On our own…

Lincoln, Corgan and I had our first driving outing to take Grandma Homer to the airport Tuesday evening. We showed her the observation deck and Lincoln got to play with her one last time. He really cried when she got out of the car, but luckily I had thought ahead and given him a new toy drill to ease the pain. Whenever I put him to bed now he asks for “Papa” and when I tell him she had to go home, he says in a serious tone “airport.”

Speaking of outings, I packed up both kids and hit Target since we were out of milk for Lincoln. Whew… Corgan did great until the last couple minutes so I picked her up and held her while we checked out. Everyone we passed asked how old she was and after hearing her scream, one lady said “I’ve forgotten how cute that noise is.” Cute?!?! Hm…

Grampy Emerson stopped by our house on his drive from Florida to Maine to meet Corgan. He somehow possesses the magic touch because she slept the entire time he was here. This same thing happened when he first saw Lincoln, too. I’m thinking we should have Grampy up more often!

As for the day to day, we’re doing pretty well in our routine. Instead of Chris taking a regular paternity leave, I’ve asked him to stay home until Lincoln is allowed to be up around 6:30 or 7:00 (Lincoln tends to attempt a 5 am wake up). He gets Lincoln up and gets dressed for work. Then I run up to get changed. I get Lincoln’s breakfast started and we’re set for the day. I have to say, after 7 years of Chris getting to work by 5 am, it’s nice to get to see him for a few minutes in the morning.

Chris’ Note: In my defense, the only reason I haven’t taken a week or two off is because my job is so hectic right now - so I need to be there as much as possible. Also, while I’m obviously glad to help out in the mornings, can I just say that for the record that I REALLY do not like A.) dealing with all the cars and school bus traffic that are nowhere in sight during my usual 5AM work hour commute and B.) getting to work after the sun is up, and worst of all C.) having to look Lincoln in the eye and say bye every day! All that aside, special thanks to Holly for being understanding about my job/etc.

Lincoln and I play outside as early as we can to avoid the heat. After lunch, both kids take a nice long nap which means that I’m passed out on the couch right along with them. Chris usually shows up in the middle of my afternoon chaos – trying to get dinner started and Corgan fed and Lincoln asking to play outside. After a quick dinner, we wrestle Lincoln into the bath and his pjs, feed Corgan a million times, put Lincoln down for the night and do everything in our power to get Corgan to sleep. At that point, Chris earns his well-earned freedom to the joys of the third floor and I go to bed to get ready for our 12 am and 4 am feedings.

So we’re making it. We’ve got some work to do with Corgan in the evenings. She doesn’t seem to know what she wants and we just want her to pass out! Lincoln’s going to bed much better, and I’ve even been forcing him to deal with Chris being the one to put him down. On our calendar this upcoming week is Corgan’s 2 week check-up so come back to see how she’s doing!

Photos & Videos!

Chris’ Notes:  This week’s photo album is up - view it here (and once again no, it’s not in the new site/format yet - maybe next week).

I got a lot of video work done over past few days, so the videos for this week get their own post. One video is still being uploaded so I’ll update this post later when it’s ready. Click the thumbnail images to view each video!

(Mini) Video 1: Lincoln Air Guitar! (Running Time: 01:14)

Video 2: Lincoln’s Trip to the Zoo! (Running Time: 03:59)

Video 3: Last few weeks of Lincoln footage pre-Corgan! (Running Time: 12:51)

Video 4: Week of August 11th, 2008! Running Time: 05:51)

Week 1 Survived!

Well, we all survived Corgan’s first week! I’m not sure we would have survived w/out Holly’s mom here with us so another big thank you to her - THANKS! I hope she had a fun stay. I know Lincoln will be sad to see her go. The real test for Holly and I will be once she leaves later this week! Can we handle a 2yr old and a baby? I was able to work all last week since her mom was here so this week I don’t know what I should do. I’m needed more than ever at the office right now so I can’t take a full blown “maternity leave” but I obviously don’t want to leave her all by herself while she adjusts/etc. Comments/suggestions welcome!

This week in tech

In technology news, our camera (ol’ faithful “Canon Powershot S80″) finally kicked the bucket Saturday. The past *THREE* times we broke it was a fairly simple fix by sending it in to Customer Service but this time it seems to have multiple problems and all appear to be general wear and tear finally catching up. I suppose we had a good run with it - my last count had us at 8000+ photos with it - that’s a decent run aye? It was a good camera and served us well.

Anyhow, instead of spending the $ to have it fixed again we decided to get something new and slightly better. So, we got a Panasonic Lumix TZ5. For all you tech nerds, the summary on the TZ5 is that it’s a 9.1 megapixel camera with 10x optical zoom and it takes slightly better movies (up to 1280×720 @ 30fps) - plus it lets you specify 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio which is fun!

It’s pretty crazy how cheap cameras are these days - makes me think there is some magic camera technology coming out soon or something. And FWIW, yes I did contemplate finally biting the bullet and getting a camcorder that takes still photos (instead of a camera that takes movies) but the selection/quality just isn’t there yet (IMHO) so I’ll keep buying this kind of thing till that changes.

Homemade Knitted gifts for Corgan!

I’m sure we’ve received lots of gifts for Corgan - but usually by the time the gift senders are getting Holly’s thank you card in the mail I’m just finding out about who sent what when. This week however Corgan got a present from someone I know and it’s worth mentioning!
“Renata” (her main in-game name) is one of my guild mates in the World of Warcraft guild I’m a member of. When she’s not playing the game, writing in either of her two blogs (Musings of an undead podcasting knitter or Citizen Azeroth) or recording her popular podcast [World of Warcast] she enjoys knitting! Anyhow - she made time in her very busy schedule to knit Corgan a very cute pink sweater and a bunny doll! They are both very cool and I’m sure Corgan will like them both.  Click the thumbnail to see them up close! Chloe (our cat) was quite suspicious of the bunny doll - I bet because she smelled Renata’s cats on it!
Thank you Ren! She’ll be HORDE for sure now! >]

Photos & Video

Well, sadly the “new photo site” is STILL not ready. It hasn’t gone away, it’s just taking more and more “prep” work to get it setup. It will be worth it I promise! (Dear god I hope). I’ll explain everything when it’s finally ready but at this point I’ll stop talking about it! SO - like last week, this week’s photos are at the old photo site - click here to see them.

This week’s video is 5 minutes of footage from this past week! Enjoy!

By the way, I have to take a moment and say thanks to the VIMEO.COM site/service. I now have *28* videos hosted on their site now - probably adding up to (or nearly a GIGABYTE of data!! They have no banner ads, no nagging, they allow twice the video quality of YouTube and it’s all free! I have no idea how long it will last or stay the same but it sure is nice while it lasts! There’s no way I could have videos like this (at all let alone every week) w/out them! YouTube quality just isn’t worth it.

Holy cow I may get to be before midnight!
/rushing to bed

I thought it would be fun to whip up a quick baby photo comparison graphic of Lincoln and Corgan to note any similarities etc. So - here’s version 001 in the series! Click the imagefor the full size version.

(Something tells me this will be a fun thing to do over time too so stay tuned for future versions!)

 

What a Week(end)!

We’re finally back to the house and settled in now - of course we’ll be figuring things out as we go for a while. Lincoln’s initial reaction to Corgan was very positive but I’m sure it will go back and forth for a while as he adjusts. He did really good all things considered having never been away from Mommy for more than a few hours at a time.

Thank God Lincoln’s grandma is here to help - her cooking and baby support is a life saver. Also, thanks to everyone for all the congratulations, kind words and support. We’re very happy so many of you like her name! It was hard to keep a secret that’s for sure! We’ll keep you posted w/all the latest as usual. I’d write more but once again I find myself up at an ungodly hour managing our photos, videos etc so I have to stay brief!

Photos

I was really hoping to launch our all new photo site (thumb to right) this week but there’s still more work to be done, so all the photos are at the OLD (boo!) photo site for now. Hopefully I’ll get the new site done by the end of the week - but with a brand new baby in the house who knows what my chances are… I’ll try hard though.

Anyhow… This week’s photo album is ready for viewing - click here to see it now! There are a ton of photos in this album (including some of Lincoln at the pool!!!). BTW - Out of fairness to Corgan, I’ve renamed the photo folder “Lincoln” to “Family” - just FYI in case you get there and wonder where the “Lincoln” folder is.

Video

This week(end)’s video primarily only covers Corgan’s arrival so there will be additional footage from this past week showing up in a future video (i.e. Lincoln at the pool, etc). Enjoy!