Calling to make an appointment for Nathan to see the orthopedist:
"The hospital has recently upgraded its computer system, so you may experience longer than usual waits. We thank you for your patience."
Happiness is coming home, starting to do the dishes, realizing that the kitchen sink is clogged, so clogged that Drano won’t even dent it, then washing your son’s bottles in a bucket in the sink, a bucket that you then have to carry into the bathroom to empty out.
Wait, that’s not it. Happiness is something else.
Before we got married, I explained to Meredith that while I might be many things, I was not a plumber. An degree in Electrical Engineering had, if nothing else, taught me that water is bad (m’kay?), and while I would work on A/V pipes for years to come, water pipes were an entirely different beast.
Over the years, I’ve bent slightly, being willing to dry basic things to unclog drains (Drano, pulling everything under the sink apart, plunging), but anything that’s stuck behind where the pipes vanish into the walls is clearly beyond my ability.
Bah.
Meredith and I saw Serenity last night (thanks to meriko coming over and babysitting). It was great! If you’ve seen Firefly, you definitely need to see this. If not, go watch Firefly, then go see Serenity.
Before the movie, we saw the trailer for the upcoming Disney version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I had forgotten the part in that book where an army of Uruk-hai fought for the White Witch. I guess they took a wrong turn between Isengard and Helm’s Deep somehow. Maybe they stepped through Saruman’s wardrobe instead of marching out the front gate. Stupid Uruk-hai.
Life has been crazy busy lately, which partially explains why I haven’t posted anything here in forever.
Nathan turned 10 months old last Monday, and had his 10–month checkup with the orthopedist to look at his club feet. We knew it was going to be good news when the doctor looked at Nathan’s feet, then checked with us on which foot or feet it was. Both his feet are doing great, and we’re continuing to use the brace every night. We bought a new pair (his fourth) of orthopedic shoes for him the same day, since he had outgrown his old pair. I’m very grateful for the fact that as Nathan has gotten older, he doesn’t tend to kick his shoes off nearly as much anymore. Not having that battle every night is a welcome change.
He’s suddenly grown a lot more hair. It’s amazing how different that makes him look. He’s creeping along furniture all the time now, able to walk along the edges of anything as long as he can hold on. He can now walk along our cabinets, too, no longer needing to push down on something to remain stable, but just needing some place to put his hand. It won’t be long before he’s walking.
This weekend, Nathan has decided that it’s fun to explore the inside of my mouth. Almost every time I picked him up, he would turn towards me and start trying to jam a hand or two into my mouth. He seems very curious about the whole thing, although he usually starts laughing when I start to eat his fingers. Yum yum.
Nathan is developing two strong traits right now: his will, and separation anxiety. How lucky for us that they are going hand in hand.
He now thinks that the ideal amount of time to be apart from us – and by ‘apart’, I mean ‘not in a parent’s arms’ – is somewhere between 0 and 3.7 seconds. And the 3.7 seconds is only OK if he is clutching to a parent’s leg at the time. We may request an exemption for meal time (putting him in a high chair), and, if he is feeling magnanimous, he may permit this.
Coupled with his growing sense of exactly what he wants, and a growing surety that what he wants is Right and Just, we are starting to get a vivid image of what the toddler ages might be like.
A few years ago, Sony released a version of DRM that could be blocked by use of a magic marker.
It seems that they’ve now gone to the other extreme. New Sony CDs install hidden software onto your machine to protect their content. If you try to delete the code, it disables your CD drive. Mark Russinovich writes about his experience finding this and the pain of removing it from his PC.
The music industry really is just completely out of control.