Photoshoot

A few weeks ago, we took Cole to get some professional photos taken. We were warned to bring a change of clothes since the photos would be taken without his diaper. For some reason I thought that only meant a shirt. After Cole's first accident on me, I quickly realized that I should have brought more clothes. The photo shoot lasted 4 hours and every single accident happened to land on me. Here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot. You can also visit the photographer's site for some more photos. www.codinaphotography.com

Black widow

We've had our fair share of scorpions and even a rattle snake but tonight we found a black widow spider in our garage. You can see the characteristic red hour glass on her belly. Luckily I found this before Lauren wandered into her web.


Here you can see the aftermath of another deadly creature that goes around eating the heads off of animal crackers.


"Nice Chester. I won't hurt you." After 2 yrs of avoiding Lauren, Chester is finally letting Lauren pet him. Big mistake.

Just peachy

It's been consistently over 110 degrees over here so I'm helping to make some ice cream. They said this would be fun but I don't buy it. Can you tell I'm barely able to smile?


Ah this is much better. I've never seen this machine in my life and I'm already 2 years old. Is this one of those wedding gifts that you only use a few times a year or in my parents case, once every 2 years?


Steady.....make sure you get every piece.


Yum!

Words of wisdom

Baby Cole, maybe you should wear a hat when we go out in public.



Baby Cole, when they say to look at them, you don't always have to do what they say. Look at me. I'm busy txting my peeps. After I'm done, I'll flash them my pearly whites, and they'll gush over me. Stick with me and you'll have your own phone when you start walking. I plan on upgrading to an iPhone when I turn 3.

Happy 4th of July

Our HOA sponsors a July 4th parade and celebration every year and we decided to check it out this year. In addition to the snow cones, they had hot dogs although 9am was just a little too early to be eating hot dogs.



Here you can see all the cool water slides they had setup.



They also had a bike decorating contest as you can see from the sea of bikes.



Lauren is enjoying her snow cone while checking out the fire engine.



The coolest part of the celebration had to be when the fire engine arrived and proceeded to spray everyone with a little water. We fortunately kept a safe distance. :)

Future American Idol

Lauren learns a lot of songs and nursery rhymes at daycare. This particular one, we weren't familiar with and as a result weren't quite sure what she was saying. After some searching we figured it out. See if you can tell what she's singing (including arm movements too).

I'm 2 months old now!

I'm not sure you can tell but I've broken double digits for my weight -- 11 pounds. I can also smile now but only if I fancy you.

Push ups

Lifting up your head may not seem to hard but for a 7 week old, my head is probably close to 50% of my body weight.


I just hate it when my head comes crashing down.

Monthly Outtakes - Bear hug

After 2 years of taking monthly photos of Lauren, we have taken over 600 pictures just to get the 24 monthly ones. Here are some outtakes from those photo sessions. I never realized how much she liked to eat the bear.

3 months

6 months

7 months

9 months

10 months

childhood memories

Lauren is enjoying some quality time back in her old school bebepod.


Here's her at almost 7 months.

Light at the end of the tunnel....

Got this surprise today from daycare. I just hope it continues. We've been practicing at home but with no "output".

Mr Maytag

May was a very strange month where it seemed things were failing left and right.

Things that failed were

1. Water heater (I just replaced this 2 yrs ago)
2. Dishwasher (3 yrs old)
3. Car battery (2 months old)

Our water heater started having problems where the thermal protection would trip and shutoff the water heater. After a few days of continuously resetting this (not recommended) I figured out why it kept tripping. Basically the water heater wouldn't shut off at the preset temp and would keep heating up the water until it got too hot and tripped the thermal protection. After searching on the Internet how to troubleshoot a water heater, I determined that the lower thermostat was bad. Basically no matter what temperature I set it to, it was sending voltage to the heating element.


Here you can see the old thermostat and the heating element (in green) just below it.


Here's the new thermostat from Home Depot for $9. The water heater is under warranty but Sears only covers the parts. You have to pay for labor to fix it. They charge $70 just to come out to see what the problem is. Now granted $70 would have been a lot easier than me troubleshooting the problem and then buying the part and installing it but at least I know how to fix this if it were to go bad again.


Our dishwasher let out this awful loud noise one night and then I noticed the door wouldn't stay open. First thought in my mind was that the spring snapped.

Here you can see the dishwasher pulled out and the spring that is used to counterbalance the door.


Here's a closeup of what actually failed (the end of the rope that attaches to the door) and the replacement parts on the floor.


Here you can see the old design (left) and the new design (right) of the pulley. The old design had one pulley fixed which I guess caused additional wear and noise when you opened the door. The new design has both pulleys spinning now.


I just couldn't help but add some foam insulation to try and lower the noise from the dishwasher.

I'm 1 month old now!

What tradition is this? Every month I have to have my picture taken? If you haven't noticed, I'm not your first child! Fine, I'll play along for now. I can't speak for Teddy or Ice (aka Blue Bunny) though.

I'm 2 years old now!

I can't believe I'm 2 years old now. I've finally transitioned from having my age measured in months to years now! Just a quick recap of the last 2 years.

Over 3500 diapers,
10 airplane rides,
8 states (AZ, DE, HI, NJ, NV, NY, PA, WA),
8 unscheduled visits to the doctor,
1 visit to the ER, and
0 boyfriends (who has time?).

Go bananas

How many hrs does it take to change a nightlight?

Answer: 2 hrs to be exact.

What took so long was that there was no outlet on that wall so I had to wire a new outlet. That in itself shouldn't take more than an hour but there was some blocking in between the light switches (source for the power) and the outlet. I had to cut another hole in the closet so I could drill through the blocking and then fish the wire through that hole.

When we moved Lauren into her new room, there were no good spots for the nightlight and hence why I needed to add an outlet.

Here's the opening that I cut out for the outlet. One of my tricks for easy clean up is to tape a bag on the wall so all the drywall dust falls into the bag. That saves the vacuum from choking on drywall dust.



Here's the before picture with no outlet.

1st week

What's an air bag?


Here you can see me skyping on my dell mini9 netbook with my uncle and cousin in South Africa. I'm not quite sure where that is but I've heard it's far. I love the mini9. The built in webcam makes it very convenient for me to skype when I don't feel like getting out of my crib. Windows also takes less than a minutes to boot up and shutdown.

Another thing for those that don't want to leave the crib is to use diapers.com for diapers. My parents used it for the first time and the prices are better than other stores, you don't pay taxes and they have free shipping on orders over $50. My diapers were ordered on Monday and they were delivered on Tuesday. Can't beat that. In case anyone wants to order some diapers, you can enter this Referral Code, SMXN4697, and you'll get $10 off your first order. :)

Tiny toes

Chocolate on my face? Where?

I wish I were a baby

Babies get all the cool stuff like vibrating chairs, plush soft covered books...

Baby boy

3 days after the official due date, Cole was born at 5:29 AM on April 29th. He weighed 6 lbs 13 oz and was 19.5 inches long. Everyone is doing great. Lauren is adjusting to being an older sister and mom and dad are adjusting to handling 2 little ones.

Here's Cole just after his first sponge bath.



Cole napping in the standard hospital issued cap and blankets. I think most hospitals use the same vendor or at least the same color palette.



Lauren meets her baby brother for the first time.



Cole posing for his first photo shoot. Little does he know what is in store for him every month.


Here you can see our room lighting. If you look carefully, you might notice that this is the light pattern from a flashlight pointing at the ceiling. Our hospital had construction going on and had no power between 10pm and 6am except for a few critical outlets. This normally isn't too much of a problem except we had to wake up every 2-3 hours to feed and change Cole. Changing diapers by flashlight is not something you should have to do in a hospital.