Early Christmas

Since we will be out of town for Christmas, we had a an early Christmas with my mother (Maymee and Grandpa Den) on Saturday night. Lots of photos were taken few are very good, enjoy the best of them:

Family Visit

Dad and Rachel (Grandpa Dave and Ray-Ray) came to visit on their annual pilgrimage to Vero Beach for Christmas. Here are some shots that I hope will bring a smile to them and anyone else. It was quite nice to see them, as always.

Baby Cage

My yellow lab is as reliable as I am in his treatment of Esme. To the extent that whacking him on the tip of the nose with a wooden mallet didn't even cause him to stir, although he did stare at me with quite the doleful look until I stopped her. With that, when Esme climbed into the dog kennel with him we weren't concerned...

We found Mom's makeup!

Pictures

I am going to post some photos that range from visiting Grandpa Dave and Ray-Ray to our trip to St. Johns last week. Please enjoy.

Some pictures

Please forgive some of the editing, I am playing with new software. The last picture is of me taking a quick rest for some water on a trail in the county park near our house.

Okay Weather, Great Adventure

With some gentle prodding, I convinced Angie to go for a bike ride with me last night, with our daughter in the trailer. The weather was getting cloudy but the temperature was right and she agreed or acquiesced, either way we went. The ride was a little ambitious, but we had the trump card on our side: Carl Miller. Carl is an avid cyclist and unbeknown to him, I had elected him the emergency vehicle. We had decided to ride the Ravenel Bridge which is not a small feat as you know if you have driven over it, but to Carl it's a walk in the park. Based on that I had figured that if Angie and I, both novices, weren't able to make it back to the car, we could send carl back and have him come get us, or even better and way more fun considering his fear of anything under the age of sixteen, have him tow our daughter for us. (Chuckle)
Fortunately we did not have to have any help, although there was some great moral support and instruction, and all four of us rode the bridge from Mt. P to Charleston and back. Carl also is quite the photog and snapped a few pics of us huffing away.
I will also add a link to his new birding page, which is under development, but has some phenomenal photos on it.

lowcountrybirds.net

He also wrote the pages so be suitably impressed, while recognizing it is a work in progress.

Enjoy!

Glorious Weather

We had our first date with spring this weekend, and we loved it. Sunny and 75 on Saturday and Sunday had all our windows opened and the family outside enjoying the fresh air. I have some pictures from Sunday of Esme in her her walker while Angie and I cleaned up the garage and the yard. Here is the special girl in a special shirt. Photo credits go to Angie.

Average weekday evening

I took several pictures last night at Angie's request, it was definitely worth the bytes since we have some very sweet shots of our daughter playing on the couch with Angie.
First, let me tell you that Esme is feeling substantially better and is back to her regular happy self. She has added a few tricks to her repertoire, primarily a distinct opinion on which toy she wants, not a specific one all the time, but usually the one you really don't think she should play with, like my glasses, or every scrap of paper she can get her hands on. It had been quite easy to distract her and swap toys, but no longer. Instead she gets quite upset, and with a moue that would stop your heart, begins an escalating cry/scream indicating her displeasure. It tends to not last long, but if she glimpses the previously desired object she will attempt a fairly effective (for someone who can't stand yet) lunge for it. It has caught us off-guard several times, and we have narrowly dodged catastrophe on this steep learning curve. Another new trick is sitting up fairly reliably without any support. This has been neat to watch as she gets her balance and learns how far over she can lean, etc. Adding to the learning curve is that after only a week of sitting up she now will grab whatever is in front of her and stand up. The one that surprised me was when she was sitting in my lap facing me, and suddenly grabbed by shirt with each hand and yanked herself up and was face to face with me with a big two-toothed grin. Finally, we had a 6 month checkup and she was following her curves still, 27.2 inches (95th percentile) long, 15.5 pounds (35th percentile), and 55th percentile in head size (I forget the actual diameter).

I'll try and talk more about "Mom" and "Dad" soon, but suffice it to say we are okay.

More as things develop, love to all.

Almost six months, and almost a month since our last post.

Wow, does time fly when you are not only having fun, but also when you are sick, exhausted, keeping up with large projects at work or simply trying to keep up with your new life. Or a little of all of the above simultaneously.
Briefly, about Angie and myself, my company or a pseudonym of my current company, successfully re-bid our contract with the government. That has added quite a bit of planning and preparation for new network structure come March 1st, and with my current servers calling it quits after 4 years of faithful service, it makes my job all the more complicated. Angie's job has become a bit more exciting with the new CFO coming into her own and beginning to recognize Angie's talents for her job. As an example, Angie had estimated a multi-million dollar figure and was four thousand dollars off the exact number that the team of auditors came up with at year-end. I was impressed, and more importantly, so was her CFO.
Esme has begun some new things too, primarily she is very intentionally balancing while sitting up. We keep her kind of corralled, but it's really amazing to watch her lean forward to pick something up and then shift back to compensate. Another source of real interest to me and to her is the water pouring from the faucet. She cannot quite 'get' that there is something there, but she can't grab it. Her little hands clench and open in the stream repeatedly, until she gets distracted. Angie decided last weekend that she would let Esme try some applesauce out and proceeded to get a series of wonderful faces, but nothing that would seem like actual ingestion. Later that weekend Angie and I were chomping on an apple and decided to see what Esme thought of an actual slice of apple. Esme thought that this was wonderful and began contentedly sucking on it. Only afterward did we notice that her two little front teeth on the bottom had been shaving apple away as she sucked. I did get a picture of that, I thought it was too cute.



On Saturday we took her for a spin in a new bike trailer we bought on Friday. It doubles as a stroller and strikes me as so much safer than those seats that mount on the back of a bike. Here are several pictures of that morning:





Three weekends ago we took a walk on the Cooper River bridge with Mimi and Grandpa Denis. We were fortunate to run into my friend Carl who was biking over the bridge, and he stopped to take a few pictures for us. Here they are:




Esme is currently uner the weather, though. She officially has an ear infection and has been prescribed her first ever round of antibiotics. In a total blast from the past for me, it is the same pink amoxicilin I was guzzling as a kid for all my ear aches. I have completely resisted tasting it, but boy does it bring me back. On athe Esme front as well, she has been, up until being sick, sleeping relaibly in her crib all night. I would say through the night but to be specific we were tending to wake up once or twice to a quiet sniffle as she dug for her pacifier in the middle of the night, and she would fall back to sleep immediately after we got it back into place. Of course with her feeling poorly we are having "crib parties" instead of quiet restful evenings.

Hopefully that catche everyone up with the basics, good night all, I will add more as I get news, pictures or time.