October 31, 2005

The time change sucks. You heard me say it. Yup, for all those of you out there with a little one who has no idea what a time change is or, for that matter, needs a little lesson about time in general (not to mention relativety and.. well, I guess physics in general), you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Hayes got up at 5 this morning. Last week if he got up then it was six. Six is a good time. Five is not. Five sucks like the time change.

He did this despite us keeping him up to the unhead of time of 7:30 (well, 6:30 after all this daylight savings nonsense) to make sure he’d get the picture and sleep a bit more. Didn’t happen.

Funny thing is, before HBomb showed up, this time change was that awesome once-a-year extra hour of sleep. You could get up what felt like an hour late and still get to work on time! Now, with child, I get to get up an hour earlier than last week?!? Man, this time change sucks.

October 28, 2005

We had HBombs 9month appointment yesterday and it confirmed one thing we all knew and disproved a few things I thought I knew.
1. I’ve been saying Hayes is 25-26 pounds if anyone asks. Apparently I’m an idiot. He’s actually a shade under 23. This puts him in the 75th percentile
2. Hayes is 29.5 inches tall. Puts him at 75th percentile.
3. Statisticians be damned, you can actually be above the 100th percentile. Hayes is.

We found this out when they measured Hayes’ head. We knew it was big… but not over 100th percentile big. It’s HUGE. He’s head heavy. Man, it’s funny. Fortunately we think that makes him cute. Unfortunately, it makes other people (still) think he looks like the flippin Quizno’s baby.

I don’t really think Judit, our pediatrician, wanted to tell us how big his head actually was. She went throught the little graphs, one at a time, telling us the percentiles until she got to the head one. Instead she just said “Holy F’n shit, he’s got a huge head.” Minus the swearing and well… she actually said something more along the line of, “Yes, he’s got a large head.”

I asked, “Around 100th percentile?”

She shyly looked at the ground, obscured her mouth and replied in almost a whisper, ” Over 100th percentile.”

Like I said, didn’t know you could be over. Yup, HBomb continues to amaze us. He’s already breaking the rules, and he doesn’t even know there are any. To top it off, he’s teaching us stuff. Who knew having kids could be so educational!

October 26, 2005

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted — I’ve actually missed HBomb’s 9 month post. Not to worry, there’s nothing wrong here, we’ve just been swept up in house hunting stuff. We made an offer, had an inspection and ran screaming. Yup, the amount we can pay for a house doesn’t go too far these days. Even when you’re looking 45 miles from Boston. Worst housing market ever.

And BTW, anyone read the housing info porn in Wired this month? Where it said the average price of a house these days is $138,601 for a 3BR 2BA 2,330 sq. ft. home? Yup, you can’t find that ANYWHERE in New England. NO WHERE. Anyone else want to kick me in the balls where we’re at it?

But back to H, ‘cause, after all, that’s what this is all about. He’s doing great! He’s having tons of fun tearing around the house and grabbing anything not on a nano scale to stick in his mouth (this includes dirt I can barely see and crumbs I didn’t notice until he was chewing on them). His newest acheivement is standing on this own.

It’s both scary and funny to watch. He pulls himself up on something, lets go, teeters for a few seconds and falls. For him it’s all a mind game. I know this because he stands just fine — straight up and down and sturdy — until he realizes he’s standing, then the balance thing gets to him and on his butt he goes. Standing for him is kinda like that cartoon cliche where the coyote ends up stopping in mid air about three feet off the side of the cliff. You know, then he looks down, realizes he’s in mid air, holds up a sign and falls. That’s standing for Hayes. Except he can’t write or spell, so there’s no sign. There’s just falling.

We figure he’s going to be an early walker. He’s already let go of a chair once and taken a step, only to land on his head. Yup, totally mobile kid is in the works. Just in time for Haloween. We’re scared.

October 20, 2005

This is totally off topic.

I hate Budweiser, or any AB product for that matter. I’ve made no secret of that. And I don’t want it held against me when I say AB is either the stupidest company in the history of companies or the biggest liar ever. If I were to pick one, I’d go for the latter.

Take a gander at this story on Boston.com today: “Anheuser-Busch pulls ‘water’ drinking game”

Ok. Do I really need to spell this out? How dumb can they possibly be?

Let’s see if I can get this straight: They develop a promotion called “bud pong” and have it played by trying to bounce a ping-pong ball into the glass full of liquid owned by their opponent. If one accomplishes said feat, the opponent must drink the liquid in said glass.

This is a Bud promotion, right? So what would Bud want you to put in the glass? Well, they’re explicit about that. Water, that’s what. Water. For a beer promotion. For a beer promotion based entirely on a game that, before branded as “Bud Pong”, was called BEER PONG and was a well known DRINKING GAME to anyone who went to college (or for that matter High School) between, say, 1995 to present. There’s even a Nation Beer Pong League.

So, somehow AB thought people would play this with WATER? Why not milk? Or OJ? Or coke? Hell, maybe Hayes and I should start playing it with his Alimentum.

Idiots.

Meanwhile the FCC is cracking down on swearing on the radio and tv. Gee, that might hurt our… uhm… sensibilities?

AB, on the other hand, will likely come through this unscathed. I mean, they had no idea that anyone would ever play the game with beer in the glass instead of water?! The directions of game explicitly state to play it with water, so why would anyone disregard the instructions? Until now, no one has ever not listened to instructions!

Everyone involved in this promotion should be fired. Fired. That’s how strongly I feel about it. I LOVE beer. Love it. Just don’t loosely veil a promotion based on a well known binge drinking game but change the liquid from beer to water and then act dismayed when people play it how it has always been played.

The bottom line is always AB’s bottom line: How do they sell more beer. I know how the beer industry thinks, I worked in marketing for a well known beer company for three years. It’s all about getting people to drink more beer. So, when your new promotion is to steal the rules from a beer drinking game, but play it with water, what are they trying to do? We all know the answer to that. The better question is: did anyone actually EVER play it with water?

There should be consequences for this type of blatant lying and/or stupidity. AB, do you get me? Government, are you listening? When people drink too much, people die. No one could ever say that about swearing.

October 18, 2005

There’s nothing like getting a wrong-number call at 2:30 in the morning to ruin your sleep. Throw that in with trying to negotiate a deal for a house with a certifiably crazy home-owner. Then toss in Hayes waking up for absolutely no reason what-so-ever and bawling until Jen went in. 3 Times. So, basically from 2:30 on I got 2 hours of sleep. And that was only because I have a wonderful wife who took pitty on her poor sleep deprived complaining wimp of a husband and let him sleep from 6-8am.

Worse still, this is the second night I have gotten no sleep. Though, admittedly, the Sunday night was entirely my fault. I just got into that thinking about everything mode and then had a dream about our cat and a carp fighting on the carpet with the carp ultimately killing the cat. Disturbing.

Better luck tonight? Let’s hope so.

October 12, 2005

With fall upon us, I thought it was time for another review of a very fall-like product. So, here it is: Macy’s (and by Macy’s I mean only available at Macy’s) new Baby Greendog collection of clothes for the under 1 year crowd. Yup, it’s what Hayes is wearing to the left. You can read all about it on their website here.

All you really need to know from their website, though, is that the clothes are super soft, mix and match and blah da blah. All good marketing jargon that usually falls well short of the truth. In this case however, if anything, it doesn’t give the clothes enough credit. These are by far the nicest, highest quality clothes Hayes has. Period.

Keep in mind we live in an area proliferated by high-end baby boutiques that sell baby shoes that cost more than our Subaru. In other words, I’ve had ample chance to see super expensive clothing, and it ain’t as nice. It just isn’t. Those expensive boutiques seem to only offer the wear it once to make baby look cute but, don’t you dare wash it kind. On the other hand, we’ve washed this outfit and, suprisingly, it still looks as good as new.

So here’s the short and skinny of it: if you need something to “dress up” the baby, but that can also be worn day-to-day without running the risk of ruining it, the Baby Greendog line fits the bill. Sure, it’s a bit more expensive than a trip to TJ Max, but, in this case, you get what you pay for.