New drinking methods

For the past few weeks we have been working on transitioning Kylie from bottles to sippy cups, and with the exception of her bed time bottle, we have finished this task. Kylie will now drink all of her day time drinks from her sippy cups; these drinks mainly consist of juice and water. In addition to this she also understands that she needs to be sitting down when she is drinking and will regularly walk over to the couch and climb up into it when we give her her sippy cup. On the few occasions that she does not go directly to the couch, we simply ask “Kylie, can you please sit down to drink?” and she will either then proceed to the couch or on some occasions Daddy’s La-z-boy and then have her drink.

On a number of occasions, like when we are at a restaurant, we have given her the opportunity to drink from the establishment’s child cup, which is usually a plastic cup with a cover and a straw. However, Kylie has not gotten the hang of the whole drinking through a straw procedure yet. That is until today. Tiffany said that earlier today Kylie drank almost an entire cup of water through a straw at Big Boy. So as of now Kylie is drinking through a straw in addition to her sippy cup.

We are very happy with this progress and will continue to attempt to fully transition her off of her bottle. I think once we get her used to drinking her milk from a sippy cup, her night time bottle will be more easily transitioned away from.

Good news, Bad news

Well I *Finally* finished processing all of Kylie’s 12 month pictures, and as such have started to put them up in the gallery. That’s the good news. The bad news is this: I won’t be finishing the upload. As of right now I have month 12 weeks 1 and 2 up and that will most likely be as far as I get for now. This is because it took about 10 hours for those 25 or so pictures to upload. The web server is just getting old, the hardware and such is really out dated and the fact that it only has 60 MB of Ram is not helping. However, there is some more good news. A few days ago I posted that we just got new laptops; this means that I am slowly decommissioning the other systems I have been using. Seeing as I technically no longer have a need for a desktop system my old 1.6 GHz machine with 256MB Ram is going to become the new web server, as such things should move a little more quickly around here. The only problem is that I am not going to be able to get to that right away, so for the time being we are going to be without pictures. Sorry, but everyone is just going to have to hang in and I will get everything fixed up as soon as I can (meaning as soon as I have some free time).

13 months

Kylie turned 13 months old today, this last month didn’t seem to go buy as fast as all the others. Not really sure why, but in a way i liked it, I don’t feel like my time with her is flying by. I know all parents say that time goes by fast when their children are young, and this past year I really realized what everyone means. So seeing how this past month seemed to go by at a “normal” pace, it was real nice. This past month wasn’t all that busy, Kylie did a few new things but basically she is right where she should be developmentally, now we are right about at the point where she is going to stat picking up on new words and/or phrases. This month she did start walking backwards, made her first phone call, and had her second ear infection along with an eye infection. She has also picked up a few new words as well, and her new favorite phrase is “What’s that?” while pointing at an object. She also expresses her interest in things by pointing to them and saying “Oooo”, which is really cute to see. The only other new development is that Tiffany thinks she is starting to learn how to throw little temper tantrums, as she will more easily now when she doesn’t get her way. Like when we put her down for a second and do not immediately pick her back up and things like that.

I suppose I should also address pictures, or the lack there of as I am now a month behind, something that has not happened in a long time. I have somewhere in the vicinity of 500 pictures for month 12, this can be attributed to Kylie’s first birthday party and Nana’s visit. So it has taken me an abnormally long time to process all the pictures, as of right now I still have roughly 70 more pictures to process and get ready for posting, as soon as they are done I am going to get them up in the gallery. As for this month’s pictures, well I think it should go without saying that if I am a month behind they are not ready either, but in addition to this I don’t think we took to many this past month, so when the do make it up don’t expect a lot.

First phone call

Kylie has always been fascinated by our cell phones, and she plays with them when ever she can get her hands on them. She has recently discovered how to open them, as mine and Tiffany’s are both clam shell styled phones, and today, in a round about way, she learned how to make a phone call. Tiffany was changing Kylie and Kylie was playing with her phone, when all of a sudden her phone rang. She answered it (and it was set to speaker phone) and it was my Mom (Nana), who proceeded to ask Tiffany if she had just called because her phone rang and the called id said it was Tiffany, but when she had answered it there was no one there to talk to. So my Mom had called back to make sure that nothing was wrong and to say hello as well. As it turns out, and Tiffany explained to Mom, Kylie must have managed to press the speed dial button on the phone that is designated for Mom and hit the send button, thus placing a call (her first phone call ever) to her Nana, and at that time the speaker phone must not have been on. During this explanation while the speaker phone was on, Kylie was happily chattering away with her Nana and even saying “Nana”. I am sure this was not an intentional phone call, but it is her first phone call none the less, and to her Nana.

Walking…backwards

Last night (Tuesday) I noticed Kylie doing something a little differently than normal, she was walking backwards. Not for long distances or anything, mainly she would be looking at something, like the TV, and walking backwards towards the couch, the whole time giggling. Then when she would bump into the couch she would laugh and usually stretch back over it. I mentioned this to Tiffany and that is when she told me that this was something that Kylie started doing yesterday (Tuesday), and that Kylie seems to think it is very amusing. So I started to play with her while she was doing it. I would stretch my leg out so that she would bump into my leg before she reached the couch, and she would reach behind her without turning around and feel my leg, and then start laughing. It is rather cute to watch her play like this, and we are very happy at her new found sense of coordination, as, it appears, is she.

Our new toys have arrived

So around 4pm today mine and Tiffany’s new laptops arrived. I have to admit that they are a little bigger than I expected, but that is only because i failed to realize, I don’t know how but I did, that these have 17 inch widescreen displays. Not that that is a bad thing, actually I rather like it and think it will make watching DVDs even more enjoyable. We both got a Dell Inspiron E1705 with the following specs:

  • Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2250 (1.73GHz/533MHz FSB)
  • 60GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
  • Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Internal Wireless (a, b, g compatible)
  • 17 inch Wide Screen XGA+ Display
  • Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
  • 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery

The only difference between the two is that mine has a dual layer DVD burner, and Tiffany’s has a combo DVD player CD burner. In addition we each got carrying cases, mine is a back pack and hers is an attache case. We are both happy to have them and I am sure we will spend some time setting them up completely over the next few days. Now I will have to begin the process of preparing the other computers for recycling.

Power outage

Well the power just went out here at work, first time this has ever happened on my shift in the 15+ months that I have been here. It is kind of cool, but strange at the same time. The generators kicked in just like they should, so that was real nice. The power never actually went out as we are continually running off of a UPS system, the power coming into the building first filters through that and charges those batteries. It only takes a few seconds for our generators to kick on, so all the data on our servers is fine. It was kind of nice to see our fail safe systems in work, not that I want it to happen again anytime soon though.

Posted in Job

Scrapblog, online scrapbooks

Before I moved out to Michigan, I really hadn’t heard of scrap booking, however, I know see it everywhere. Tiffany has done a number of them over the years and is currently working on one for Kylie. I personally am not very into it, I mean I give the occasional suggestion here and there, mainly when asked, but that’s about it. I do not consider myself to be very creative and usually stay away from those types of things. But today I cam across Scrapblog, a community of online scrapbooks. When I first came across this site I thought it was going to be nothing more than a normal blog with pictures and slide shows, however, after looking through a couple of them, they are actual scrapbooks complete with different pages and little icons and things to put inside them. I am not saying that I am going to go out and create one, but for the more creative minded this might be a lot of fun. Maybe Tiffany could use this site to share her scrap booking of Kylie? Who knows?

Emurse: online resume management

I found this article tonight talking about Emurse, and thought I would go check it out. Signing up for a new account was simple and fast. Once I was in i started to create a new resume based off of an existing resume I already have in .doc format. Entering the data was simple, with the hardest being trying to match up the sections and make it appear as close to my existing document as possible. I liked that after the resume is complete and to your liking you have the option to have the site host your resume as a webpage so that you can send the link to potential employers, in addition to this you have the option of downloading your resume in one or more formats: a .doc, .pdf, .rtf, .html, or even plain text. When you have found a position that you wish to apply for you can even send an email to the person that requires it for the position directly from the site, attaching your resume to the email. There is also an option to have the site remind you to follow up with your contact about the position, arguably one of the most important parts of job hunting, and something I am personally forgetful about doing. I am sure there is much more that this site is capable of, and I am rather looking forward to using it.

Learning Chinese

I have always wanted to learn either Japanese or Chinese and to someday travel abroad to one of those countries as well. For the most part I have always focused on learning Japanese as it seemed easier because of the lack of the multitude of dialects. However I recently came across this article about China launching a web site to help people learn Chinese. Although I have not had a chance to fully explore the web site or to look into any of the tutorials, I am looking forward to having the time and opportunity to do so.