Doctor’s visit and updates

Kylie had her latest checkup today and we are happy to report that the doctor says Kylie is doing great! He says she is still advanced for her age and that he is happy to hear of all the things she is capable of doing. I was obviously not able to attend this doctor’s appointment so Tiffany was kind enough to send me all the information. Kylie is now 30.5 inches tall (2.5 feet) and is weighing 22 pounds and 4 ounces.

Tiffany tells me that Kylie still loves to dance and will even dance in her car seat if a song with a good beat come on. We are thinking that when she gets a little older that we may enroll her in some type of dance class if she continues to show a fondness for it. She also shows a fondness for music in general and still loves the playhouse Disney songs. When Tiffany sings her “she’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes” song from on of her CDs, Kylie knows how to do the “toot toot” motion of pulling the whistle for the train and actually make the “toot toot” sound.

A while ago Tiffany bought Fridge Phonics by Leap Frog for Kylie to play with and help her learn her alphabet, and Kylie has learned how to put the letters into it and press them so it tells her what each letter is. Eventually we want to get Kylie the Word Whammer as well. She has also become very good at playing with her shape sorter and knows what shape fits into what hole. Her motor skills continue to improve as she is becoming more dexterous and is getting better at feeding herself with a spoon and a fork. She also knows the difference between a hair brush and a tooth brush and how to use them. She enjoys brushing her teeth and does so when she gets her hands on her, or Mommy’s, tooth brush. In addition Kylie’s verbal repertoire continues to grow as well. She is now starting to pronounce “issy” for Aunt Sissy, and she also says “duck” and knows that they go “quack.”

She has also reached the stage where she is learning to throw passive aggressive tantrums. This is displayed when she decides she does not want to go somewhere so she decides that she will just lie on the floor instead. In addition to this she is now learning that she can display other emotions as well. For instance when she is mad or frustrated she will hit Mommy to display it. Tiffany is trying to teach Kylie that though it is ok to be frustrated or mad and to feel those emotions, that it is not ok to hit people. So instead she is allowing Kylie to hit the floor or a pillow while she tries to figure out what it is that is frustrating Kylie. This is a difficult stage because we don’t want to discipline her for being upset and unfortunately at the time being this is the only way she has to communicate that she is feeling such things. We are hoping that as her vocabulary continues to grow that this phase will pass.

First day at TLR

Today was my first day working at the TLR site in Eagan, and I think it went pretty well. It turns out that every morning I will have a conference call with the rest of the people involved in this process, that call is at 8:30am central time, so that is how my day will start from here on out. After that Rick showed me around some and explained what was going on, and then it was right to work. Mine and Rick’s main purpose for being out here is to rebuild the TSH infrastructure. Basically this means that as equipment is shipped to Eagan from other sites or new equipment is brought in, we are responsible for setting it up. This includes receiving the shipment, making sure all components are there, making sure racks are in place, that all cable has been run to the designated location (fiber, network, power), getting the system racked, powered, and up and running. The shipment could be anything from a Sun box to Cisco networking equipment. We are also responsible for receiving port assignments and making certain that the boxes are patched both on the server side and the port side within the structured cabling runs so the machines can have access to the network. In a addition we are also responsible for initial configuration of iLo and anything else they throw at us. We are also running cable traces and other stop-gap trouble shooting that arises. I expect to learn a lot on this new position and am really looking forward to having hands on access and experience to things that I have never done or seen before.