finally finished...

Hello, and welcome to my blanket
As you can see, I very much enjoy my blanket. Watch as I luxuriate in its luxuriousness...
Well, bye now, and thank you for visiting my blanket. Come again soon, won't you?


after over a YEAR of knitting, Laina's baby blanket is finally done! I knew it would take a while, but over a year? That is crazy slow. Of course I wasn't working on it consistently, especially during the whole move/transition to a real house thing. And then Laina was born and then things were even more crazy. Now that she is on somewhat of a more regular routine, I had a little time to work on it. I decided just to finish it up where I was at, instead of putting on another foot or so like the pattern calls for. Oh well, it's just a little smaller than it's supposed to be. But I wanted to be done with it...after looking at the same blanket for over a year I'm already sick of it and Laina hasn't even used it yet! (Well besides me taking the pics of her on it). I did think it was funny that Laina happens to have a camouflaged outfit for it...

(the voice of Laina was added by Jay in an advanced hacking maneuver)

Laina's first portraits

We took Laina for her 3 month professional portraits last Friday. At first I was hoping to get some nice big smiles, but considering that she cried the whole way to the studio, I was just happy to get some of her not crying! Then as we waited for the photos to be uploaded for viewing, Laina fell asleep and the photographer offered to take more pics of her asleep. That was really nice of her and so we got some good ones of her sleeping, too. The ones above are the 2 poses we ended up getting some prints of. All in all I would say a successful first photography session.

One Year

We realized that its been one year since we showed up in Colorado! This has probably been the most eventful year we've ever had, so I thought I'd recap the highlights:

First long distance road trip: We drove straight through, 16 straight hours, with nary a stop over 20 minutes the whole way. I got to see lots of amazing natural wonders, and Jenna got to see nothing but taillights and Vegas.

3 months in the tiniest dwelling that 2 people and a dog should ever occupy: Our 290sf hotel room on the third floor, with "kitchenette" (really just a sink with microwave above and mini-mini fridge below)

New Job for me: I started a few days after we got here at my new firm, Klipp

New Car for Jenna: Jenna picked up her Matrix shortly after we arrived here

Positive Pregnancy Test: This was a shocker, especially within the first couple months of being here...

First "downpayment" on a brand new house: We kind of got to feel what it's like to have a brand new house being built when we put $5 down on a house in nearby Horse Creek (they were running a special)... but eventually had to back out when our house hadn't sold in time to close.

New job for Jenna: Jenna worked at a horse stable for a few months, until winter came.

New church: hitting about 8 or 9 local churches in just a few weeks, we found the church community we felt we could call home.

First snowstorm, blizzard, etc.: Our first winter was one of the worst in Denver history, so we got to experience the worst of it right away... luckily we moved into a 1br condo just before the first snow of the year in late October. With the blizzards came lots of firsts, like first time shovelling it, taking the dog for walks in it, driving in it on a regular basis, hitching a ride on the back of a stranger's snowmobile down a major highway during a blizzard, etc.

Another new job for Jenna: Jenna started working at Old Navy, which was much more reasonable during pregnancy

Most stressful time ever: The period after Christmas, when our house still hadn't sold after 6-7 months after dropping the price by $100k +, blizzards were happening weekly, work was getting busier and busier, Jenna was working lots of evenings and weekends, and the due date was approaching fast, was one of the darkest, most frustrating, and most stressful that we will hopefully ever endure...

Strangest escrow ever (and first sold house!): Once we did finally get an offer, it was a great one, $10k over our asking price (with $10k in closing costs, of course). We had both just basically given up, so neither of us believed it. We both were so negative that we assumed it was going to fall through up until closing day. The buyers gave us lots of reasons to think that way - like getting everthing done late, not returning our agent's calls, never asking for inspection repairs, etc., but they did finally come through and close! (a couple of days late, but we expected that)

New House!: This was an awesome day... one we never would have appreciated to the extent that we did if we had moved right on out here into our house. We finally got to sleep in our bed again, we got to let Ella outside to the backyard, and best of all, we weren't going further into debt each month to pay both a mortgage and rent, all right before the baby was due, which was awesome, because every baby book talks about how financially stressed couples can get right before having their first baby... multiply that times 10 when you're digging further into debt every month living in limbo between moves...

New Baby!: Laina was definitely the biggest and best thing to happen all year (but probably the smallest physically). Along with her came all kinds of baby-related firsts: There are so many of these I won't waste your time... but they're still happening...

New friends: Since settling in we've made a bunch of new friends, in our neighborhood, church, work, etc, and we actually feel, after a year in Colorado, that we can really call this home.

Anyway, thinking back, we're hoping this next year goes a little smoother...

Back in the Saddle Again!

Laina and I got to go watch Jenna ride a horse for the first time in about 8 months today! At the stable she started working at very, very part time (a few hours on occasional Saturdays), she got a dressage lesson from one of the trainers. The stable has an indoor arena (obviously, from the picture above) Although it was a really gorgeous day, it was nice to be out of the sun while we watched. She felt a little rusty at first, but got right back into it pretty quickly, doing all kinds of tricky stuff that I really can't tell she's doing (but the trainer could). If you don't know, dressage is a really subtle sport. If you don't have an eye for it (which I still don't), you would just think the horses are walkin' kinda funny...


Laina was surprisingly interested (when she wasn't sleeping of course). Whenever I'd hold her up her eyes would lock on to mommy and watch her go... So we figured she'd like to say hello to the horse, Midnight. Somehow we got her to pose like Michaelangelo's Creation. Not intentional...


I kept poking my head out the arena doorway to check out the scenery. This is pretty much how the whole area looks just east of us in the rural part of Parker. Lots of horse stables and pastures like this everywhere you look. Eventually as you head east the trees go away, then there's pretty much nothing until Kansas (not like Kansas is something, though, but we'll have to go check it out sometime and get some BBQ.


Jenna really enjoyed riding, of course, so she'll probably start trying to ride as much as possible. Luckily there may be a horse that will be in need of riding while the owner is away at college, which would be free to Jenna... so she may get to go riding quite a bit pretty soon.

We're off to a barbeque, so that's all for now

What Happened?

I turned the TV on at prime time tonight for a little vegetation... and here were my choices:

So You Think You Can Dance
America's Next Top Model
American Heiress
American Masters
Next Best Thing (Celebrity Impersonators)

Is there anything being put out on TV anymore out that isn't just about celebrities or talent contests?

Geez.

Guess I'll go play my guitar for a while... (actually I started watching "American Masters", which was a documentary about Les Paul, and his invention of the solid-body electric guitar and multi-track recording, which reminded me my guitar is sitting next to me, and my Les Paul imitation is downstairs right next to my multi-track recorder)

...woops, never mind, Laina woke up.

The Top Ten Things Nobody Told Us

So we were talking to some friends today about what having a baby is like, and I was inspired to do this post of the top 10 things nobody told us (or maybe they told us but we didn't really understand) about newborns/infants:

This is going to go Letterman style, where you go backwards, and the number one answer is always a big letdown since its the least funny of the 10...

10. Diaper Blowouts - Mere diapers, no matter the type, can't always contain the glorious creations of a baby

9. The quivering lip - Simultaneously the cutest and saddest thing you can see a little helpless baby do...

8. Lack of sleep is for real - You really don't get enough sleep for weeks - I always joked about this and thought it was funny that new parents don't get sleep... But you really don't - and it isn't funny. This one belongs in the "I heard you, but I didn't really understand". Now I know why the first question anyone asks a new parent is "Getting any sleep?". The scary part is that I even had it way better than Jenna.

7. Staring contests- Babies seem to be into staring for long periods of time. You can try to beat them, but you will lose.

6. Cuteness overload - Your baby is the cutest thing in the world. I never thought babies were cute until Laina was born, now everthing she does is absolutely the most adorable thing I've ever seen.

5. Baby Acrobatics - Babies like to try to dive out of your hands. Maybe this is just Laina, but it seems like she knows when I've got her one-handed, because that's when she decides to pull a Greg Louganis. It completely freaks me out every time, but I guess it keeps me on my toes...

4. Emotional Rollercoasters - Emotions can turn on a dime. She can go from full-on baby smile to red-faced scream in nanoseconds... Usually its when you're trying to grab the camera - as evidenced by this photo:



3. The Sleep Conspiracy - Babies like to do all their sleeping when your out and about, and other people can see them. That way, it appears to the outside world that they just sleep all the time. I think this is a widespread baby conspiracy to convince would-be-parents that babies are "low maintenance", thus ensuring the continued production of their kind.

2. Boringness - Newborns don't really like to play much. All those toys you got at the baby shower don't really do anything for her until shes a couple months old. You can put on the best puppet show that ever was, and get nothing but a blank stare, or worse, one of those red-faced cries...

1. Onesie Aversion - Infants (or at least ours) don't like getting dressed, and you have to change them multiple times a day. My theory is this has to do with the similarity of the sensation of having a onesie pulled over one's head to the all-too recent and traumatic journey from womb to gloved hand...

So there you have it. Maybe that wasn't the "Top" 10, but more like "Ten Things I Could think of as I typed".

If you veterans have some more, feel free to post them in the comments section...

Ahoy, Scallywags!

We got outte thee harse far tha farst time without the wee wench yest-aarrrgh-day and saw "Pirates of Ye Carrrrghibean At Thee Waaarrrlds End"

I know it not be Talk Like a Pirate Day (That be the 19th of Septembarrrrgh), so I'll be talking proper-like farrrghh the rest of ye post.

It was a big moment for us... we actually both left the house without Laina, a friend from church offered to babysit, and we took her up on it. It went pretty well. About halfway through the movie I forgot about the Pearl and the pirate's code and starting wondering how Laina was doing and wondering how much longer the movie was going to be... I found out afterwards that Jenna was thinking that the whole time... (so she wins the parental paranoia award)

But we made it the whole time without checking in once... Big feat, even if the movie's been out for over a month, we were happy to go see it. That was actually only the second movie (not counting the one visit to the dollar theater when we first got here) we've seen since living in Colorado... and let me tell you, California folks, 5 BUCKS for a matinee! That's right. That may have been the best part. I figured movies would be up to like $15 by now...

Anyway, that's pretty much the whole story. I was going to write like a pirate the whole time, but, not only did I decide after the first couple sentences that its too hard, but it also would be really annoying to try to read...

Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho....