Monthly Archives: March 2011

2nd Birthday

Down

  • Last night I went to bed around 9:30 exhausted. A little after 10 I was awakened to the sound of Calvin screaming. I went to investigate and he was crying in the middle of his room. As soon as he saw me, he flung himself into my arms. I tried to calm him down but he was inconsolable. I sat in the rocking chair and held him. He’d put his head down for a couple of minutes and then cry out and change position. It seemed to me that he was hurting. I blame it on teething. I’m pretty sure he has another set of molars coming in. Anyway, I left him to go downstairs and retrieve some ibuprofen. I gave it to him but, sadly, it doesn’t work right away. So Calvin dozed fitfully for about 45 min until it started working and then slipped into a deeper sleep. I manage to transfer him back to his own bed around 11:30. Since I was already tired, losing more than an hour of sleep was not ideal.

Ups

  • Nana and Grandpa, Jaeger’s parents, visited arriving Thursday morning and just left this evening. Yesterday Nana, Calvin, and I went to the children’s museum in Denver. Calvin had a lot of fun. I think the highlight of the trip was a big fire truck that the kids could scramble up and down on. They also had little fireman hats and jackets for the kids to wear.

  • Calvin turned two today. We had some people over to church and had an Asian-themed meal featuring Jaeger’s Sushi. Then we had German Chocolate Cake with Coconut Sorbet for dessert.

Calvin Moment

  • In church today they sang happy birthday to Calvin. I had just finished playing offertory so Nana and Grandpa were watching him. He stood up on one of their knees and beamed graciously at the congregation the entire time they sang to him. I think he’ll make an excellent benevolent dictator.

Piano Playing

Down

  • It’s very hard for Jaeger and I to find a good equilibrium in caring for Calvin.

Ups

  • I’m starting to get adjusted to the time change.

  • Calvin did take a nap both yesterday and today though for a while I wasn’t sure he was going to.

  • Finished reading An Unlikely Countess, by Jo Beverly, yesterday and The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang, today. Very different books but both were good. I’m also currently listening to The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, by Wendy Mogel. I listened to it before I had Calvin but am re-listening to it now.

  • I’ve been exercising consistently for several months now.

  • Calvin’s birthday is this Saturday and he will be two. Jaeger’s mother (and possibly father) will be coming out. Jaeger is going to make Sushi for lunch and we’re going to having German Chocolate Cake for dessert. It’s a really strange combo but both should be good :-)

Calvin Moment

  • I got called Friday night and asked if I could play piano for Cradle Roll as a sub yesterday. I said that I could try but I wasn’t sure how Calvin would deal with it. To my surprise, it mostly worked. Calvin did spend one song wrapped around my middle as I tried to play over him. Also, for a couple of songs he was a little too enthusiastic and banged on the top keys as I was playing a couple of songs. However, I think the other parents were amused more than anything else. Every time Calvin managed to sneak in a banging session on the piano another kid would come over and try their luck. It’s very interesting trying to play music while intermittently reaching out and preventing other hands from helping.

Grandma’s Visit

Down

  • I hate spring time change. I’ve been getting 8 hours of sleep every night and am still exhausted.

Ups

  • I had a really bad day Wednesday but after Jaeger took Calvin for his night time routine I went to our local Borders. They have a Seattle’s Best Coffee Shop in there and it makes some of the best hot chocolate I’ve had at a coffee shop (which sadly wouldn’t take much). They top the hot chocolate with whipped cream, white chocolate shavings, and provide a chocolate stick to stir it all together.

  • Mom came to visit Calvin on Thursday. On Saturday night Mom and I went to a “girls night out” at a church member’s house and watched The Young Victoria. Sunday night, mom babysat Calvin while Jaeger and I went out to dinner and ate ice cream. Monday night we celebrated Calvin’s birthday (part 1) and ate Pineapple Upside Down Cake (there will be more cake on his real birthday).

  • I broke down and replaced my lost iPod Nano with a black 16GB 5th gen iPod Nano. Unlike my failed Sony Walkman experience, the iPod connected flawlessly to my Windows 7 computer.

Calvin Moment

  • Calvin has started to randomly repeat my phrases as I talk. I’ll be talking to myself or someone else and out of the blue he’ll say exactly what I just said. I guess it’s time to be extra careful about what I say in front of him.

Simplification

  • Haven’t done anything recently.

Mp3 Players

Several months ago Calvin lost my iPod Nano. I’m not sure how but it’s gone and he was the last person seen with it. I have a work iPhone that I’ve been using to listen to podcasts and library audio books. However, I really need to get my own. I’ve always been annoyed with how rigid Apple can be and as time goes by, I’ve been getting more and more annoyed. So, I decided to try replacing my iPod with something else. I mainly used my iPod for podcasts and audio books. The audio books are library subscriptions from Overdrive so they needed the ability to do WMA DRM. I don’t need a huge amount of space because I don’t keep the podcasts or audio books indefinitely so 4 -8 GB seemed like a reasonable choice. Plus, I prefer smaller players.

After researching a bit, I decided either the Sandisk Sansa Clip or the Sony Walkman would fulfill my needs. I was leaning toward the Sansa Clip but wanted to touch it in person so Jaeger, Calvin, and I took a field trip to Best Buy. In person, the Sansa Clip screen looked too small. So I instead started comparing the Sansa Fuze+ with the Sony Walkman. I was pretty sure the Sansa was Overdrive compatible but wasn’t as sure about the Sony player so I went with that.

I bought the Sansa Fuze+ but when I got it home, I saw that I had gotten the “+” version which had significantly worse reviews that just the plain Fuze. Most of the users seemed to complain about the touch interface which I had some concerns about in the store. I hadn’t opened the package yet so the user reviews convinced me to return it and get the Sony Walkman instead.

Well, the Sony Walkman was a disaster. In many ways, I like it. I think the interface is reasonable and Overdrive transfers audio books to it beautifully. However, even though it’s supposedly Windows 7 compatible, I couldn’t get it to work right on my computer. I spent at least 6 hours trying to get it to work correctly. The only way I could get it to work was by telling Windows it was a USB drive. This kind of worked but it was cludgy and the (minimal) software that came with it didn’t recognize it as a valid device. Windows Media Player did but I discovered, to my surprise, that WMP does not have podcast capabilities. Eventually, I got it mostly working using Winamp. However, then I realized that the Walkman didn’t have bookmarking capabilities. That is, if I paused an audio book to listen to a podcast and then went back to the audio book, it’d make me start at the very beginning of what is usually a 60-90 min segment and I’d have to painfully fast forward until I reached the spot where I left off. I spent 12 hrs (8 of them asleep) convincing myself that I could live with this. However, by mid-day today, I had regained my sanity. To my surprise, but delight, Best Buy took back the Sony Walkman and didn’t even charge me a restocking fee in spite of the package obviously being opened.

I’ve mostly resigned myself to getting another iPod Nano. I did look for other mp3 players that had bookmarking capabilities but the reviews were pretty lackluster. However, I’d really rather not get one of the new Nanos. My main complaints are 1) they’re too small and 2) I don’t like touch screens. My iPhone’s touchscreen I tolerate because work pays for it but it’s not my favorite way to interact with devices. So, I’m considering buying a used Nano instead. Still not sure . . .

On a completely different topic, I think I’ve run out of useful books to read about selling houses. (You may recall from previous posts that we’re seriously thinking of selling our house in a year to 18 months.) I’ve now read around 8 books on the subject and they’re starting to repeat each other so I’m going to quit for now and just read a refresher course when the time gets nearer. My favorite books on house selling that I’ve read are:

  • Seven Steps to Sold by Donna and Shannon Freeman – Nice general overview written in a friendly tone.

  • Home Staging that Works by Starr C. Osborne – Discusses all aspects of how to make your house look it’s best to buyers.

  • How to Sell a House Fast in a Slow Real Estate Market by William Bronchick – This book had more detailed steps than the Freeman book. It would probably be especially useful for “For Sale by Owner” info. He offers info such as it takes 100 people walking through your home to get 10 serious buyers to get 1 buyer in a position to make an offer (i.e. marketing is very important). He also provides tips for various aspects of marketing such as when taking pictures of the front of the house you want it to be at a 20 degree angle instead of straight-on.

Calvin Moment

  • Today when I took Calvin to the park another child was filling my hands with bark chips and telling me it was “banana pie.” Calvin overheard this and picked some of the chips from my hand and pretended to eat them. I think this is the first time I’ve seen such abstract pretending from him. Normally, he will use our cell phones and pretend to talk on the phone or pretend to be driving a truck. However, the prop always is intended to represent what he doing.