Lunch With My Mom & Sister

by

Today was my mom’s birthday.  When talking to my sister last night she mentioned that she was going into the city with my mom for a show and they were going to grab lunch.  I pointed out sarcastically that I work in Times Square and I also have been known to eat lunch.  She didn’t know why she didn’t think of asking me but we made plans to get lunch.

We met up at an italian restaurant around the corner from my office.  That was coincidental since my mom got a recommendation from a friend to go there.  We had a nice lunch.  I had Veal Parm.  It was good to see both of them especially since I wasn’t going to see my mom for dinner on her birthday.

The Containment System is in Place

by

MC & I have procrastinated long enough.  We spent months pondering what baby gate system we should get.  In our defence we had issues with the length of the opening of the play area by the living room.  We wanted a friction mount system but nothing would work with a friction mount at that size.  We also didn’t want to drill a hole into the molding around the opening we were going to use.  We ended up having to buy a system that we drill into the wall but also figured out a way to not touch the molding.  Once we figured that out we bought a system but then found excuse after excuse not to set it up for 2 weeks.  Finally we found time to do it today.  The bigger gate took a while to get right, but the smaller one we use to block off the kitchen was thankfully a friction mount and it only took like 10 minutes to setup.

Teagan was babbling and crawling through the kitchen and turned the corner and saw the gate for the first time and just stopped talking and stopped moving to stare at it.  When we are with her we leave the doors open so she can crawl out and explore with us in toe.  She crawled into the living room and then started playing with the door.  I think she will be locking us out very soon.  At least we can contain her in her play area when we want to.  Well that is until she learns to climb over the gates.  She has already figured out that the bars are great for helping her stand up.

A New Media Center Unit

by

Today I put together furniture for the media center.  When we found out we were haivng a baby we knew that part of baby proofing would require us to replace my old media center.  What I had was open and had glass shelves.  We bought a new unit with drawers.  I was able to put the power strips and everything inside the unit so only a few wires go out of it into the outlets.  We can also get baby proofing stuff to lock the doors on the front of it.

We hoped to have this built sooner but when we got it the base piece was broken.  Crate and Barrel was really cool and sent us the replacement part with little hassle.  We spent most of Teagan’s nap assembling it.  MC then played with Teagan as I moved all our electronic gear to the new enclosure.  I am very pleased with the results!

Now all I need to do is finally order my new TV so I can get it mounted on the wall above this unit.

T Standing on Her Own

by

Sometime in the past week or so T started pulling herself up to a standing position.  She would try before and we would help her do it but within the past week she has been doing it much more frequently and totally by herself.  it is pretty cool to see her mastering a new skill.

She is also able to sit back down with some difficulty but she can do it.  M saw on a parents news group people saying their babies had trouble doing that for a while so at least we hopefully dont have to keep going into her crib to sit her down once she figures out how to do that in there.  Please no one tell T that she can do that.  She hasn’t figured out she can stand up in her crib yet.

She has been teething a lot recently.  Drool is everywhere but at lest she has 4 teeth showing now.  Two on top and two on bottom.  If I didnt see them I would hear her grinding them all the time.  Apparently that is her latest play time activity.  It sounds like it would hurt a lot but my dad said it doesn’t and she is testing out her new weapons.

Sushi Tasting Menu

by

Tonight MC and I finally used a Travelzoo discount MC got me for Fathers Day.  It was something like 75% off a 6 course tasting menu at a very well reviewed sushi restaurant.  I didn’t know until last night it was in the Katano Hotel were Joe & Karen got married.  We scheduled for our baby sitter to stay late with Teagan and we went out to dinner.

The location in relation to our offices wasn’t optimal since there was no direct subway so we ended up walking in 90+ degree heat to the place.  The exercise was great but the heat was brutal.

I didn’t realize it was a tasting menu when we I got the present.  Generally I am wary of them because i am picky.  This time it was generally good.  There was something for me to eat in every course.  I was even a bit adventurous and tried some new stuff.  I am not a fan of eggplant.  The food was very good.  I was just still hungry after the meal before desert.  I ended up ordering 3 pieces of ale cart sushi.  I even splurged on a $13 piece of fatty tuna.  It was well worth it.  Very tasty.  The entire meal was very tasty.  I am not sure if we would do it again especially since the full price meal would have been a huge bill, but we were both glad we did it.

Out of Town Guests

by

Friday MC’s sister in law Cathy came to visit.  She hasn’t seen Teagan since before she was 6 months.  She lives far enough away that trips are difficult.  We meet her in Bryant park and then took the subway home.  MC and Cathy went to dinner and I put Teagan to bed.  After they got back from dinner we hung out and talked a bit.

This morning we were all tired because Teagan was up for over an hour at around 1AM or so crying.  She is typically a great sleeper and a great baby but we think she was teething.  She kept us all up.  Once we were up we all went for breakfast.  The french cafe place we wanted to goto was busy so we ended up at an irish place that does breakfast/brunch.  MC and I have walked past it before but never tried it.  I had an omelette.  It was good.  We all shared scones.  They were ok, but the ones at the farmers market i typically get on Sunday’s are much better.  Teagan was great at breakfast and sat in her stroller almost the hole time.  After breakfast we walked Cathy to the subway and said our goodbyes.  I grabbed a Cappuccino at Starbucks (one ding against the breakfast place was they only did regular coffee).  From there we ran one or two errands and then went home and feed Teagan lunch.

In the afternoon we ran out again to goto the grocery store.  MC wanted to look for fresh food to use to prepare meals for Teagan.  We ended up opting not to get anything and will use Fresh direct since it looks like they had better stuff.  On the way home I ran over to the Liquor store and got some Pimms.  I wanted to get some for a while since I really liked the taste when I had some in the UK last year.  Thankfully the store by our apartment had some and we just bought the rest of the ingredients and the grocery store.  I made one to have at dinner and it was very tasty.

We made fish and potatoes for dinner.  I tried tuna instead of the usual sword fish i like.  I was not as big of a fan with the tuna.  I will go back to sword fish next time.

 

Baby Proofing

by

Baby proofing tonight or attempting to. We need an extra extension on the baby gate so we are not going to get those up today. The edge cover for the coffee table we got is horrible so we need to find an alternative because my glass coffee table is awesome looking but a huge hazard for Teagan. What we have now is good for a few days but we need to replace it.

My 2nd Attempt at an iMovie Did Include Babies and Animals

by

After our trip to Jayson & Gretchen’s we had a ton of video of Teagan.  I wanted to share it with our family but some of it was long clips with not much action and then we had several clips that were very short.  Lauren’s awesome job of putting together my dad’s 70th birthday video got me to finally try iMovie a week or so ago.  It went so well that I wanted to take the footage we had of Teagan with Jayson’s dog and clip it together.  By doing that I learned that 1, it is pretty fun and cool to do.  2, its a huge time sink.  Thankfully it was only 3 minutes of video i created in the end but i can see even slightly more elaborate videos sucking up my time.  I already want to go back and make a montage video of Teagan’s first year, but I just dont have the time to do that right now.

Maybe i didnt try the software enough but I don’t remember iMovie being that easy a few years ago.  I know Final Cut Express was not very easy and after trying both of them I gave up on video editing for a while.  I am glad I gave it another try.  These video’s wont be my last that I work on!

Long Commute Home

by

Sat on the subway for an hour getting home tonight. Only saw Teagan for 5 minutes or O before I had to feed her and put her to bed:(. She was tired though and went right down after I put her in her crib