I'm 8 months old today!

A lot has happened this month. As you can probably tell, I'm not at home. I'm in Vegas! Not bad for my first trip. I also got my first tooth this past month and my 2nd one is about to come in. We also moved into a new house just before Xmas. I still can't crawl but I predict by next month I'll be crawling all over the place.

Wild Wild West

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to checkout the gila river farmer's market. There weren't many vendors (you see almost all of them here) but the cool thing about it was being located at Rawhide - a western town. Highly recommend the $5 breakfast if you go.





What's a visit to the wild west without a horse ride?




This isn't Thomas.


The farmer's market even had a pie eating contest, pumpkin pie of course.

Zoo Lights

Here's a picture from the ZooLights at the zoo. Basically the zoo decorates the park with lights.


The Zoo has a member preview where it's only open to members. One of the benefits is the free carousel rides. Lauren loves riding the carousel.


Cole enjoying the lights from his cozy carrier.




The gorilla actually travels across the vine. I set a long shutter so you can see all of the action at once.

I'm 7 months old today!

Can you tell what I'm doing? I'm pretending to be a crab! Don't I look just like the crab on my shirt?

I see you!

To Do list

Since I'm staying at home till the New Year, I created a To Do list for things around the house. The first one was replacing all of the ugly brass in our house. The last remaining brass pieces were the door thresholds and sweeps. Here you can see the before. This one doesn't actually look too bad since it matches with the door but for consistency I replaced it.



Here's the after picture.



Here's an after picture of another door I did. I replaced a total of 4 doors. Each door took about 2 hrs to do. I usually could finish a door a day since Cole would nap twice for about an hour each time. By the last door I could finish in about an hour.



Another item on my to do list was to replace the Saab's worn out trim. The material they used in the trim didn't stand up to the desert sun.



Here you can see the installation of the new trim piece.



Here's the after shot. It looks so much better now.

Watch out

I don't know if you can tell but I'm mobile now. That's right, put me down and watch me go. It's not pretty as I mostly just pivot and roll over. If only I could figure out how to crawl...

Sleep strolling

Can you guess who didn't take their nap when they should have?

Waffles anyone?

This is what happens when you have too much batter.

I'm 6 months old today!

I'm so old now. I can eat a whole jar of stage 2 baby food. Lauren was just starting stage 1 at this age. I plan on doing everything better and faster than her.


Teddy, is it me or did you shrink?

It's official, I'm allergic to peanuts!

Just found out that Lauren is very allergic to peanuts. She's feeling much better after her shot of epinephrine. Looks like we won't be having any nuts at home.

Some light reading

Number 2 never takes this long. Must be the rice cereal.

Dishwasher repair man

Our dishwasher died just this past week. When I plugged the power cord in another outlet, it trip the breaker indicating a short. So I opened up the junction box where the power cord is attached and you can see that one of the wire nuts melted and then shorted to the metal panel causing a nice little scorch mark. When I googled the problem I actually ran across the same problem here. So I cut off the melted wire, reconnected the wires but this time soldered them together. Hopefully it won't generate as much heat now.

Nebulize me

Here's a picture of Lauren doing an albuterol nebulizer. The first few times were traumatic and she needed to be restrained in order to take it. By the end though, everyone was happy. In this picture she was watching Rudolph. :)

New treads

A few weeks ago, one of our tires had a nail hole and went flat (I could hear the air rushing out). The nail hole was right on the very edge which isn't repairable. Only punctures more than an inch from the edge can be repaired. Since all four tires needed to be changed, we changed all of them instead of just replacing this one. One thing that I didn't realize was that the spare tire was on the original rims and I didn't have the original lug nuts in the car, making the spare useless. So in case any one has custom wheels on their car, you should always carry the original lug nuts for the spare tire. Luckily I decided to drive back home.


We bought Yokohama Parada Spec X tires (seen here after being delivered by UPS) from Tireteam.com. You can see the tire reviews at the tirerack.com. None of the local places had these tires in stock so I decided to buy them online since I could get them weeks before the local stores could. Big O installed them and also sells their road hazard insurance so it was just like getting them installed by them but only cheaper.

Plumbing leaks

Our water softener started leaking recently. Luckily we caught it before any damage was done to our house. You can see the new (blue) softener that I bought from Sears. This is just a rebranded GE softener.


Here you can see the point of failure on the old unit. It lasted 10 years which isn't too bad.


The softeners are essentially the same so I installed it using the existing plumbing. The new softener was a 1/4" too low but you can still get the connectors to fit. Or so I thought. It developed a very slow leak through one of the connections.


Here's the new connection that a plumber did. He removed the old fittings which I found out are threaded specifically for those water softeners. You can't use them on a standard thread. This would explain why I wasn't successful in hooking up the flex lines to the existing connectors. Luckily I was able to put the old bypass valve on so that we had running water until the plumber was able to fix it.

Prime lens

I got a new prime lens for my birthday. It's a Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX. You can read a review here. It's normally out of stock but Ritzcamera recently got them in stock. Basically it lets in a lot more light so that the shutter doesn't have to stay open as long.


Here's an example of a ceiling fan with the new lens. This was taken with a shutter of 1/20s, ISO of 720 and F1.8.


Here's a picture taken with our 18-200mm zoom lens with the same shutter of 1/20s, ISO 800 and F4.2. You can see how much darker the image is.


Here's a shot using the zoom lens but this time changing the shutter to allow more light in. The shutter is 1/4s, ISO 800 and F4.2. Notice the camera isn't able to stop the fan blades because the shutter is open so long.

Morning walks

Since the weather has finally cooled down, morning walks are almost a daily activity. Here you can see Cole all ready to go.


Cole usually falls asleep halfway through the walk but this time he managed to stay awake for the playground.


If you look closely you can see the bee.

Pineapples anyone?

Being at home has some benefits like trying out different recipes. I normally don't bake but decided to make a pineapple upside down cake because Fry's had pineapples for a dollar. The recipe is a light version that I used from Everyday Food. I didn't have any wheat flour so I just used regular instead. I'd probably use butter and add more sugar next time but then it probably wouldn't be that light then. :)

I'm 5 months old today!

Ah Teddy, why am I so happy? As I reflect back since my last picture with you, I've started eating real food (rice cereal) and I had my first play date with a girl! We didn't talk much but there was this connection.

Rice and Salad

We have started giving Cole some solid food although I'm not sure you can say rice cereal is really solid food. Cole seems to be enjoying the rice cereal and he's still perfecting his technique. He pushes most of the rice back out but nevertheless enjoys it.


I've also started my bonding leave and one expectation is that dinner be ready. So much pressure. Here's a quick chicken caesar salad from Everyday Food. It tastes good and is very easy to make.