J&M got Maui'd!

Elsy passed her nine month milestone last week and immediately got sick. She had a runny nose and the occasional sneeze and cough. She spat up a couple of times as well, which she has not done in months. The runny nose is most annoying though. She hates to have her nose sucked, and wiping can only clear out so much mucus. It also makes for a hard time to drink from a bottle as she is unable to breathe and must gasp for air every few seconds or so. Not to be left out, the two of us soon got sick as well, with Maggie really going down on Saturday. We all have gotten our flu shots, and Elsy even got a booster this past Friday which was Maggie's day off. I was only marginally better, as I did not have the chills and aches, but weakness, the occasional head ache and general lethargy makes managing an infant that much harder. Oh, and it did not help that Elsy had a runny poop bomb that I had to clean up and after the bath she peed on me. I did discover that Elsy likes drinking water.

We were on high alert this past week because Elsy was exposed to HFMD . She was exposed to it when Maggie took her to visit her cousin. They didn't realize that their baby had a fever until after Elsy had already put copious numbers of items into her mouth at their house so we decided to play it safe and refrained from going out to too many places while we waited for any symptoms to show up. So far so good. Apparently the incubation time is 3-6 days so I think we are in the clear. We also replaced our mattress. It was definitely not as comfortable as we needed it to be. We got a couple of twins to tide us over and figure out which model we liked better. So far I think the thicker one is the winner. (Personally I didn't notice too much of a difference but it has only been a few days on the thicker mattress.) Oh, also Elsy can kind of crawl backwards now. Gotta start clearing the floors..

I have been meaning to sell a few of my old/not-well fitting suits for a while. It was kind of interesting that before I met Maggie I had only one suit. Afterward, I ended up picking up four more suits, two tuxedos, one sports jacket, two bespoke suits, and one wedding suit. I do not have the space to keep them all, so.. I only was able to pick up the suits from my parents' place a couple of months ago but I finally got to try it on for a wedding reception a couple of weeks ago, which is when I was reminded of the fact that the suits were not well fitting. After getting a couple of tailored suits from Hoi An last year, it was time to get rid of some of these other cheap suits. Maggie suggested donating them to Richard, but due to the size difference.. Well, we brought the suits to the family Thanksgiving dinner and I had Richard try them out. Not even close. Next I offered them to Hoi, even though he did not need any suits, who also was not able to fit them. Then it was Adrian&

Wow, it has been half a year that Elsy has been with us now and how much she has grown! Three times her birth weight and she definitely is a pudgy little baby. Maybe not so little anymore. I am still amazed that I am a dad. I figured it would happen one day, but knowing that it will happen and having it happen and be reminded of it day by day is something completely different. There are challenges yes, but so far the rewards definitely worth the effort.

We finally got to sleep in our new king sized bed last night. It as nice to have the extra space to stretch out on. (Or just to have period.) This morning we were woken up by Elsy's singing. She does this every morning. When she wakes up she starts making high pitched whines and noises. Not sure if she's practicing speaking, but this morning, we were monitoring her with the baby cam and due to the split second delay in the feed, her echo made her morning song sound like a high pitched whale song. I wonder if whales would understand baby talk?

Maggie and I just recently finished putting together our new king sized Ikea Fjell bed. It took us six hours to put together. Four more hours than anticipated, and this was after we had put together the Lonset supports the night before (that took a couple of hours to assemble). Well, at least now we have a new bed. What will we do with the old one?

I was able to install the wall shelf this weekend while Elsy was sleeping. I was surprised how less noisy it was than I had expected. It only took fifteen minutes to do by myself and with it, our kitchen counter has become a lot less cluttered. In addition, we saw a deal for a TV stand that we jumped on last night. I think the post was up for 17 minutes when Maggie found it. The stand was cheaper than anything else that was posted and included a lot more stuff. It was, however, out of the city, but it was definitely worth the drive and I immediately drove out there to inspect the shelving, take it apart, load it onto my car (which can carry a lot more than it looks), and bring it back home. After dinner we put it all together in an hour. Our place looks so much more organized! Next up is finding inserts for file folders..

I sold my cowboy hat on Thursday for $30. I bought it while I was down in Seguin over a decade ago as a souvenir of my trip down to Texas. Since then, I have worn it a total of four times. One of which while actually riding a horse. I have come to the conclusion that purchasing souvenirs are only worth purchasing if the item will actually evict strong nostalgic memories or emotions. This usually means that anything I buy for myself will be left in the closet while things bought for me will be a little more cherished. Seems like I won't be buying anything more for myself in the near future, and selling a lot more of it as well!

Maggie and I are looking for shelving to put stuff on. We have a lot of stuff. That stuff is mostly in boxes. Most of those boxes are at my parents' place. I am very sure they would prefer not to have our stuff there so we have been looking for a place to put our stuff. We will be taking a look at a new bookshelf tonight. I also have a shelf that I got last week to install. The difficulty is finding a time to do it while Elsy is awake and/or not at the apartment while I am at the apartment. That has not happened yet and I do not foresee it happening for a while, so I think this weekend will be a chore filled weekend! I found Elsy lying on her side this morning when I went to feed her. She was wide awake, staring at the sunlight streaming through a crack in the drapes. She is at that age where she looks at any shiny object. She is also at that age where she can now start rolling. However, she is a bit of an anti-turtle. She can roll onto her front. But she can not roll back onto

Elsy has not learned to roll over yet, but she has learned to throw her legs around to shift and spin her body a bit. With enough of these movements and solid objects to push against she is able to spin her body around. Right around. Like a record baby. Ahem. We found her facing the opposite direction that we laid her down in a few days ago, and since then she has been roaming around the crib. Well, at least her legs have. Oh yes, we also installed the Nest around the same time so.. good timing?

Maggie has been complaining about my bed ever since she moved in. I purchased it from Laz over a decade ago, and it has served me well. However, it is getting kind of old, and we would like to get a king sized bed. That being said, we went shopping for a new mattress last Sunday and tried a myriad of mattresses. Most of which felt much more comfortable than our current stock, but also cost ten times as much.. We will look for deals of course, but in the meantime, I think we should find a nice home for my old mattress, box spring, and frame. They've served me well for over a decade and I would like to send it to a good home, but most likely we will try to sell it to some new student going to one of the nearby universities. Pick up only of course.

Maggie and I spent yesterday cleaning up the place and getting some things put up, like the rest of our photos. Only took us three months.. Still need bookshelves..

Maggie and I have been keeping an eye out for available daycares once her maternity leave is over. Pickings are pretty expensive downtown, with waiting lists long enough that kids will be going to school by the time they're accepted, and I do not want to overburden my parents for help even though they have offered to do so. We do want Elsy to get exposed to other people and peers so that she can learn to socialize well and gain valuable skills (and exposure to various pathogens that should build up her immunity). However, we also want her to be exposed to more relatives as well so that she is comfortable, at least with my parents, so that if we need to drop her off in an emergency, there will not be a screamageddon when we are gone. Prices for daycare are high here, and will become exorbitantly expensive once we start having more kids in the system. I guess we will need to figure out where and when to minimize our headaches, parental reliance, and wallet drain.

This is obviously not my 100th post. Nor is it really about anything 100. In any case, now that Elsy has reached a four month milestone, we can reflect on her first 100 days of life which we kind of did at her 100 day celebration (held late so that it was conveniently enough near my birthday and when GKMMM were in town). We had around 100 people invited to the party of which only two did not show. Had I remembered that the venue had a projection screen available I would've put together a slide show of her first 100 days instead of the tennis game or baseball game (although the baseball game was quite the hit!). It was unfortunate that we were not able to really greet all of our invitees properly. I tried to focus on those that we rarely ever see. But even then, it was still not enough time for those that we were able to talk to! I am still amazed that four months have gone by and none of us has had any serious issues. Things have been going relatively smoothly. Smooth enough fo

Since this was our first year downtown, and this was the only year we would get a clear view of the pride parade, we decided to stay downtown during the pride weekend festivities. First off, I would say that our vantage point for the pride parade was excellent! The best part was the air conditioning, available drinks, snacks and sleeping arrangements. Now for the bad part. We were situated next to one of the concert venues, and what we did not realize was that the concerts were to run to 0200 on Saturday and Sunday morning, and until 2300 on Sunday night. The sound proofing for our unit is not the best, as we could hear regular traffic on normal days. The concert sounds came right into our unit and the base was especially felt as our windows (and everything else) would shake with every beat. This led to some very sleepless nights, especially for Elsy who we are in the process of sleep training. The fact that she started to sleep through the noise on the second night, and not just

Now that Elsy has passed the three month stage, she will be hitting some noticeable milestones pretty soon. She already started grasping objects, has really started to babble, laugh, and has been getting to sleep a lot easier now (with sleep training that is). That tiny baby that we started off with is now a curious infant, ready to see what's next on the list of life..

Elsy is now more than three months old! It is amazing how quickly time flies when you have a little one. They do not stay that little for that long! I think both of us are still open to having more kids. We shall see how the rest of the year goes..

After putting Elsy to bed I decided to get a few things that were bothering me out of the way. I swapped around my USB cords on my computer - something I have been meaning to do for a month. I re-reversed the latches for the walk-in closet door and laundry room so that they now point in the right direction. Something I have been meaning to look into for a month. I had picked up a microwave stand after work, which was something we had been meaning to do for a month. Unfortunately the microwave did not fit inside the microwave cubicle. Not critical, as it can fit on top, but we wanted to put the toaster oven on top and have the microwave below. It was also a foot lower than I would have liked. I don't want to kneel to put food into the microwave, although on the top shelf things are easier to access. So, we are progressing. The place is starting to look more like a home and less like a storage room. A bookshelf would be nice, but that is something we will need to discuss..

More and more people will start coming to visit over the next weeks and months. We already have a cousin dropping by today, and then a couple of Maggie's friends are coming over on Friday. Our place is mostly presentable, although we still have some stuff to clean up and organize. Namely, we require a bookshelf - or three. We sold our bookshelves when we were moving and stored all of our books in boxes. These boxes were mostly left at my parents' place. Out of sight, out of mind. Of course, now that we have a place of our own again, a dozen boxes of books are hard to organize without something to put them onto. Still, least of our problems. I was just happy I was able to fix the shower faucet handle (apparently the renovators just did not bother screwing it in), and got rid of Dion's stuff freeing up room to hide more boxes. Next project is to see if I can fix a couple of the doors. It seems as if they were installed with the latch backwards. i.e. you need to turn the k

So we have pretty much finished setting up the nursery. Pretty much. There are still boxes in there, but the mattress is in and covered and things seem ready to go now. We just need to put together one more of those POÄNG chairs, get the last boxes out of the room and we will be set. Of course, we have to figure out where to put those boxes.. On a brighter note, we put down the foam mats in the living room for baby to crawl around on when she starts crawling and moved the rug back to the corner where it belongs. Eventually we will get things organized into a way so that the place is presentable but we are actually pretty close now methinks. By this weekend I foresee something akin to a visitable venue, if only barely. Just in time too because people are coming over on Friday. I guess I should start inviting others too. Will get to it. Eventually.

I put up our first photos on the wall last night. I only had time to put up two of them: Our large wedding canvas and our smaller wedding photo frame. They both now hang near the clock on the most visible side of the living room for all to see. This was possible because I was able to move the empty boxes and buckets from the living room corner into the baby room. This was possible because I was able to move the empty furniture boxes (the ones we just purchased) from the baby room and hallway into the locker room. This was possible because I actually had time to move those boxes down to the locker room, although the boxes were so big and bulky, there is now no more room for anything in the locker. Still, this place is starting to look more like a home!

We have unpacked virtually all of the boxes in our apartment, although we still have a score of boxes left at my parents' place to bring over. Still, this is quite the achievement considering how little time we actually have for unpacking and organizing. (Usually we have time for one or the other.) The big ticket items are finally assembled and more-or-less positioned. Once we get the mattress, we can finally start setting up the nursery. Three months after the fact. Good timing too. Elsy has reached the limit of the bassinet and we need to find her a more permanent sleeping location stat. Anyway, once the nursery is set up, we can move those boxes to storage, and that will clear up quite a bit of room to allow us to move our other boxes to take the place of these boxes so that we have the space to bring back the remaining boxes from my parents' place to take the place of those boxes. Time to start flattening boxes methinks.

I had an appointment to bring in my car this morning and Maggie wanted some time to clean up the apartment. So I took Elsy in my car to my parents' place. This is my car. I drive this baby like crazy. As such, I needed to install the car seat in my car. since my car actually had two sets of latching points, it was surprisingly easy to put in the base, after I figured out which hole to use that is. This is my baby. She can drive me crazy. The carrier was a little more annoying to put in. With only two doors, I had to push the passenger seat all the way up to squeeze the carrier in and had to lean in a bit to get the carrier in the base. I am sure that it would only get even more annoying as Elsy gets bigger and heavier. This is my baby in my car. Ain't that crazy? Still, it was possible so I can cart Elsy around in a pinch. I just don't think I would like to do so that often. Baby looks so small in this picture.

We started living in the condo this weekend even though we moved our big ticket items last weekend. We had planned to move most of the rest of the stuff at my parents' place over the week but my mom got sick and so we are still missing most of the contents of the kitchen among other things. This is what our cupboards looked like. As such, my breakfast today was a little improvised. I had to find some way to eat my cereal and milk. Hopefully we will be able to get the rest of our stuff this week. Otherwise we'll be taking more advantage of the delivery options downtown.

Maggie did not wake me up early this morning for my shift and I got an extra couple of hours of shut eye - which was good because I went to bed relatively late last night. Now if this is the start of the turning point where Elsy will be taking longer naps will take time to tell, but I am looking forward to having a good night's rest. At least until the kids start jumping on our bed..

Elsy has been growing pretty quickly of late. She is no longer the "tiny" newborn that she was a month ago. I would like to be able to document all of this, for myself, and for Elsy, but things have been going so fast, and there has been so little down time that I have had enough trouble keeping up with the commitments I already have. The best we can do is take lots of pictures and videos and hopefully be able to look back and recall how things were when she was young. She will never be like this again.

I've been debating whether to write an Elsy blog or not. So many first times for us, and I would like to remember these moments before they're gone. Now, whether I have the time to write anything, or willingness to post it openly are another set of questions. If there's a will there's a way and I'm sure something can be arranged..

Elsy has a chronic case of the hiccups. I think she got it from me. We adults might find it cute hearing little hiccuping sounds coming from such a tiny creature, but I am sure that she is starting to find it a little tiring, having to endure these body shaking events for many minutes, interrupting things like eating (hic-gulps), couching (hic-coughs), burping (hic-urps), or just trying to sleep (hiccups). You'll get over it kid - and it is cute.

We were informed to go for a "Billy Ruben" test a couple of weeks ago because Elsy was looking a bit yellow and was losing weight. I had no idea who this "Billy Ruben" person was or how it was related to jaundice, but after getting the test results back (which were negative - quiet healthy actually), I discovered that they were testing for bilirubin . Huh, it is actually a thing. (Not a person.)

Some things that we talk about when dealing with the baby would sound so terrible taken out of context. I try not to laugh whenever I catch myself or someone else saying some of these things out loud. Most of these comments come when feeding or dealing with diapers, Regarding feeding for the first time: "We need to teach her how to suck and swallow." When feeding her by finger with a tube: "Get her to open her mouth, then stick it in there and get her to suck." When trying to clean her after a bowel movement: "Spread those legs wide apart. That's a good girl. Oh, I know you don't like it, but it will be over soon and you will feel a lot better afterwards." The list can only grow! I'm a terrible father!

I told her this morning when she woke up: "This is not the womb you're looking for. "

Welcome to the REAL world.

And so it begins: The last days of our (childless) lives. We're as ready as we'll ever be. and we will be as ever ready as well.

Maggie and I installed the car seat in the car on Saturday. They say that you should do it one month in advance, just in case. The hospital will not let you leave with the baby without one installed, so having one installed this early will mean that you do not have to rush to get one in around that child birthing time. Also, 37 weeks is considered full term so this weekend, we start: Babywatch.

So, in a month I will have a baby in my arms. She may not be born on that day, but there will definitely be a baby, and I will definitely be in need of sleep. So, Maggie and I will try to enjoy what time we have left of our DINKy lives before entering the world of parenthood..

So Maggie and I have decided that we will be moving back into the city this spring after the baby has been born. We both enjoy living urban life and the commute right now is somewhat painful. Now going along those lines - I have been thinking long and hard as to when I would be letting go of my RSX. I have had the car for over 12 years now and it is in excellent condition, but with the baby coming it will be a little tough to carry a baby around in it and Maggie cannot drive it so.. Time to look up black book. Hopefully they didn't all decide to retire after that lottery.

Maggie and I went to a pre-natal class this past weekend and came back more informed as to what we were getting ourselves into than before. I think it was time well spent. Hopefully we'll actually remember all of this stuff when we're in the middle of all of that stuff, but I'm sure that we'll be fine in the end.

So our wedding website went on line just a bit over five years ago now. I was able to archive and post the website in it's entirety last April and things have been humming along ever since. It seems somewhat narcissistic to keep both the wedding website and The PIT up and running even though both are now effectively frozen, but I do like to preserve the past, regardless of how inconsequential it is to others, just because I like to remember the past. I wonder if we should do something interesting for our fifth year anniversary. With our luck, it will be changing diapers or something similar.

Maggie and I had a baby shower yesterday. It was organized by her sisters and there were plenty of people invited - from both genders - although I was not particularly informed about that point until much later, but that's alright. Who would I have invited anyway? There was plenty of food, fun, and frolicking during the afternoon festivities as friends and family filled the room with talk and laughter. Plenty of photos were posted on Facebook and the ones that Elena posted seemed to garner the most attention. What tickled me the most was having so many people congratulate us on the upcoming birth when it seemed overly presumptuous as the due date was still ten weeks away. I even LOLed when Cheryl congratulated me saying that Leo was so cute. I should pass along the complement to Reg though. I'm sure he'd appreciate it.