May 17, Part Jen

May 17
Today we continued our battle with the internet. The laptop was running slow, but at least it was working in Windows. Then the Unix fairies arrrived and now Windows no longer has internet access but Linux does. Hmmm, go figure. Now i can't update Quicken! And I'm walking on egg shells in Linux for fear of shutting down special services. And for the record, Windows boots a bazillion times faster than Linux. I knew we should have brought 2 laptops with us!

So if you missed me in my evening of IM glee the other night, you probably won't see me for another month on-line....or until Rob leaves and i can scrap Linux and use normal Windows again.

That also means NO MORE PHOTOS since they reside on the Windows partition. If this causes you concern, as it does me, please email mowgie@yahoo.com and request that the Windows partition have internet access restored. But I understand that mowgie has been emailing contraband photos, which explains the sudden drop off of blog comments and readers. At this point I think my Dad and Liz , and Chiplet are the only readers left.

Enough griping for a while.

The visit with junior went well. It was a littel drizzly so we were indoors again today. Today's music selection was Band Of Horses and The Eagles. Brenda, I must sadly report that junior became a bit rammy with the Eagles, but it may have also been caused by the proximity to his nap time; although I will say that Hotel California put him to sleep so there is still hope.

We had a bubbleicious day, ripping through the remaining 2 bottles of bubbles, bringing us up to a total of 3 bottles (the first being kicked over early in our visits). Then we spent an hour crawling around the floor at breakneck speeds, and I realized that my knees make a really neat crunching noise. Then junior decided to show how he can almost stand. He crawled up to the wall, stood up, then backed away from the wall. He got a little wobbly after about 10 to 15 seconds, and being the overprotective mommy I am, I sat behind him to cushion his tooshy when he plopped down.

He is also figuring out that when he crawls on carpet he gets very good traction. Then when he moved to the wood laminante floors and tries to crawl quickly, he just moves in places like Wille E Coyote. i think this amuses him more than frustrates him, as he looks down at his legs and watches then move.

Also in mid-play he had what sounded like the world's worst poopie. It was a weird gurgling sound of water runing through your internal organs. Rob said he smelled something wicked, but I could not smell a thing. Junior went on crawling and plopping down without being phased. We brought an extra diaper and were later brave enough to attempt our first diaper change, unassisted. When we checked his diaper about 30 minutes later, (we figured why check if he wasn't crying) he was clean as a whistle, no poopie or #1. We dodged a bullet there. He seems to show his sign of approval with us with making harmless bodily function noises that end up being nothing. That's our boy!


When we first arrived today, he was in the middle of his post lunch potty session. So of course we had to take a picture. There were 3 or 4 kids on potties but we were only looking for junior to snap a photo. He sat there very patiently and posed with a focused look on his face (perhaps a #2?), and his hands crossed over his privates. Now that I think of it, I have a similar photo of my nephew Bryan. For any of my college roommates that are reading, that was the only picture of my nephew I had hanging up at college. Sorry Bryan, but it was a funny picture that just may resurface at your wedding next January.

After our action packed visit, we had lunch at a cool looking place with no English menu. It looked Mexian, but was of some ethnic culture I have never heard of, could not pronounce and do not remember. I have become less picky about food, and when she described the 2nd thing, meat with some kind of vegetable, I jumped on that. Gone are the days where I read page after page of menu items and torment myself trying to pick one. If it doesn't have fish, liver or horse, I'll usually get that and stop asking what else is on the menu.

I spent the rest of the night watching Rob try to get the internet to work on Linux and reading the book Liz gave me the day before I left. I am about 1/3 of the way through, and have read more in the past 2 days than I have in about a year. In case you are wondering, it's called Northern Lights, by Nora Roberts. It has it's share of smut, but it's also a pretty interesting murder story in rural Alaska.

We have gotten more requests for names. We are keeping the real name under wraps until court at the tail end of this month, but we are still posting names of interest. My sister Kathy suggested Zero Mostel Taylor. Hmmm, nothing like setting high standards for a kid with a name like Zero. Although, if you are into School house Rock, Zero is My Hero. If you don't know what School House Rock is, then you're too young and need to visit the Smithsonian ASAP.