December 29, 2005

You’re right. No pix since 6 months is pretty lame. I suck. So, here’s some from Christmas!

	Hayes with his new favorite present: a ipodesque fake mp3 player that plays kids songs recorded under water! Or, at least, they sound like they were.
	Hayes “opening” his first present ever. Ok. More confused than opening.
	Running with scissors! Cups, I mean.
	A book about pooh
	Remeber those poppers? Well, they still make ‘em, and aunt Heather got him one. He thinks it’s about as funny as old Steve Martin albums. Dunno why.
	The moose is loose!

December 28, 2005

Christmas has come and gone. It was fun fun fun. And long long long. I now feel for my parents who had to drag three of us ages 3 (barely), 1(almost 2) and 6 months around for a Christmas. Man, that had to hurt. Not that I thought Christmas sucked — to the contrary — I just now realize how difficult it is with a young one.

That said. Hayes made out like a bandit with tons of new clothes and toys to monopolize the limitted space in our apartment. That house can’t come soon enough. And speaking of houses… we had a home inspection yesterday and things went pretty well. We need to have the sellers make a some fizes before we sign on the dotted line, but we’re very optimistic that this is The House. I’ll have more details on it as they are warrented.

December 22, 2005

Well, we’re quickly approaching a year and things are happening at a rapid pace… both in HBombs development and his life (read: our life) in general.

No new milestones in this month to speak of, though he definitely is “talking” much more and has added new constanants to his repetoir. He almost sounds like he’s talking in another language. He clearly thinks he’s talking and that we should understand what he’s saying, cuz when we don’t he points at the object with an open palm and whines until we either get it for him, or move it out of his site. I think it’s only a matter of time before the latter tact results in a hissy fit — but it works for now, so, as they say, no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Speaking of gifts (man, that was a sparkling transition if I ever had one. My 9th grade English teacher would be proud — if only she could overlook my spelling), Christmas is right around the corner… 3 days away. And although it’s a safe bet Hayes will be getting tons of toys and clothes, he won’t be getting any from us. We’ve decided that between the two families of ours, H will get more than enough things… and since the concept of Christmas (the gift giving, not the religious) is out of his grasp, he’ll have no idea we didn’t give him anything… or, for that matter, that anyone has gotten him anything. Instead, we’ll suplement after Christmas if’n he needs something new. That being said, I did pick up some “They Might Be Giant” CD’s for him… you know, the kids ones.

Well, that’s about it. We may have a big announcement in the near future. No, it’s not a another kid… keep wishing mom.

Merry Christmas everyone! (and I mean that in the most non-religious way possible.)

December 20, 2005

CNN.com: Judge rules against ‘intelligent design’ in science class

December 13, 2005

Tough morning so far — for me, anyway. So far the following things have happened to me since midnight (I think)

• The cat broke into the room sometime after midnight and jumped up on my face scaring the shit out of me/waking me up
• The cat broke into the room again and woke me up at 6:30 on the day I can sleep until 7
• I somehow managed to stain my pants multiple times before leaving the house
• I switched cars with Jen for the day (I got the new one, she the old) and it took me two trips to the apartment to get everything I needed to get things moved from one car to the other, adding 10 stupid minutes to my commute — keep in mind, the cars are not parked close to each other or our apartment, for that matter (though they were closer than they normally are, which I will grudgingly admit, was good)
• I fell on ice on the way to the car
• I thought I left my glasses in the house that I need to drive, so I went in to find them, for a third trip to the apartment
• While up in the apartment, I realized that I had forgotten to take my left-over lunch, which I thought Jen had left out for me so that I wouldn’t forget it. Turns out it was the soup that she is defrosting for dinner tonight, which is currently sitting on my desk here at work
• After looking for a couple minutes, I remembered that I had been wearing my glasses when I fell, so went back out to the car and found them on the sidewalk
• Got to work, and the elevator was waiting… so I thought to myself, this can’t be good. I was right. The doors almost closed, someone hit the up button, the doors reopened and that someone got in. This repeated itself again, but with no one getting in the second time

Ok, ok. So I’m really bitchy. I think it’s because I didn’t drink any coffee this morning until now and feel… well, really out of it. Hopefully things will get better as the day progresses. At least Hayes slept until 6 this morning…

December 12, 2005

Don’t get me wrong, which will be easy to do should you continue reading, but the couple above us are about the nicest people in the world. They also happen to be among the most unintentionally loud people in the world, which would be comical if their schedule was not diametrically opposed to Hayes’.

Oh, and did I mention they are right over our bedrooms?

We used to love the layout of the apartment. It’s in two browstones that house 5 units. 4 of the units are two level and one spans both browstones. That one is ours and, over time, we’ve realized it about the worst set up possible because we have 4 different neighbors. One neighbor lives above our bedroom, one below, one lives above our living space, one below. Anything a neighbor does effects us, and recently they’ve been doing a lot.

Take our friends upstairs, whom, as I said, we think are great, very noisy guys. They do their laundry at 5 AM. 5 AM. Once it was 3AM. And their washer and dryer are directly above us. So guess what? When their spin cycle goes we hear it. And, more importantly, H hears it… and he’s not big into sleeping through such intrusions.

Oh, but that doesn’t happen that often. Only about once a week. Their dogs racing around their apartment at 5AM happens about every fucking day. Yah, I said fucking. And guess what? That wakes H up too. And he aint happy. Funny thing is — and by funny I mean about as funny as the bird flu — the dogs have ESP for H’s sleeping schedule. H goes to sleep, they start racing around.

This is how it sounds to us as we sit peacefully enjoying the quite of H sleeping:

No sound.

Earthquake as dogs — and these dogs have a combined weight of about 20lbs — run above.

H screams after being asleep for a full 5 minutes.

Lovely.

See, when I was working at home, and while Jen was pregnant, they decided to replace the carpeting in their bedroom with hardwood. Which, you know, made it about ten times louder for us. Then they bought dogs. The small kind that like to run.

But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is… wait for it… they own another place right down the street. They bought it two months ago. Their place has been on the market for over three months in which they’ve decided to stay, for some unkown reason, until it sells. So far they’ve reduced the price over 140k and no takers.

Yup, folks, the bubble has burst right over our heads. So, here’s the short and skinny: the thing that we’re hoping helps us buy a better house for our money so we can get the hell out of this noisy place is also making our stay in our apartment a nightmare. If that’s not irony for you, I don’t know what is.