Nathan Speaks!

Well, kinda. He's started cooing a little. More on that later. Nate and his mother went to the support group at the hospital again yesterday. He's slowed down a little with the weight gain. He only managed to put on 8 oz this week, down from last week's 11 oz. So now he stands at 11 lb, 11 oz, and almost 2' tall. He goes in for his 2 month Dr visit Monday. He's really starting to show a little personality. He's a really smiley guy during "happy time". Here he is showing off his chest hair...

Like I said earlier, he has started cooing from time to time. He'll sometimes let one out after he sneezes. Other times he'll just do one on his own. I managed to catch one on video Tuesday. It's at about 7 seconds into the video and you may have to turn your volume up to hear it.

My Little Kingdom

I finally finished the great logo project the other day (see "What Have I Gotten Myself Into?" Feb 4, 2008). I was actually surprised how quickly I got it done. I was expecting it to drag on for months, but I managed to stick with it and finish in about 3 weeks. I have to say thank you to Olivia for giving me the time to work on it. Here's what it all looked like when I was done...

I was very surprised by how few pieces I was actually missing. I think I got my first set when I was 5, so I've had some for almost 25 years. I estimate the collection to be between 6000 and 7000 individual pieces. When I was finished building, I was missing a total of probably 20 or 25 pieces. Not to shabby. I was actually missing only4 or 5 pieces from the newer, larger sets. The older sets were missing a few more, but I was able to substitute different colors in for most of those. There was one small police van that ended up looking like a clown car, though. Shauna has agreed to hook me up with a handful of pieces to round things out and make everything pretty close to 100%. Here's a few closeups so you can see things better...Who knew the space shuttle launch pad was next door to a truck stop?My favorites were always the space sets...

The sad thing is that I'm really only halfway done. Now I have to tear them all apart piece by piece and bag them up by set. Now watch, I'll go through all this work and Nathan will end up not even liking legos.

Graduation Day

Well, on Monday my son finally graduated. He moved up from the size "N" diapers to the size "1" diapers. It was really quite a jump. He was bursting out of the old ones, and now he's swimming in the new ones. Liv took him to the mother's group at the hospital again yesterday. He weighed in at 11 Lb 3 oz. For those keeping score that's an increase of 11 oz in the last week or over 1.5 oz per day! I believe his new nickname will be Moose. He's even started smiling a little and his mother actually got him to laugh a little in the bath the other night. I haven't caught any of it on film yet, but we got some good pics of him with mom and dad last night...

Grandma and Grandpa Dudley are leaving for their cruise tomorrow. I'm sure Nate will probably be walking by the time they get back. Wave goodbye to them, Moose...

Where Will the Merchandising Stop?

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail today titled "Merchandising Gone Arwy." After going to the link provided and reading the write-up, I saw how right he was. Here's exhibit A, the Merchandising item in question...

It appears to just be a cute little kids' thermometer featuring Spongebob Squarepants. Yes maybe a little dopey, but no more outlandish a merchandising scheme than say a Winnie the Pooh toothbrush or a bottle of bath soap with Elmo on it. There's one little catch though. According to the e-mail forward, clearly printed on the packaging are the words "RECTAL THERMOMETER".

.....Long dumbfounded silence......

Oh wait, it gets worse. Apparently also clearly printed on the packaging is the word "MUSICAL"! Yes, you heard that right! This little number plays the Spongebob theme song as you put it in your screaming child's corn hole. I was completely astounded by this forward and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I just had to do some digging and see if this was as messed up as it appeared.

I found the website of the company that makes this little beauty. There was a picture of the packaging, but it was too small to read all the fine print...

I read the product details on the website and discovered it was designed for "oral, underarm, or rectal use". Ok, I feel a little better now. At least they weren't using Spongebob as a pitchman for getting kids to enjoy having their temp taken that way. Reading further on the website, "Plays Spongebob Squarepants theme at end of temperature taking", and "fast, 9 second temperature read-out". It's probably best that the song plays after you're done because after a couple uses the kids would probably run away screaming when they heard it playing. I still can't imagine that this will be good for Bob's TV ratings. I mean, if kids associate Spongebob with cold probes in the nether regions I think they might start to lose interest in the show. And what's with the "fast, 9 second temperature taking"? That might be fast for oral use, but that's an eternity on the other end of the digestive system.

So what's my point with all of this? Do I think this is wrong or something? No, I'm a capitalist and if you can make money selling this sort of thing, I say go ahead. Just know that I will mock you and call you stupid while you do it. Come on people! I don't care if Spongebob magically comes to life and dances a jig with his little undersea buddies after each use. I don't see this making temperature taking any more fun for my kid. There's just some places that merchandising shouldn't go. My kid's pooper is one of them.

My Son the Chipmunk

Well, it's been a while since my last post, but we're still here. I guess it was a combination of business and a slow Nathan news week. To all of Nate's loyal followers, I apologize for any withdrawl symptoms you may be suffering. But never fear, we're back with another dose of uber-cuteness for you to feast your eyes upon. Here goes.

It's been 10 days since my last post and Nathan has now passed the 6 week point. Last Wednesday, his mother attended a new mother's support group at the hospital. I'm not sure what exactly goes on there. I think they just pass the babies around and share spanking tips or something. Anyway, they had a scale so Liv put the lad on there and he was up to 10.5 lbs. After doing the math, we figured he's putting on about 1 oz. per day. I think he's putting most of it around his waist and in his face. His torso has assumed the shape of a pear and his cheeks belong to a chipmunk.

Accompanying the weight gain is a noticable increase in power too. He has no trouble holding his head up anymore and it's getting difficult to dress him if he doesn't want to cooperate. He's started to study things as well. He'll lock onto a person or thing and intently study it for some time. It won't be too long before he starts to investigate I think. He's already made a few half-hearted bats at a toy we have suspended in his car seat. We're hoping to see him start punching at it soon.

Thursday we went over to Grandma and Grandpa Dudley's for Grandpa Mike's birthday. We forgot the camera so no pictures of that one. Friday while I was doing a lighting job at church, Great Grandma and Grandpa Adamski came over to visit the boy. I don't know much about the visit, but there was a picture on the camera so I thought I'd post it...

That's about all the Nathan news there is to report. His Grandma and Grandpa Dudley are shoving off on their cruise this coming weekend, so I'm sure we will have to get them another Nathan fix before departure. If Liv goes back to her support group this week we'll get an update on his ballooning as well. More to come!

When Opportunity Knocks...

Two days ago I wasn't looking to buy a new TV. I had come to the conclusion that I would be stuck with my little 27" until Nathan was out of college and I was cool with that. Then I get a call from Jonesy at work. The guy he is working for is looking to buy a flat screen and needs to get rid of his old TV. I was intrigued at first, but didn't expect anything to come of it. Well, here's a picture of my living room taken this evening... It was just too good to pass up! It's a 53" widescreen Panasonic rear projection HDTV. The guy spent $1800 on it 4 years ago, and I got it for $300. It's SWEET! I was worried that it wouldn't fit into our little TV spot, but once we got it in it looked like it was built to fit there. It actually takes up less space than the TV/coffee table combo that it's replacing. It took me a couple hours to wire the DVD and VCR into the fireplace...
Don't freak out, it's a crappy "light bulb" fireplace. This is the most it's been used since I moved in here. I was a little disappointed with the picture quality watching tv, but then I remembered that we haven't forked out for digital cable yet. The analog signal just gets spread out over a larger screen and it's actually a bit more grainy than the old tv. Then we popped in a DVD. WHOA, there's the difference I was looking for! Our living room is now a movie theater! So I guess I got lucky on this one. Opportunity knocked right at tax time when we had a little extra money on the way. I need to send a big thanks to Jonesy for hooking me up with this sweet deal. Hooray for me!

One Month of Nathan

Nathan turned one month old yesterday. He had his one month appointment at the Dr's office today. He weighed in at 9 lb 13.5 oz, 23" long, and a 14" coconut atop his neck. For those keeping score, that's an increase of about 2 lb and 1" on the length and noggin size over the past 2 weeks. At this rate, I calculate that by age 1 he will be 4'2", weigh 87 lb, and we will refer to him as "mellon-head." The Doc says everything is fine and he is doing nicely. We are both super thankful that he is so healthy and happy. I'm also thankful for my new hobby, teasing the boy while he sleeps. It's quite funny, watch...

He does the funniest things while he's sleeping, like saying goodbye to all the Kermitt readers.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into

As some of you may know, I spent most of my childhood playing with Legos. I acquired quite a collection over the years as well. I enjoyed them so much that I kept them all with the intention of someday giving them to my kids. Fast forward to now. I finally have a kid, so the wheels have been put in motion for endless hours of imagination expanding playtime for him. I didn't get my first Lego set until I was 5 I think, so it will still be quite a while until I give them to Nate. I have thought of one potential problem though. It would be quite overwhelming to dump 10,000 plus pieces on a 5 year old kid, throw him some instructions, and say "Have at it!" I imagine that he would get frustrated looking for one particular piece in a giant plastic mountain, and lose interest. I had the foresight (OCD) to keep most of the old boxes and instructions for my Lego sets. So, I decided it would be best to separate them all into their respective sets and meter them out to the boy over a longer period of time. Always one for extensive planning (OCD again), I also decided it would be easier to sort them out sooner rather than later. Once he gets older he will be anxious to "help" me sort them out which will undoubtedly turn into him eating them when I'm not looking. So, I pulled them all out of the closet yesterday and set up shop in the spare bedroom. After opening up all the boxes and spreading them out, I asked myself "What have I gotten myself into?"

As you can tell, I did have a system of organization. The only problem is that I last used that system 10 or 15 years ago. As you can see, I wasn't exaggerating when I said 10,000+ pieces. You can see how this might be a little much for a 5 or 6 year old. So, I've resigned myself to the fact that I will be spending the next few months scratching through these boxes in my free time. I managed to sort out about 1% of them in a couple hours last night, so you do the math. The next hurdle will be finding a place to put the growing number of completed sets as the storage boxes will still contain pieces not yet used. We'll see.

In preparing for this little project, I did stumble on a neat website. I knew there were a few sets that I no longer have the instructions for and wondered if I might find them online. Did I ever. I know Aunt Shauna and Uncle Logan will probably be the only Kermitt readers interested in this, but check out this site... http://www.hccamsterdam.nl/brickfactory/theme/index.htm . I was quite impressed. I'll keep you updated on my progress as I trudge through this little project. Now watch, after all this Nathan will probably end up not giving 2 hoots about Legos.

A Big Weekend

Nathan's Aunt Shauna and Uncle Tom made the trip down from Iowa this weekend to see the Teeny Little Super Guy in person. So, we had a busy but fun weekend hanging out with the fam. After 10" of snow overnight Thursday, I decided to stay home Friday. It worked out well, because it took Olivia and I all day to clean the house up for our weekend guests. Friday afternoon we headed north to G&G Dudley's for dinner. We got there early enough to take the 4-wheeler for a spin in the snow. Nathan sat this one out but judging by Olivia's screaming, I think she enjoyed it. While waiting for Shauna and Tom to arrive we took some pictures of Nate in an outfit that was given to him by Olivia's darling aunts Belinda and Glenda. They gave it to us when we went to visit Olivia's family in TN/GA back in August. The hat was the cutest part of the outfit, but I guess Nathan wasn't feeling too cute because he started screaming shortly after we put it on him. He was still cute after we got it off him though.
After his photo shoot, Nate went to hang out with Uncle Logan for a little. I purposely left the red-eye in this picture just fot the sheer creepiness of it...Around 7:30, Aunt Shauna showed up and was instantly upon the lad. It was the first time she'd seen him in person, so it's understandable.
So after all the introductions, we got Nate to nap long enough for the rest of us to eat some dinner. Evidently Nate was dreaming that he was at some sort of political rally or something. Power to the people, Nate...
After dinner, a couple card games, and a heavy dose of smothering for the boy we headed home. Saturday morning, we had some last minute sprucing up to do and then the family all came over to our place. Great-Grandma and Grandad Dudley and aunt-to-be Megan were also in attendance on Saturday. We all just kinda hung around, played some games, ate, and passed the kid around until 5. Then we all went to the Saturday night service at church. While there Shauna got to see one of her high school friends, Kathleen, and her adorable 15 month old boy. I feel bad because I didn't catch his name. Anyway, after church it was back to our place for more food, games, and deep intellectual conversation with a 1 month old...
So it was a busy weekend, but we really enjoyed it. Now all that's left is the superbowl this evening (yawn). My only hope is that Tom Brady gets that pretty little butt crack on his chin planted in the turf by some large, angry defensive linemen. I loathe the Patriots and only dislike the Giants, so I guess I'm rooting for New York. Actually, I'm probably just going to be rooting for the commercials.

Dr. Evil Redux

I told you he's Dr. Evil...

When Dr. Evil gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset.... people DIE!