Fussy T

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Before I write this post will preface it by saying that T has been a fantastic little person. She lets you know what you want to eat or needs to be changed. Otherwise she is not a very loud. This past week however she has decided not to nap a lot. For someone who’s not yet five weeks old that’s not a great idea since she should be sleeping 80% of the time. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with her getting more formula now than she did as recently as last week, worth it’s just a phase.

Were not sure why the sudden change. Her doctorate knowledges that between two and six or eight weeks babies just cry and are generally uncomfortable.  T doesn’t really cry for no reason but has been crying when she gets fussy and doesn’t want to sleep. It’s been hard on M since she bears the brunt of it while I go to work. The solution has been to put her in a wrap that you wear. It supposed to mimic the way or something where the baby is next to your body and you cover her up so it’s dark. It’s been working it’s uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. Your back starts to hurt and it gets very hot. On the plus side T generally fall asleep in 5 to 10 minutes in that getup. We are hoping she gets out of this phase soon, but we also know how lucky we have been because she’s been overall a fantastic little baby.

Moving Day (Again)

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Today is moving day at work. They are doing a very large reshuffle of all the desks on the floor I work on. The goal is to align all the teams to be sitting near each other. In theory this is great, and my wider team will be very close by. The problem for me if you consider the problem is the majority of my team is still not in that office. We thought we would get them moved during this shuffle but it doesn’t seem like that can happen. On the plus side I’m hoping my new desk is an upgrade to where I am now. It is definitely more space than I have now. I also get a window, but that may be a downside and not the positive I think. To put it in perspective I work in Times Square on seventh Avenue. The side of the building I am on looks out onto seventh Avenue, and all the flashing signs. The guy that currently sits there says it really is in a huge deal, but I will know Monday if I will be annoyed or happy by the move.

Since removing the entire floor got evicted at noon today so they can do the work. I’ll be working from home in the afternoon. This we the first time I’ve done that since the baby was born. I’m not sure how that will go over. MC did say she was going to be going to a mommy up with Teagan so they might not even be around.

Besides all of the move excitement today has been a typical day, with no major surprises. Knock on wood, since it’s Friday. Calm Fridays are always a plus.

Groundhog Day

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Having a baby is sort of like living the movie Groundhog Day, but doing it every 3 hours.  T has been fantastic, but after a few weeks of the grind of change, feed, try to get to sleep, sleep and repeat after 3 hours it does feel like deja vu. M agrees with that assessment and she is dealing with it 10x more than I am since I at least goto work 5 days a week and am only home for 2 cycles before i have to goto bed for wrok.

Thankfully we have been lucky that T hasn’t been too bad.  She has recently been fussy and not wanted to nap but she isn’t screaming all the time like horror stories we have heard so neither M or I am complaining.  Lets just hope she gets out of this phase and we are able to get her to sleep through the night consistently   She has been doing it every once in a while.  Tonight she slept for like 7 hours i think, but normally she does get up after 4 or 5 hours.  Lets hope for the same kind of luck again tonight!

Ordering an iPhone 5 Drama

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I think I’ve said this before, I’m a fan of Apple but I don’t just blindly buy their stuff. I’ve actually tried android phones for over two years or so and keep coming back to my iPhones. I mentioned that now because I’ve gone out immediately ordered every iPhone that’s been out. I’m not sure if the original counts in that statement since I returned it the next day. I’ve written about that in the past, that just goes to show me the product inferior even know it’s Apple product I’ll send it back. With the iPhone 5 it was the first device that I was not 100% sure I wanted it since the original.  I ordered one as a knee jerk reaction to the fact that there was one.  I did want the bigger screen and LTE but I really wasn’t sure it was enough to upgrade.

I went online at 6AM the day you could pre-order only to find that even though i was online 2 hours after you could start ordering my order wouldn’t show up for 2 weeks after the launch date.  I had second thoughts about my order after reading that even though the Verizon iPhone was LTE it would still not be able to do voice and data at the same time unless you are on wifi.  I was not pleased since that was one of the reasons i didn’t go with the CDMA Verizon iPhone. 4.  My initial reaction was that I wasn’t sure if i wanted this new phone with that limitation so I went and canceled my order.

I went back and forth on what I wanted for almost 2 weeks.  I know its just a phone but lets face it I use this thing all the time so making the right decision is important to me.  That and I like technology that works, and wont stand for using something every day that just doesn’t work right.  Note to self that means my microwave needs to go soon!  In the end I realized that I do want a bigger screen, and having a phone that be used with one hand is important especially with a new baby being held sometimes in the other hand.  The final straw was that yes voice and data wont work at the same time but at least i will get both voice and data to work period.  Lets face it AT&T just does not work at my office, and that is right in the middle of Times Square.  Everyone with Verizon doesn’t claim any issues.

So here I am ready to order my phone now.  Well Apple didn’t want my order.  For some reason by caneling my last order they didn’t like me anymore.  it had something to do with the credit authorization for a new verizon account.  Whatever the reason i wasn’t happy.  I ended up placing an order with Verizon directly.  I went with the black model, again.  I kept telling myself i wanted a white one but concerns over it getting dirty looking got me to go with black again.  The only issue was Verizon told me I wouldnt get my new phone until October 19th.  I was not pleased but at least i could use IOS 6 on my 4S in the interim   I was suprised to get a note in late Sept telling me that my order had shipped.  In the end I got my new phone from Verizon around the same time that Apple said I would have gotten my phone if I ordered it from them on the first day of pre-orders.  Go figure.  So after a bit of drama I now am sporting a new iPhone 5.  The best part is I can now make and receive calls at work.  Something I havent been able to do since 2009, but more on that in another post, maybe…

First Day Back at Work

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Knowing that I can only take a week or so off we wanted to make sure that MC had helped when I went back to work. Her parents were eager to come and spend time with us and the baby. We scheduled it so they would come Tuesday and settle in so I can go back to work on Wednesday. I was very grateful to know that they were both here to help out.

Because I stopped writing for a while after the baby came most of these posts are backdated. I don’t like doing that because I end up forgetting specifics of what I want talk about. My first day back at work is a perfect example of that. I want to write about it, but I really don’t remember much about it other than to say I don’t remember much about it. I know I was tired, I know everyone asked about the baby, and I know I shut off lots of pictures. I did have a lot of email to catch up on. It took me probably two or three days to get up to speed on where everything was with my ongoing projects.

T’s First Week

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Who would’ve thought having a baby takes up so much time. Okay, so you know I’m kidding about that. Even the 15 to 20 minutes I wanted to set aside to write out the window when T came home. I am posting this blog entry so my mind to be a little fuzzy about T’s first week.

Wednesday of this week was not much different than Monday and Tuesday. I got up I went to the hospital I saw the baby and M, I stayed all day and came home. The only differences by Wednesday I realized that taking the train was not fun in the morning. I decided the expense of the car service was worth it for my mental health, so I took car service to the hospital.

Thursday my dad picked me up and we went to the hospital to pick up M in the baby. I was happy to find out that the car seat and base that we bought did not take very long at all to set up in my dad’s car. I ended up leaving the base in the car since MC and I will use that car periodically anyway so it made sense to just have one there.

When we got the hospital M was feeding T. She went quickly to sleep, and other than some drama getting wheelchair to get out of the hospital the trip home was uneventful. Just the way we wanted it.

We had the postpartum doula that we hired come over Thursday afternoon after we got home. We were going to wait till Friday but we decided her over the day we came home. She was extremely helpful in getting the babies room finished and transitioning us into being at home with her. We had her back again on Monday.

Friday M had to make an unexpected trip to her doctor. That left me alone with T for the first time. Generally she behaved very well, but did not want to go to sleep. My dad came over to spend some time with me and T while M was out. He was also unsuccessful in getting her to sleep.

Saturday and Sunday are pretty much a blur and really not sure what happened to write about specifics. Monday we went to the pediatrician for the first time. T had gained 2 ounces since birth and was doing great. The doctor was pleased, so so were we.

I Have Been a Little Busy

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The past few days I’ve broken my own new rule about trying to write every day. I have a really good reason for doing. Sunday morning we had a baby. My wife started going into labor early Saturday morning. Made one trip to the hospital early Saturday morning that turned out to be false alarm, so they sent us home. Full on labor began in the early evening Saturday. We finally had the baby, T Emma at 7:15 AM Sunday morning.

I was able to get a little sleep in the late morning Sunday before going back to the hospital with M’s parents to see her and the baby. She was still out of it so we didn’t spend much time with her, but I did get to sit with T for a while before going home.

Monday was spent all day at the hospital with both of my girls!  T had to stay in the critical care nursery for two days because of a potential infection. She was a trooper, and slept through most of it. M was able to start nursing Monday morning, but the baby needed a bottlefeeding here and there. I was able to give her one of them.  M was sure to get several photos. I didn’t leave the hospital until after 10 PM to head home. In the morning I took the train to try to save money on car service, but at night I took a cab.

Today was pretty much a repeat of Monday. I got up to the train to the hospital, grabbing breakfast on the way. I stayed until around nine when I headed home. I can’t wait to have both M and T home on Thursday.

Dragon Dictate 3 Upgrade

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Since I like writing, but typing at the end of the day after working at a computer all day is not the most fun thing to do I have been using dictation to write. It has been fantastic.

The issue is since I upgraded to mountain lion my dictation software on the Mac has not been working. I’ve actually been using the dictation on my iPhone 4S. I think I’ve written about that before. It’s actually quite good, but nowhere near as good as using the computer. As if to prove a point, the WordPress app on my iPhone 4S just crashed for the second time in a day. I lost about two paragraphs of this post and had to write it over. That sort of thing doesn’t happen on the Mac.

Today, Nuance the makers of Dragon Dictate released an upgrade for Dragon Dictate for the Mac that works with Mountain lion. Because of the limitations of the iPhone dictation I am pleased to be able to upgrade. But I’m not pleased about is the rather expensive price of the $149 to be able to upgrade. I don’t typically buy software is expensive. The only other software that comes anywhere close to this price is Microsoft office. Even that I got a rather steep discount through work the last upgrade. I just hope the price was worth it.

I am downloading it now, and I hope to have it working tonight. I’m wondering if I need to train it again. This software I like the mobile phone versions of the software requires you to train the software by reading. It does not take very long, but it does require some minor concentration to read to a computer. I will give my opinion in a later post.

Due Date +2

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As of today the baby is now officially two days late. I know that first children tend to trend late, but it still doesn’t make it any easier that we are here waiting. I have to give credit to MC, she has been staying at work regular hours. She doesn’t have to, but I think she wants to get things squared away before she takes off.

Hosting Changes

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All my thinking about changing domain names led me to another bigger change. For the past few years I have been using wordpress.com to post my blog. Before that I mainly hosted on TypePad for years. in between I played around with movable type, and WordPress. In 2009 my started using WordPress.com it was free, and they offered services cheaper then TypePad if I wanted any. At the time I wasn’t walking a lot and the easy dollars or so year just for bloging seemed like a lot from TypePad. With my recent revival to writing I was making changes to my site. Unfortunately any real changes that I wanted to make on wordpress.com would require several add-on purchases. At that point I looked at the price of a true hosting provider. I signed up for one, only to cancel the trial account within an hour. I then continue to waffle and signed up for another hosting provider. The second provider bluehost.com hey pretty decent rate for a 2 year package. It was pretty simple to set up all my content on the new provider and add both my new domain name and my old one to point to that site.

For the most of the life of my blog I’ve been on TypePad, but I have over the years used several different hosting providers on and off. In recent years using Google apps and other web services for free or small fees having my own hosted account didn’t seem like it was worth it. By simply decreasing my Google apps for business mail quota I was able to go from the paid plan to the free plan. That cost savings alone offsets the price of the new hosting plan per year, so I figured why not give it a try. I like the additional flexibility I can have with my own website. I am already playing around with media wiki again, and some WordPress plug-ins that I could not get on the hosted account.

Having my own FTP account should also come in handy. I can remember at least two or three instances in the past several months that I’ve needed it, most recently two weeks ago.

Now I just have to see if I continue writing to make these changes worth it. I told MC yesterday I would love to be able to carve out 30 minutes night to just sit and write. I always found that pretty therapeutic to do that. It helped me unwind from the day. I just haven’t done it in years. Of course it’s my luck that I decide to really get into this again right before I have a baby. That means pretty much no free time at all. On the flip side it would be nice to have time to document what the baby does, and other milestones. I think years from now that would be nice to have. I always said I like to write for me.

I will see how it goes over the next few weeks.