Happy Birthday Callaway!

Callaway celebrated his second birthday this past Saturday. I am so thankful that he has started to calm down finally. He still has to constantly be in our presence and when we are up and walking around he only feels safe if his nose is touching our legs. At least he doesn't constantly jump up and down (which he still does, just not constantly).

I have decided that if we ever get another dog in my lifetime, it will not be a puppy. I am happy that we got to have Callaway as a little guy and that he got to grow up with us, but house training is a bitch. Although, Travis would argue that we would be able to train a new dog and teach him tricks more easily if we got him as a puppy. UGH. That is something we will deal with when the time comes.

Our carpet is still covered in spots where Callaway peed as a puppy. We've done as much as we can to clean it, but it will be here until we are able to replace the carpet (hope to do that right before we sell the house). Nowadays I just have to deal with a dog that loves me so much that he won't let me pet him. Not because he backs away, but because he has to lick my hand the second it comes within a foot of him. I'm going to have to go ahead and point out that this is Travis' dog, despite the fact that I spend more time with him than Travis does (because of all the hours he works).

Anyhoo, Travis and I brought Callaway back a treat for his birthday. Travis wanted to document the occasion, so here you are:

Callaway's 2nd Birthday from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo.

Introducing Lil Wodie's Blog!

I finally broke down and started a baby blog for Lil Wodie. I was having trouble trying to pick one out because most of them have cheesy backgrounds that I'm not very fond of. This one was the best I could find. For free anyway.

I know I talk a lot about baby stuff and pregnancy on here, and I'm not going to stop. But maybe having this other website will help me cut back on the amount of it. That way there is a sort of filter on this blog, for those non-baby-eccentric folks out there.

Baby Ward

Avoiding the topic

I am having an angry morning. For no good reason other than I have pregnancy hormones surging through my body. I think these hormones are comparable to alcohol in that when there is too much of it in your body, your inhibitions are diminished. I say things or get angry at times when I know it is unreasonable, but I gripe at Travis about it anyway. I mean literally, as I am speaking the words, I know it is not sane thinking. But it feels like the only way to ease my pain is to let it out.

This morning I did a pretty good job of not letting it all out on Travis, but it left me feeling mad and irritated. Traffic on the way into work just exacerbated the issue. In fear of passing on this pointless anger, I'm going to stick to a few strange things I've come across in my recent web surfing.

Cow struck by lightning ... and lives

Etch A Sketch art

Free online PMS reminder (for husbands or boyfriends who fear that time of month)

World Series of Beer Pong

Streaming Webcam

My dad and I figured out our webcams last night. It took us probably 20 minutes to run my dad through everything he needed to do to turn on the webcam capabilities on his computer. The night before we downloaded the program. Since Travis was working on repairing our Internet, we were unable to test it then.

I think that may have been a good thing because it can be EXTREMELY frustrating sometimes when I explain computer stuff to my dad. He has lots of patience. It's me that wants to tear my hair out when I have to describe to him, over the phone (remember: he's in Illinois, I'm in Texas), how to toggle between open windows. I have to go through every single little step required to do something. I've been trying to convince him to take a Microsoft Office class at the local college so he will at least have that basic knowledge. Still trying though.

Anyhoo, after we finally got our webcams synced, I realized that my microphone had stopped working. I was unable to figure out what the problem was, so we settled for speaker phone for last night. I went through and showed him what Travis has been doing in the nursery (which he finished last night, by the way - photos soon), all the baby clothes and book, and all the new stuff we've done to the house since he last visited. It was cool that I could just walk around with my laptop to show him these things.

THEN, we started photo sharing! Wow. It is amazing what you can do online. I wish I had started doing this earlier. With both of my parents. And my friends in Illinois. It would still be nice to get this running with all of them, but it probably won't happen. Lives are busy (Chrissie just had a baby, mom just moved to a new home) and stuff like setting up webcams can be a daunting task for some people. Although I do have to say that it was much easier than I was prepared for. If my brother hadn't fallen asleep at 7:45 last night, I would have had him set everything up for old daddio.

Ah, photo sharing! That was so neat. I just uploaded photos directly into the instant messaging screen. I showed my dad current photos of the belly and all the ultrasounds. Plus I threw in a few of stuff I've done with Ariel recently and a few of the animals (my current babies).

This whole online camera thing is going to be so great once the baby comes. I am a little upset that my parents and brother won't get to be as large a part of Lil' Wodie's life as I want them to be. This will open up all new doors. I can show them the baby, live. Then I can share any current cute photos I may have taken of the little one. My dad owns his own business and his office is at home. So the days when he is just sticking around the office during my maternity leave, I can jump on for a quick hello.

I think we were online like that for almost two hours last night! I finally pried myself off the keyboard just before 10 pm so I could jump in the shower and head to bed. I was so wired from all the fun that I couldn't get sleepy until 11:30 pm. It didn't help that Travis came into the room after I climbed into bed to talk about our days for a little while. He still had to eat dinner and take a shower!

I told Travis that he needs to settle down a little bit or he is going to run himself into the ground. He assured me that after he finished putting the furniture back in the nursery and after he finished painting some decorative boxes for the nursery, he would sit down and rest with me tonight. Sounds like there will be plenty of resting going on for him tonight, huh? At least he was reasonable enough to agree to wait until this weekend to put together the crib! (I'm fighting the urge for his sanity.)

Tales of a Bullheaded Man

Travis is a stubborn, stubborn man. He stayed up until 3:30 in the morning doing work around the house. That means he got about three hours of sleep last night, before heading to work this morning.

The main task I wanted him to take care of last night was to get our Internet working. I asked him to take care of this first because it didn't work all weekend. I ended up using the neighbor's Internet (thanks Sara!) to do our taxes this weekend (another horror story in itself). Neither our modem nor wireless router would work with our computer.

First on the list of people to call was our Internet provider. They were able to get our modem to work, but the wireless router still wouldn't work.

Second on the list of people to call was the maker of our wireless router. They were unable to find a problem with the wireless, even though the Internet still would not work unless it was hooked directly to the modem.

Third on the list of people to call was the maker of our computer, Hewlett-Packard. Of course, through all this, the only American Travis spoke with was with our Internet provider. Everyone else was from somewhere in the Middle East. When Travis called HP, he spent the first 15 minutes of the phone call spelling his name out to the guy. Neither of them could understand each other.

He ended up spending a total of two and a half hours working to get our Internet back up and running. The final repair was removing our wireless card and reinstalling it. What a pain. Thank goodness it's working again though. I HATE paying for something that doesn't work.

Travis finalized everything around 11:30pm and then what does he do? Continue painting the nursery. He started the trim at almost midnight. I got up at 3:20am for my mid-night trip to the bathroom to find Travis on the couch eating Ramens. What is wrong with him?!

Of course, all last night he was a cranky butt. He didn't ever finish his dinner, hence the snack before bed. I don't know what his rush to finish this stuff is. I think he's having more extreme nesting instincts than I am. He has a growing list of things he wants to do around the house before the baby is born. Hopefully we don't kill each other before then.

The 3 Stooges (minus 2)

I think the clumsy stage of pregnancy has started to set in for me. I have hit my head twice this weekend. TWICE. Once, on Saturday when I stood up on a chair in the closet doorway, as I attempted to retrieve an item from the top shelf. Yes, I knew that door frame was there. I stood right into it anyway. I knocked myself dizzy with that one. Then, a second time on Sunday, when I was leaning down to set some stuff in the corner of the kitchen, I whacked my head on the cabinet. Each time I had to fight back tears.

Here is where I combine two of my hated "side effects" of pregnancy: acne and the new one, clumsiness. When I hit my head on the cabinet, I frickin' hit directly on a monster zit that has been living on my forehead for the last week. AND NOW IT IS BRUISED. Yup. I bruised a zit. Didn't know it was possible, but apparently it is. I guess this pimple was not painful enough, I had to go whack it on some kitchen hardware.

I can also tell my memory is getting worse. Another thing I didn't think was possible. I have a horrible memory. I call Travis my living Rolodex of memories. If I can't remember the name of a place we went, I just ask Travis, "Remember when we went to that place? On that special day commemorating when we started dating? Two years ago?" He always knows what I'm talking about, thank goodness. I would be lost without him.

I've determined that my crappy memory is a combination of things. Hypoglycemia is a major one. Who can think when they are hungry? Another adding factor I found out about recently. When my brother started going to daycare, they required a lead test. His results came back HIGH. Not life threateningly high, but well above the normal range.

See, we grew up in a house that was over a century old. Meaning, there are decades of lead filled paint covering those walls. When my parents bought the house, it was on the verge of being torn down. My dad, being the conservationist architect that he is, could not bear to see the place demolished. Instead, my parents purchased the house and began refurbishing. A couple years after they began this process (you know, after they had running water and functioning electricity) they got pregnant with me. They spent the rest of our time in that house fixing it up. We lived there until I was 18 years old.

The last decade we lived there, the construction was not as vigorous as it was in my first few years in that house. If my brother had high levels of lead in his blood ten years after I was born, think about the levels I must have been exposed to. In prime growing season. Yet another reason why my memory is retarded.

Now we add pregnancy on top of all this, it's no wonder I'm a clumsy, forgetful fool. I shouldn't be surprised to find out my brain is shrinking.

Star Wars a cappella

OH MY GOSH! This was so awesome I had to post it. A friend of mine posted it on Facebook.