over dinner. It's the fifth and final dish we'll be getting through the Helping Hands program.

Here are the final stats:
Number of dishes that came with dessert: 5 (out of five)
Number of dishes that contained Mexican food: 4 (out of five)
Number of dishes that contained Enchiladas: 3 (out of five)

While Alecia and I are VERY grateful to those who've brought us food (including Eric and Katherine, who brought over some homemade cookies and taco soup, and Brett and Emily, who brought over chicken soup, a quiche, and a lasagna), we'd like to kindly request a cease fire on the enchilada front. Don't get me wrong, we love enchiladas! I, alone, have probably eaten about six pounds of the stuff over the last few weeks. But we have no more room in our freezer for casserole dishes, and with the baby being so tiny, we don't think the time's yet right to have people over for an impromptu fiesta.

Anyway, back to the weekend, which was EXPLODING with excitement!!! (Notice the extra exclamation points? EXPLODING!!!!) I already filled you in on how we spent Thursday (dinner at Eric and Katherine's), so I'll start with Friday night.

Alecia and I were lucky enough to be joined by our great friends Scott and Lynda, as well as my brother Todd and his lovely girlfriend Amanda (who really seems to have a way with our kids), at the Brazilian steakhouse Fogao Gaucho. It's become sort of an annual tradition to hit up one of the local churrascarias on or around my birthday. A churrascaria is a restaurant where the meal comes in two courses: the buffet beginning, which consists of an exotic salad bar and assorted soups, pasta, seafood, etc., followed by the meat course, where the gauchos bring anywhere from sixteen to twenty courses of meat to your table on gigantic skewers. You have a little disk at your table that's green on one side, red on the other. When you turn it to green, they bring the meat until you turn it back to red. In other words, it's a meal that's NOT made for vegetarians. When you're done, you'll eat more meat than you ever have in your life. We topped our meal off with a variety of desserts (each couple got one and shared it with the group), as well as cappucino and caipirinhas (basically, Brazilian margheritas). We were stuffed to the gills when we finally pushed away from the table.

Maddie and Josie came with us for the birthday feast, and were on their best behavior. Maddie ate some veggies, pasta, bread and cheese, then went with each of the people at our table to look at the big tropical fish tank at the front of the restaurant. One at a time, she let each of us carry her up to look at the fish. Josie was even easier, as she slept through the entire 2 1/2-hour meal. She even stayed asleep when the waiters sang a birthday song for the table next to us.

Pictures of the event can be found by clicking HERE. For some reason, Todd packaged the pics in an Adobe Acrobat slideshow. So when you click on the link, it may ask you to download some software. It's safe if you want to do that, but most of you should be able to see the album without downloading anything. Of course, you'll miss Todd's captions without the extra software. You'll have to call him and ask him to narrate the show.

After almost getting stuck in the middle of a robbery while stopping for gas (more on that later), we all came back to our place to play some games. We played so long that we kept Alecia and Lynda up well past their normal bedtimes. Even Maddie got to stay up late, finally crashing around midnight. We played Loaded Questions, which is a game where you answer rhetorical questions ("What celeb is least deserving of fame?" "What is the best attribute of the person to your right?" "What city would you live in if money wasn't an issue?"), then try to guess which answer belongs to which friend. Todd's answers were the easiest to guess, since all of them had something about "whores," "porn" or "boobs" in them (for example, the "What is the best attribute of the person to your right" question--that person for him was Alecia, who apparently has a "nice rack"). Despite being obvious, Todd was all set to win. He was on the final square, and only had to correctly guess one person's answer to take home the victory. It was 1AM, and we were all exhausted, but everyone's competitive nature kicked in. We all lied like dogs on our answers so that he wouldn't know whose was whose. I think the question was "What do you do to relax?" Answers included "Call phone sex lines", "Kick puppies", etc. Nobody answered it straight. Todd missed his chance for victory, and I swept in and won the game on my next turn. (Yes, they may have let me win because it was my birthday.)

On Saturday, Alecia and I had a shopping day. We loaded up the kids and headed to Babies R Us. I will never go there on a Saturday again. Not only was the store loaded with moms, new moms, and grandmoms, but the parking lot was also full of these deranged women, backing their massive SUVs and stationwagons wherever they pleased. It took me almost thirty minutes (and all the cuss words I know) just to park. Hey, I'm not saying the guys shopping at Home Depot on the weekends are any better...oh, wait, yes I am. There's no reason a 4'11" woman should be driving a truck that seats fifteen. Your family ain't that large, lady, and you can't even see over the steering wheel!

Back to the topic at hand, Alecia and I made a MAJOR PURCHASE on Saturday, picking up our very first double stroller. We bought the Graco because it was on sale, but mostly because it matched our other stroller and fit Josie's car seat. I put it together in the gift-wrapping area at the front of the store, and we left the box behind. We were planning to go somewhere after the baby store, so I had left the other stroller at home. We immediately made this stroller our primary one for our next stop: THE OUTLET MALL.

I won't spend as much time on our visit to the North Georgia Premium Outlets as I did on the rest of this boring post. We were there for about four or five hours, and here is what we bought:

• Two pairs of men's jeans from the Gap outlet
  
• A jar of Dulce de Leche ice cream topping, a half pound of chocolate coffee and a special cookie dough scooper from Le Chef Gourmet
  
• A sun hat, sunglasses, and a fleece jacket from The Children's Place outlet (total spent: $4.86...no joke)
  
• Six scented candles from the Yankee Candle Company Outlet
  
• Alecia, what am I forgetting?
  

On the way home from the outlets, we stopped at CompUSA so I could pick up a new power supply for my computer. It's been randomly shutting off on me when I try to play Half Life 2 or burn CDs. Of course, I installed the power supply on Sunday...and had two crashes last night. That was money well spent. Guess I'll keep looking for a solution.

Sunday, we stayed at home, except for a couple of errands. In the early afternoon, I went to the comic book store (yep, still a geek). In the evening, Alecia went to Target. We each took turns staying home with the kids. In between those two outings, our friends Stefan and Jean came over bearing gifts for Maddie and Josie. We all hung out for a few hours and ate some of the Carvel ice cream cake Carolyn brought us on Friday. By the way, Jean is due to give birth at the end of this month (it's an epidemic), so she has that beautiful pregnant glow. But we neglected to take any pictures, despite our promise to take more when we had friends and family over.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was our weekend.

Regarding our week so far, the last few days have been very tiring for Alecia and I. Maddie's been teething again, and Josie has been gassy. Having two kids who won't sleep means we've had some long nights. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The marketing girls at work bought us two nights' worth of a night nurse's services! That's a nurse who comes over around 10pm and sits up with your baby ALL NIGHT. We haven't met the nurse yet, but she has some good references from my coworkers. Apparently, she's like the baby whisperer, in the fact that she knows how to comfort any baby. And she won't even watch TV or read while she's over--she just sings to and holds the baby. I'll admit, it will be strange to have a random person in our house like that. And the dogs may be a problem. But we're looking forward to a full night's sleep. I plan to go to bed as soon as she arrives, and sleep the sleep of the dead. (Who am I kidding? I plan to play video games. Then, I sleep!)

See, Julie, the above is what happens when someone says they want to hear about our weekend. From Alecia, you get a paragraph. From me, you get the unabridged version of the King James Bible.

One final note: I added something to the right side of this page. Can anyone guess what it is? That's right, there are now links to pictures from the Schneiders! (For those who don't know, that's my sister's family.) They host their photos on oFoto, not on our server, but I wanted to link to them here to share the wealth. I hope to link to some of our other family members' pics if they'll let me. Even better, I'd like to see some of our family members join this blog. It's easy for me to give you a password and the address to go to so that you can post on here. Just let me know if you're interested!

Peace out! (Man, I'm so 1990.)