Archive for June, 2010
Getting a little twitchy
Jun 25th
I think I heard on the radio yesterday that we have had a total of 5 days in June without measurable precipitation. That is sad. It also has been making it hard to get our walking in. The past few days we haven’t been able to go. The first day we got a few blocks away and it started raining so we turned around; then the last few days there have been severe weather alerts that have made us afraid to get stuck out somewhere when it starts hailing. It hasn’t hailed yet, but it has rained pretty heavy every day. Like I said; not conducive to walking. So that sucks.
Work is stressful. Summer is traditionally our busiest time of year. Usually we try to get ahead in the spring so that we don’t fall behind during the summer. This spring I was out on maternity leave, a coworker severly broke her ankle, causing her to be out for a month, and another coworker got pretty severly sick, so she was out for 2 weeks. Combined with your normal vacations and such, that means that this summer has been pretty hecktic. And then you can add in that we switched our customer management system, which left us with a month of “down time” and has been a headache and a half trying to get it up and running properly, and now we switched some other computer stuff that caused another few days of down time…well, I’m sure you can see where this is going. We are swamped and behind (although not as bad as we could be) and everyone is stressed trying to figure out all the details of our new system. So yah…a little twitchy. Theoretically it should be getting better soon, but they’ve been saying that since before I went on leave, so we’ll see what happens.
In non-twitchy news, James and I are going to a 1 year birthday tomorrow, and I am so excited. Several friends that I haven’t seen since before James was born will be there, one of whom has a new baby. There will be babies everywhere! Or not. But kind of. hehehe. Anyway, I will try to get a picture of all the kids together and permission to post it on the interwebs. That’s a lot to remember, though, so no promises. Ryan jokingly suggested that we hire a personal assistant for me because I have completely lost my mind. It’s so true. I can’t remember anything. I’ve been assured that this comes and goes, so there might be a time later when I can remember what happened yesterday and whether or not I’ve eaten or taken a shower today. Amazing how you just take that kind of thing for granted; knowing whether or not you’ve showered.
And on that note, I will get back to work.
Fog, fog, go away!
Jun 16th
Duluth has officially had no days that are “mostly sunny” since May. It is now halfway through June. This is unacceptable. However, this weekend is supposed to be warm and at least partly sunny. Heating up just in time for Grandma’s Marathon. Of course. hahaha. Those poor marathon runners.
My sister and 3 of her children are coming to visit us this weekend. They are camping just outside of Duluth (which is good, because inside Duluth is going to be CRAZY). I’m so excited to see them. We plan on checking out the Children’s Museum and the Depot, and going on a scenic train ride. I think they’ll love it. I haven’t seen them in ages, and they haven’t met James, so it should be a great weekend. Photos will follow, I’m sure.
Other than that, there’s not much going on. We are keeping busy with James. He gets more and more animated and funny. He’s really getting the grabbing stuff skills down; he can even reach for specific parts of something hanging in front of him and usually get it. He smiles a lot, and charms people wherever we go. He still spits up quite a bit, but we are used to it and know to expect it (although he does still get each of us good at least once a week when we aren’t prepared). He likes to suck on his fingers, although sometimes when he’s tired he’ll suck on his thumb. It is cute. He’s also been chewing on anything he can get his hands on.
Ryan and I have a goal of walking 52.4 miles before July 6th. So far we’ve gone 21 miles. We have a little bit of catching up to do, since it’s been raining so much. Yesterday we took off on a walk because we knew we needed to get one in. It had been foggy and sprinkling off and on all day, but it didn’t really look any worse than it had, so we just went. And then it rained the whole 3.5 miles back to the house. Whoops. Here we are after getting back:
A bit blurry, but you get the picture.
James stayed nice and dry in his carseat/stroller combo. We opened it up once we got in the house (just brought the whole thing in with us) and he was looking around like “What the heck is going on!?” It was funny. We actually enjoyed being out in the rain. It was relatively warm, and we knew we were going back to a warm, dry house. And leftover chili. That always helps. Yum.
Anyway, time to get back to work. Have you taken a walk in the rain lately? I would highly recommend it.
It’s June! And my baby is 3 1/2 months old already!
Jun 3rd
When did all that happen? Yikes!
He’s so cute. Have I mentioned that? And he’s pretty much the best baby ever. My sister and her fiance were in town last weekend, and he had never been to Duluth before, so we were tourists all weekend. We toured Glensheen (the historic & haunted mansion!); we walked down by the canal and the lake, and went for dinner in Canal Park; we drove up Seven Bridges Road (and Bill got carsick. Whoops!); we toured the William A Irvin ore boat, and a friend took us out on his boat on Lake Superior; and we ate at Betty’s Pies on the North Shore. We took James with us for all of this, and he didn’t make a peep of complaint.
I was telling my sister that our lives would be very different if we had a baby with a different temperament. James is so easy-going. We take him everywhere with us, and as long as he is fed and changed he doesn’t care. He takes it all in. I can only imagine how hard it is for parents of other kids. And we are definitely spoiled and will probably have a rude awakening when we have another child who is not so even-keeled. But for now we are enjoying our happy baby, and our freedom. Although he did put a bit of cramp in our style, since we couldn’t take him to our favorite bar in Wisconsin (the Anchor). We draw the line at a bar; especially one where they still allow smoking (only until July 1!). ;-)
It is Ryan and my 2nd anniversary next Monday, and so we are both taking the day off work. His parents are coming up Sunday and we will probably go up the shore and do some light hiking on Monday. A fitting thing, since we spent our honeymoon up the shore hiking. I hope the weather cooperates.
In completely different news, I recently deleted everything in my Google Reader. It was constantly at 1000+ items unread, and it was stressing me out. Instead, I marked them all as read and am manually going back to the blogs that I want to catch up on and reading back. And of course trying to keep up with the new stuff in my reader. I may have to remove a couple things from it. Lifehacker, I love you, but your 20 updates every 2 days is killing me!
Anyway, that’s where life is at right now. Busy, especially gearing up for summer, but a lot of fun with this adorable baby around. Hopefully it stays that way!
