Baby

Baby Tech

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I do not hide the fact that I am a tech person, or that I love gadgets.  If they have a usefull purpose and they are easy to use I am all for them.  Tech for me was always easy.  I found what I liked and just used it.  When we found out we were having a baby I knew there were some tech items we would need, but I didn’t realize how much stuff we would have that would help.

The first thing I thought of when I thought stuff we needed was a video camera.  My friend Jayson had one for his little ones and I thought it was the coolest thing to be able to see and even interact with them from your iPhone.  When the time came to look I narrowed my search down to the Withings Baby Monitor and the Dropcam.  Withings makes another device I have used and they seemed like their camera was pretty well built but it was $300.  The Dropcam was half the price but it wasn’t designed specifically as a baby camera.  We wanted 2 cameras anyway.  One for the play area the baby would eventually play in and for her crip.  I bought the cheaper camera first to try and if we didnt like it i would use it for the play area and then buy the other camera.  In the end I love the Dropcam and we will be buying another one.  As I write this post I have my Nexus 7 in a stand with the Dropcam app running on it.  I leave the Nexus 7 by the side of my bed with the camera app running at night.  MC switched from a blackberry to an Galaxy Nexus because Android devices could display the video.  She also leavs her phone proped up at the side of her bed with the video on.  When I am at work she props the phone up by the TV in our living room so she can see it on our couch.  I have been leaving the camera site up on my computer at work so I can easliy switch over to see if Teagan is napping.  We still use the audio monitor and leave the sound off since there is a few seconds delay.  We do realize that we may be quick to react sometimes because we see Teagan moving on the video but not making much noise.  We know now to stop and wait a bit before we go check on her but it is still a fantastic tool!

We also have the traditional baby monitor, but even thought it is a common house hold consumer electronic device it is still baby tech.  I got a model that was the best customer reviewed on Amazon and the same day we got it my friend Jenn sent us one from our gift registry.  Thanks Jenn, we use that thing all the time.  The battery lasts all day, and we only plug it in at night when we goto sleep.

The video camera and baby monitor were both items we knew we would be buying.  What I didn’t think we would ever need was a humidifier.  It is very low tech, but it is still tech.  We have steam heat and it gets pretty dry in the winter.  Teagan was very nasal sounding almost from right when we brought her home.  I have a video of her sounding like Darth Vadar.  The doctor recommended a humidifier.  Its a pain to clean often but it works.

Another item we didn’t think we would need was a temperature & humitity sensor.  When we realized it was dry we wanted to know how bad it was and when we should run the humidifier.  I bough a humidity sensor and MC put it in Teagan’s crib.  We put another one on my desk were my computer is since that is near were we will setup Teagan’s play area.  It tells us the humidity and temperature, and also says when humidity is high or low.  We are not sure how accurate the readings are but it has been good so far.  Consumer electronics have come a long way when a decent big LCD temperature sensor like what we got goes for less than $9.  I can just imagine how much something like that would cost 20 years ago.

The last major item that we use daily that you wouldn’t really consider tech.  My mom bought a Giraffe that plays music.  It also will play sounds simulating a human heart beat.  it is supposed to be soothing to the baby, and we find it great to use when putting her down for a nap.  Its a stuffed animal but it is a consumer electronic device with a mini music player inside and buttons up its back for the different options.  Not as high tech as the video camera but tech none the less, and we rely on it every time we put Teagan in her crip.

Other items we use are our phones to view the Dropcam, as well as my Nexus 7.  I am finding I use the Nexus 7 more at home as a clock and dropcam viewer than I do taking it to work.  That is due to other reasons i posted in late October, but because its around the house more I find myself using it for the baby more.  When we sit down to eat dinner or watch a movie we prop it up and use it to keep taps on Teagan.  When I feed Teagan in her room I will take it in and use it to play a sleep play list I made to calm her down.

It seems like a running theme for me in recent posts to point out that yes we dont need most of this tech, and things like the Dropcam weren’t really a viable option for kids as young as my 3 1/2 year old niece but they are pretty common today.  Need or not, they all make caring for our newborn significantly simpler than it would have been.  Raising a baby still isnt easy but it could be much much harder.  I look forward to talking about more tech I get to use with or for Teagan as she gets older.  I am personally waiting for the GPS tracker bracelet or neckless so i know when she is going or coming from school.  i know that is a way off but she is only 6 1/2 weeks old.  I have time.

The Long Road to Naming T…

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One of the hardest things about having a baby was picking the perfect name. For my wife and I picking a name was a multi-month process. Personally I thought it was amusing enough of the story to want to blog about it.  We didn’t really begin to discuss means that all until we knew we were having a girl. That wasn’t until late March. We both decided we didn’t want to know the sex of the baby. I always said it’s a surprise when you find out, see you don’t need to wait until the baby is born to be surprised. One of the added bonuses of knowing the sex is making it easier to pick a name. I cannot imagine going through that process having to have two choices, a boy and a girl name.

Once it was a girl who started out in earnest to come up with a list of names we like. That didn’t last very long when my wife was questioning my list. Instead of both of us coming up with a list of names we liked a friend or two of mine suggested that I simply retain veto power over names that MC comes up with and likes. I agreed to that and MC began collating a list of name she liked. To start with she had three general criteria she was looking for.  She wanted to find a name that wasn’t super popular, we generally traditional (aka not some oddball new name), and if possible be an Irish name. I did not mind popular names but if we found a non-popular name network I was cool with it. I agreed with her about not having some oddball name, so traditional was okay with me. I also thought it was a great idea to look for an Irish name especially since the baby would have a very Jewish last name. I thought it was a good idea to have the heritage of both parents represented in her name if possible.  What was funny to me about her initial list of names was the generally did meet her own criteria. Most of the names were very popular ones that were in the top 10 or top 25 popular lists of the past decade. I think we had three of the top five most popular names on our list at one point. All of them were at least classic names but most of them were not Irish in origin.

At this point I already dropped hints and suggested the top names I liked. My two favorites (Zoe & Teagan) were rejected. I had always liked the name Zoe. I think one of my father’s friends had a child that he named that I always thought it was an awesome name. It was always in the back of my head to the possibility if I ever had a girl.  Unfortunately Zoe was the name of one of MC’s college friends daughter, as well as being the middle name of my youngest niece.  Teagan is a name that I got from another Scott that I work with whose oldest daughter is named that. His wife is Irish so he named all of his kids very Irish names. I always liked the name and suggested it when the time came for us to pick girls names. MC rejected it out of hand. I think she just thought it was to non-standard or something like that.

Since my top two picks were discounted we went through the process of whittling down the list of names MC came up with. Over a month or so we were able to narrow down the list to three or four contenders. There were one or two that I really liked and wanted to use, and MC also agreed on those pics.  As we were narrowing it down MC decided to buy a huge book of baby names even know we’ve been looking extensively online. MC then proceeded to read every girl name out of the book. It took a while. I was surprised when nearing the end of the book MC asked me “How about the name Teagan?”.   My immediate reaction was “are you %^*$^ kidding me?” Her response to that was is that yes or no? I proceeded to remind her that I propose that name weeks before and was shot down immediately. At first she didn’t remember but then got a laugh out of it. I guess she just needed some time to become cool with it on her own. I wasn’t complaining. I totally discounted it and now through her own process of elimination had thought of using it herself.

Right around the time Teagan was back on the table of an option I was continuing to push to consider Zoe as a name. It was in that neither of us didn’t like it, that was far from it. We like it but others were using it. She spoke to her friend who has the little girl named Zoe and she was completely okay with us using if we wanted to. The only other stumbling block was that it was my niece’s middle name, but did not think that should be a factor in our decision since it was a middle name only. I brought it up to my sister and she wasn’t thrilled but was cool if we decided to use the name. She actually liked the name a lot (obviously since she used it as a middle name) and we’ve used it as a first name if she didn’t already have a son named Zachary. Side note I would’ve thought it would be awesome to have Zach and Zoe, but she didn’t think it would work with the oldest named Morgan. After that conversation Zoe we went back on the table as an option.

The next month or so we went back and forth between Teagan & Zoe. Pretty much the entire time I thought Zoe was the front-runner between the two. We asked friends and family who we trusted for their vote and it was basically split down the middle. I would champion one option than the other. And then for a while I just pushed for us to use Teagan. It was just different enough and it met all of MC’s requirements. I don’t know why it did that since I love both names. After realizing that it doesn’t matter between the two of them since I did like them both I stopped pushing one over the other thinking Zoe would win out. My wife surprised me after about a week of me being neutral on the situation saying she wanted to go with Teagan. That was pretty much it. We went through two or three weeks of we were pretty sure we really use that name but not definite, to this is what we are doing.

Being a tech junkie that I am I researched the name of bit more. We already knew of its Irish heritage and that it meant little poet. I looked deeper into his popularity and were surprised to find that over the past 10 years it had risen from somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 on the list of popular names in the US to be in the low 200s in popularity in the US in 2010. That is not by any means super popular but it showed a very positive trend. I also learned the reason it’s becoming more popular is because it’s an alternative to Meagan, and Reagan.

For full disclosure for all my sci-fi friends and I do acknowledge the fact that Teagan is a Doctor Who companion name. I rediscovered that when doing research on the name.  I had actually forgotten that. I was surprised since the fifth Doctor was one of my favorites.  I pointed it out to MC and she didn’t mind since it was a different spelling. It was Tegan, vs the Teagan we are using.  My friend Amanda pointed that out as we were pulling people for their opinions of names.   MC was more concerned about the fact that one of the only notable people with the name Teagan was some foreign porn star or something. What I realized later forgot to mention to Amanda was that neither of us remembered that so we happen to also be a doctor who companion name. The show was on the air for 50 years silver band overlap some names used.

For a middle name we wanted to see if we can use the middle name to name the baby after someone we loved who is no longer with us. We kicked around options using the K and the E as well as some of the more popular names from our final list.  The K would’ve been for MC’s friend Kim who died very young. That E was for my grandmother Ethel and MC’s brother Edward. We ended up picking Emma.

And that’s the story of how we named Teagan Emma. I have been surprised how many people who are very vocal about how much they love the name. I think the reason is the same reason why we love it. It has the right balance between being different enough in mainstream enough to be just cool. Hopefully Teagan thinks so when she gets older. The only other Teagan I know was her name, at least according to her father. Searches online have done similar feedback from people with the name.

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.

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.

The Due Date

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Today is not typically a day I like to think about. I try to go most of the day without hearing people referencing the date. Today also happens to be the projected due date for our baby. We’ve thought about this a lot, and ideally just want a happy and healthy baby. That being said I’ll be perfectly happy if she’s slightly late to avoid this birthday. that last statement is pretty moot at this point because it’s 6 o’clock and so far no labor signs. I don’t want to jinx myself, but it’s already pretty late in the day and labor takes a while.

Now we wait. If the baby doesn’t come on her own I believe they will induce next Tuesday. Let’s hope she decides to show up sometime soon, there are plenty of people that want to meet her.

With today being 9/11 and the due date I really can’t remember much else from work today. I am usually pretty good about remembering high points, but not today.

Monday August 27

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I am working towards a deadline for a big project at work. Were not late yet, but I have concerns about making our date. I generally am very sensitive to this sort of stuff but there is still a lot of work to be done, not a lot of time to do it, and I may have to run out any time have a baby. That last part about having to leave in a moments notice is probably what’s causing me to be the most concerned. Generally this kind of hectic work pace happens towards a deadline but as I said it is a little different this time because MC is due in two weeks.

Most of my day today involved making sure things were on track for the project that is due, and generally ensuring that we haven’t missed anything. The other half of the day was making sure everybody on the team knew what their priorities were.

I left work a little after 5 PM because MC and I have an appointment after work interviewing a perspective postpartum Doula.

Work Around The Apartment

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This morning we both were able to sleep in a little. We are living that up while we can before the baby gets here. Once I was up and dressed i headed out to run an errand and then grab some bagels for breakfast.

In the afternoon I hung curtain hangers in the babies room. I’m not normally a fan of doing that sort of work, since it’s pretty exacting and I like to do things right and I am not that precise with things like drilling holes into walls with my vision all. I totally messed up one of the brackets for one of the curtains but in the end you really can’t tell the difference so MC was pleased with the results, and if she is pleased with her vision I am happy. The short curtains, I’m not sure what they’re called look really good in the room. Overall the room is turned out pretty awesome.

After curtain hanging we did some laundry and then I got MC set up so she can work on the wedding photo albums for our parents. The mockup she has for my parents right now looks really good, she’s just touching it up and I think we will put an order in.

My sister and my nieces and nephew came over to see the babies room and grab some dinner. They are spending a couple of days at my parents before school starts so they swung by here on the way. We ate at bear burger. It was really good and I’m just glad to spend some time with the kids and my sister before the baby comes.

All of them, including Alexis, especially Alexis, is very excited for the baby to arrive. Alexis keeps asking about baby peanut, the name my mom uses for the baby until she officially has a name. Morgan worked on some babes and onesies decorations since she didn’t go to the shower. They were very cute. Alexis got to review and approve some of the baby books she donated to us when she was checking out the babies room. When I mean donated to us, I mean she said she wanted to give these books to the baby and gave them to my sister. It was hysterical when she did it.

All in all relatively productive weekend. It was good to see both sets of parents and my sister especially since it will get hectic pretty soon.

Day & Evening With Different Parents

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Last night we got a call from MC’s parents asking if we were free for lunch today. They were visiting two of MC’s nephews and on the way back wanted to see us and check out the finished babies room. We had no plans so we looked forward to the visit.

They arrived around 11 and got to see all the work we have done on the apt. We then showed them the finished Wedding Album and then we walked to a greek place on Austin St for brunch. We had a good meal and then we all came back to the apt and went over the wedding photos in more details so we could put together an album for them.

In the evening my parents came over to drop off an air mattress we need for when guests visit. The one we have wasn’t so great. After that they took us out for dinner at a pizza place they like. After dinner we went to Italian ices and then headed back to our apartment. Since we worked on the photo album for my parents we realized we could add more photos to the album than we originally anticipated. we went through the list of photos again and had them add other shots they really wanted.

To show both sets of parents the photos, I used my MacBook air to send my screen to my Apple TV so they were able to sit on the couch and watch the photo stream while I made edits at their request. It was pretty cool. I just had iPhoto in full-screen mode and it was pretty seamless.

MC and I will work on the layout for both albums for our parents in the next week or so.

Baby Furniture Delivered

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MC stayed home today to receive the baby furniture we ordered from Bellini. I came home and it was pretty nicely setup. Very exciting. all we need now is a baby. of course we need to finish putting together the room.