Merland: 2006

Getting Ready to Crawl for 2007

Happy New Year to Everyone!

Sonja is gearing up for some crawling for 2007. She has the position down - next step, movement.

Of course we are far from ready for a mobile baby. House is not baby proofed, as our friends with slightly older children can attest to.

So next mission, hide poison, make electricity less accessible and foam proof sharp and pointy corners.

God help us all...

She is also finally getting over RSV (short for really sucky virus) which had mom and dad sleeping in the rocking chair holding Sonja for about a week.

Aerophobia Haiku

Misty miasma
A tainted wind fills my lungs
Aerophobia

The Family (Mom's Side)

Yes there are 32 of us on my mom's side. This is about half the size of my dad's side so it is the gathering I always call casual. Two of the people in this picture were not even there when the photo was taken...yet through the magic of photoshop they appear. Extra credit to anyone who guess who they are.

Oh yeah, to see the large version of the photo just click on it.

Yes it's 110 photos

Click the image to view the mother load.

Sonja Christmas 2006

Christmas and the Eternal (Internal) Cheese Log

Christmas was an overwhelming success (emphasis on overwhelming).

We started with a Christmas eve eve hor's douvers at Aunt Sherry's. It was very nice to have Sonja get to see everyone. Jenn and I both managed to eat our fill of pigs in a blanket, pigs in a blanket with cheese, pesto cheese melt things, summer sausage, crackers and cheese. Noticing a cheese theme here. We washed it all down with some sparkling beverage vs. the hot wassail (because I don't trust anything with a name like wassail ). We managed to vacate the premises by 8:00 and were home in time for Sonja to go to bed at 8:30 and for me to make my second batch of Special K bars for the Christmas Eve celebration the next afternoon.

Christmas Eve was spent at Pat and Doug's home. Everyone was there minus David and Steph (but we understand the lure of Missouri and how it's hard to leave). Sonja hung in there really well despite the massive amount of baby oggling and hugging that took place. Mike and Dana made a persuasive pitch for another visit to Utah (which we are mulling over) and Bryan and I had a brief tech talk interlude with Shawn. Ole, Erik and Johnny kept the cat entertained in the basement.

Christmas day was a bit of a blur for me. The previous night Sonja was getting up every other hour screaming at the top of her lungs. No, she wasn't trying to scare off Santa and his reindeer, rather, she had decided that she would catch a cold for Christmas and become her own mucus factory. So lots of boogers equal lots of congestion and coughing which equals mommy and daddy having to rock her back to sleep over and over because the vertical position drains all the slime out of her head vs the horizontal positioning of her crib.

We started Christmas off by heading over the Pat and Doug's for a light breakfast and a heap of presents for Sonja (Thank you very much Kirsten and Jim for being so generous!) We next headed over to my Grandmother house for celebration with my mom's side of the family. More food and more presents. Lots of fun though as Sonja got to stare at Alex, Brin and Ryan (the other baby/kids of the house). I can tell that she can't wait to get up and running so she can chase all her little friends around. I beat my dad in a 2 out of 3 game of ping-pong which always makes me feel good. I then proceeded to nearly burn the house down by trying to remove a dent from a ping-pong ball with a lighter, this was an e-wiki how-to I thought I would try (warning ping-pong balls are highly flammable). The evening ended with nice conversation and a tired drive back home.

Merry Christmas Everyone and a happy new year!

Christmas Eve Eve

I realize I haven't been all that verbose as of late. The holidays were a hectic time before Sonja and now that she is here it's...well it's a handful.

Thing are good though and we are in the process of trying to push her daily 4:30am wake up time back to 5:30am... this will involve much crying and screaming but we are growing used to it.

I have a great blog idea I want to write about but I just haven't had the time yet. Until I get the time please enjoy the pictures from a Christmas Eve Eve function we recently attended.

Christmas Eve Eve

Sitting Sonja

Sonja December 21

Islamophobia Haiku

Your God's not my God.
Religious intolerance.
Islamophobic

Acrophobia Haiku

Climbing a ladder

Makes me want to weep and wail
Acrophobia

Sonja's first Christmas!

Christmas 2006

2 and a half minutes of laughter

Yes, you need to have the sound on to enjoy this one:

My Mortal Enemy, James Dyson

James Dyson. My mortal enemy. My wife has a crush on you. She finds you and your ingenious vacuum irresistible. Couple that with your carefree jeans and British accent and I don't stand a chance.

It happened out of the blue one night. She leans over to me and says, "I think that Dyson vacuum cleaner guy is sexy!" Your commercial was not on. We weren't in the process of vacuuming (and, no, I don't own one of your diabolically inventive machines.)

I admit it. I wanted one of your over priced rug-suckers, but now... NEVER! I will pick the dust mites out of my carpet with tweezers and a magnifying glass before I succumb to your seductive sucking machine.

Sexy... You? There are so many better, sexier men for her to like:
Mel Gibson? No wait he has that whole anti-semitic thing.
Tom Cruise? Nope crazy as a loon.
Harrison Ford? lackluster student.
Leonardo DiCaprio? Titanic.
Johnny Depp? Lives in France and owns own island (show off!)
George Clooney? ...... yes, George Clooney, you and your ER, Caesar hairstyle, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, funny, million dollar smile - you're perfect! Why can't my wife have a crush on you? For millions of healthy red-blooded American women you are the shizzle. The dreamy-creamy-ooey-gooey-marshmallowy center of hunkdom.

But no. James Dynson, vacuum man, you are my mortal enemy. It's so hard to hate you and your humble sucking machine, but I must steel my resolve against you. Against you and your steely hair, your less than perfect nose, I will not rest until... until... ok, I WILL rest in about an hour because it's getting late and really who can hate a vacuum cleaner inventor? But just be warned vacuum man, if I am not sleeping, I will be on the look out for you. Keep your innovative hands away from my wife!

Being a grownup is hard... but it has its rewards

Just sitting with my daughter tonight I found joy. Joy in her smile. Joy in the way she curled up next to me on the floor. Joy in her eyes. I feel really lucky this Christmas.

Blanket Brush and a Skateboard

Acousticophobia Haiku

Too many sounds. I
Have acousticophobia
Where are my ear plugs?

Sonja in the Exersaucer and Christmas Tree Practice photo

I have my final paper due tomorrow so no time to wast blogging away. Just a few photos...

Exersaucer and Christmas Tree Practice

Achluophobia Haiku

When the sun goes down

My mind is filled with shadows
Achluophobic

Acerophobia Haiku

Lemons, limes, young grapes.

How I hate to salivate
Acerophobic

Acarophobia Haiku

Skin irritation

Just the thought makes me bristle
Acarophobic

or

Oh small winged insect
Your blood feast makes my skin burn
Acarophobic

Ablutophobia Haiku

It's my grease and grime

The water strips me of me
Ablutophobic

Laughing and sleeping

Laughing and Sleeping

Doing the jumpy thing

I have a technology problem

I have a technology problem. Unlike many I don't have a problem with technology, I have a technology problem. The problem is that when I become stressed or overburdened I tend to mitigate this stress through the purchase of some fun techy gadget.

For example, my current Communications Technology class is about a 4 on the ol' stress-o-meter. This equates to my purchasing various X-box games as well as a new 250 GB USB hard drive for my home PC. The birth of my first child, although beautiful and wonderful, was a stressful event in that I had no idea what to expect. This was about a 7 on the stress-o-meter, resulting in the purchase of a new 42" HD television and an X-box 360 game systems.

I like playing with technology, I like figuring it out, evaluating it, seeing if it can help me get more out of life, work, play whatever... What I don't like is this compulsion I feel when I become stressed that somehow spending money will magically make my stress disappear.

Perhaps it's a hangover from the dot com heydays of the late 90's. Technology was going to solve all our problems. I remember one story on the radio about how the internet was going to bring about a society without money. We would all share knowledge and goods and services just to better ourselves as a species... I still cling to part of this dream (probably because it seems that I am personally headed for a reality without money - due to the aforementioned technology problem) - it's a dream I don't want to let die.

Long live the tech revolution!

Happy Birthday Jenn

We celebrated Jenn's birthday with my family yesterday... about 2 months late... but it was very nice... lots of food and drink and a nice warm fire.

Jump Around and Polka Dots

Sonja in the bunny suit

It's been a good day today. We've toured office buildings around town... this morning we went to grandma Wendy's work and said hello and then for lunch we went and saw Mommy! It was pretty much awesome!

Sonja Collage

A blatant rip-off of what Rob did with his blog www.snowless.com

But the song is pretty and good for pictures.

Enjoy!

Dork is back on the running trail... for now

I am happy to report that ever since the 5 k run on Thanksgiving day I have managed to keep up an every other day 3 mile run routine. The hard part will be in 2 weeks when I don't feel like running, but for now it's nice to be back outside and have 30 minutes of exercise to clear my head.

Sadly, the above photo is of me and yes, I know I am a dork.

Screw Patience I want it Now

Sitting here with my eye twitching for the last 2 weeks is starting to get to me. I am irritable and feeling less patient all the time... throw into the mix a lack of sleep, the end of the semester busy work at school, and a work situation that I won't go into because there aren't enough symbols on top of the keyboard to express how I @#$$%@~! feel.

Needless to say I am at my wits end.

Usually in a situation like this I respond by making a rash technology purchase and I really have been wanting a new PC lately but it's just not in the cards for now.

So, in the meantime, I think we are going to purchase about the least techy thing I can imagine... a toilet.

I very much doubt that this will flush away my stress... although our current toilet is both causing my eye to twitch and my feet to get wet (yick!)

The with purchasing a new toilet is that we live in an older house so we need a 10" rough-in to fit the hole - most toilets currently come as 12" rough-in standard... so my non-custom order options are few.

Has anyone heard of the Niagara Flapperless toilet? Right now it's about our only candidate... and I would really like to hear some feed back as to how it rides...

Patience is a virtue

So I couldn't take it. I have reset the blog to only display the last 3 days of postings. Having it all displayed at once was cool but took forever to load.

I did receive one nice offer to take the blog to Chuck E. Cheese for it's birthday.

Sounds like fun.

Happy Birthday mplsmerland

Okay, it's not quite my blog's one year anniversary but it's coming up in exactly one month. So to drive all of my readers crazy - I am setting it up to show all of my posts over the last year (I will do this until December 27)! So yes, this page will take longer than usual to load (go get a cup of coffee), but once it loads it should load faster the next time... if you can't stand it post a comment and let me know and I will revert back to displaying one-week's worth of posts at a time.

Happy birthday mplsmerland!

A very weird post

For those of you who have known me for sometime you will know I have a vast collection of CDs from The Residents. I became infatuated with the band as a sophomore in High School. The other world feel of their music still takes me away. Not to say it takes me anywhere I'd like to go but it takes me away that is for sure... I am mostly a fan of their music from 1971 - 1990 but they live on today and continue to scare children well into the future. A nice site on the band exist here One. A nice biography of what they are or aren't all about is here Wikipedia.

I have to put this picture here becuase I thought the lyrics to Santa Dog went as follows... Santa's dog at Jesus' feet... but I am wrong... (I like my lyrics better...like I said they are a bit twisted). So the picture only fits with my lyrics so do with that what you will...

Here are the lyrics taken from the One site mentioned above... the by line is a mystery to me as most things Residents are.

Fire
by Ivory & The Braineaters

Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus
Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus
Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus
Has no presents,
Has no presence
In the future...
...In the future
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness severed sleeves
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bong, Bong, Bong, Snowness severed sleeves
A fleeting and a greeting scene of effervescent eves
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bong, Bong, Bong, Effervescent eves
Greeting and a meeting team of hoarse and frosty words
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bong, Bong, Bong, Hoarse and frosty words
A greeting and a cheating team and other noxious herbs
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bong, Bong, Bong, Other noxious herbs
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves
Santa Dog
Has no presents
Has no presence
In the Future!

Grandpa and the Animal Farm

Sonja was so lucky she got to see great-grandpa Bob this weekend. Plus she got to animal wrestle!

bunny, grandpa, bear and cow

It's how early in the morning?

Sonja was up at 3 A.M. this morning and wasn't too keen on falling back to sleep.

She was however very good and wailing at the top of her lungs for 20 minutes.

Perhaps this is why I did what I did with the hair and the beer once we got up for good around 7 A.M.

Hairdo and Beer

Thanksgiving good, black Friday bad

Thanksgiving went great. I began the day with the 5k Turkey Trot with a group of friends then we all met at Starbucks afterwards for some coffee and thankful friend time. Next it was off to my grandmothers for feast #1 and then finally off to my mother-in-laws for the final feast of the evening. Sonja held up remarkable well.

Black Friday, however has not gone quite as smoothly. I did my part for capitalism and awoke at 6am to purchase a gift (online from best buy) can't say what it was as the recipient of said item is one of the 12 readers of this blog (now actually more like 13 readers as I discovered my cousin Dylan has a blog and we traded URLs).

Next we headed out to my eye appt where I have slighlty worse vision than before but will be getting some new frames as reward for failing my vision test.

The rest of the day has been spent trying to get Sonja to take a nap (without much luck).

Must go now as it is time for food and crying.

Thanksgiving 2006

Nostalogy

So I made up a word for this post... Nostalgic for Technology - Nostalogy. This is what I am. I find that I often think back to technology of old with fleeting whimsy. I miss rotary dial phones, phones with cords, no cell phones. I miss low resolution graphics. I miss getting my computer programming magazine when I was 13 and being all excited about retyping in the hundred's of line of basic code into the school computer so I could create a very basic text game or hear the computer speaker beep out the first few bars of Beethoven's 5th.

I miss computer camp and turning on my Apple IIe all the while making sure the boot up disk was in the drive. I miss having to have a boot up disk in the drive in order to start a computer. I miss 5 1/4" floppy disks heck I miss disks in general, most PCs now don't include one.

I miss the days when computers were seen as a fringe phenomenon of ultra-geeks.

...sigh

Atomosophobia Haiku

A blinding white flash
Atomosophobia
All things turned to ash

Sitophobia Haiku - For Dr. Eric

I don't fear all food

Lasagna, the one I fear
Sitophobia

Don't let the cuteness fool you

They make them so cute so you don't 'accidentally' forget them at the bus stop.

Perhaps I am speaking out of bitterness right now but Sonja managed to keep mom and dad awake from about midnight until 7am... and then we got about 2 hours of sleep.

A quick trip to the Dr. office (again - we just went in on Friday because we thought she might have RSV or the croup which are going around at daycare, but nope just a little cold) because when we called to explain our night from hell the Dr. asked if she wailed when we tried to lay her down. Jenn was very excited by this question because yes, in fact that was exactly what was happening.

The Dr. said that it sounds like a likely ear infection so bring her in. This phone diagnosis made us very excited perhaps there was a reason for this mega-crabitude and more importantly if there was a cause surely there is a cure (medicine!). But all for naught, after a hurried 30 mile drive to the clinic we were told she was the picture of health and that was that.

Mom and Dad are feeling dejected right now and plan to drown our sorrows in donuts and frozen pizza.

Pictures can be misleading:

Don't let my cuteness fool you

Our home

A peek inside our home.

She's like a food monster

Sonja November 16, 2006

Sonja's first performance

To explain this 3 minute video clip I should probably say that Sonja's daycare classroom is called the ducklings so the song that they "performed", and I use this term loosely, was Rubber Ducky. I imagine I will be attending quite a few of these event in my future and I am really looking forward to it. It may sound weird but I was proud of Sonja for sitting there and basically chewing on her maraca for 3 minutes. It takes talent to chew on something for that long without loosing interest, and in front of an audience no less!

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia Haiku

A hippopoto-
monstrosesquippedalio-
phobic, likes small words

Mondo Sonja

178 photos of Sonja... Really who needs to look at that many photos... but here they are anywho.

Mondo Sonja

Oatmeal

New food for this week - oatmeal!

Not only is oatmeal tasty, it's fun to wear!

Give me that spoon!

Gears of War

I am what some call a gamer. I love games of all varieties - card, board, mind - but my favorite games are video games.

It started with the Atari system in the early 80's. I have been hooked ever since. I have wasted untold hours staring at a T.V. trying to kill bad guys, collecting coins, solving problems, racing cars etc...

I am now in my mid-thirties and feel that perhaps I am too old for video games.

The thing is that the games keep getting cooler. I just bought the new game, Gears of War, for my Xbox 360 this past week and I made a startling discovery. I am the target market for many of these video games.

This insight into my position as a primary target of the video game industry oddly came as I was playing through the Gears of War game. The game is rated M (mature). It contains some pretty graphic violence and (a first for me) some pretty graphic language.

I oddly appreciated the use of this coarser language. It fit with the overall theme of the game, a dark sci-fi kill the aliens thing, and the mature language fit with the action on the screen.

When you're about to be blown to smithereens by a 10-foot tall drooling alien the last thing you would likely say is oh golly, or help, or ahhhhh... more than likely a steady stream of foul language would spew forth.

Marketing by vulgarity and violence - a sad statement on the current state of the world - but one I appreciate nonetheless.

The meaning of pure joy

I think Jenn and I discovered where pure joy comes from last night. It lies in the uncontrollable giggles of a 5 month old baby.

We had just put Sonja down in her crib for the night and were about to start singing her the nightly cannon of lullabies when I bent over to kiss Sonja's tummy. She giggled and giggled. So of course we kept doing that until all of us could laugh no longer.

It will be the thought that gets me through this week. Work remains stressful and school is moving towards it's semester's end crescendo of loads of group work and reading.

The weather has been cooperating with my mood. Today it is cold about 32°F snow/sleet and the air is permeated by a grey colorless cloud of haze. Ahh Mondays