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The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. From the week before Riles birthday up until today I’m not quite sure what’s happened. I’ll try to recap:

Riley’s birthday came and went. It was a two day food fest that was just a riot. Riley was a good sport through it all. As with all 1 year olds, he didn’t really know that he was getting gifts. It was more of a second birthday party for me, the gift opener, if I were 1 years old. He enjoyed the cake. We have pictures somewhere but I’m not sure which camera they’re on. I think even Chad and Tina have our pictures somehow on their camera.

We spent Riley’s actual birthday (a.k.a. Halloween) buying ourselves Anti-Riley furniture. We replaced our Ikea television stand with something from Slumberland that was taller and contained doors. Riley’s favorite past-time is banging stuff on the television and digging through the poorly managed stereo wires. So we thought it was time to finally pony up and get some real furniture.

After Riley’s birthday weekend we spent last weekend cleaning up leaves. We had ignored them for most of October which meant we had to spend a fair amount of our Saturday catching up. We had shipped Riley off for the weekend to Camp Motylinski so we enjoyed some time to ourselves. We even caught a movie at the theater, something we hadn’t done in well over a year.

The next few weeks hold a ton of work for me. At the client site we’re trying to get the final release of the Q3 software out the door (if you hadn’t noticed, it’s Q4 now which tells you the urgency). Every day I am lectured about needing to put in extra hours. In the very short time I’ve been here the team has shrunk by 50% so some days it feels like almost a Herculean task that we are still on pace to launch on time. Regardless, by Thanksgiving all should be settled down.

Oh yeah, and in any free time I may have I play Guitar Hero 3. Courtney has already grown sick of my flying couch dives and my back-on-the-floor killer solos.

Riles will be 1 year old next week on Halloween. Courtney and I have spent the last week reminiscing about last year at this time. The nerves, the excitement, and the fateful night two weeks before. Riley never really made many “shifts” during the pregnancy to indicate that he was going to pop out. It began quite nerve racking, actually. But one evening in mid October Courtney got up and paced around for most of night. Looking back on it, it was Riles only sign that he wanted out.

As we get closer to his birthday he’s starting the “new trick” phase again. Right before major milestones he seems to pull out some new trick. Within the last week he’s been saying “uh-oh!”, which sometimes comes out as a painful “oh-uh!” Try to say it backwards, it’s not easy or graceful to do.

On top of that he’s finally waving. We’ve been waving at him for 6 months now. Just this week he seems to have finally gotten the point. When Courtney and I pass him back and forth between us he immediately spins around and waves to the person he just left.

The best new trick, though, has been the hugs. He just started hugging us all of the sudden. It was like one day he just really, really missed us. And ever since he’s been throwing his arms around us.

So, his birthday will be fun. I look forward to it. Pictures next week.

P.S. – I taught Riley the “Pile-Driver” this week too. I told Courtney that he’ll need to know that sort of stuff for when he has a younger sibling.

I honestly cannot remember when the toilet started running, but as of late it had become more than a drip or trickle. It had gotten so bad that we’d get up in the middle of the night to shut the bathroom door AND our bedroom door just to muffle the noise.

3 weeks ago I bought a “replace-everything” toilet flushing kit. Unknown to me at the time, I didn’t need to replace “everything” per-se, the bolts holding the tank to the bowl could have been saved. Regardless, since I had all new parts I spent Saturday morning fixing the toilet. After living with the a running water noise for so long, the lack of it is deafening. But it also feels like a bad itch has finally been scratched.

In other news, I have switched jobs once again. This time, though, I think I’ve hit on something good. I made the career switch to consulting vs permanent employment. I’m still salaried through a consulting firm, but now get to enjoy the luxury of zero emotional attachment to the work. I still really enjoy working with the technology and working on solving complex problems. With consulting comes the automatic respect and expectations of a job well done. I don’t feel like a drone so much.

The downside, working at a large corporate healthcare client has seriously cut into my online social life. No longer am I able to ping anyone via instant messaging. If I try to access any sort of IM on my work computer I’m kindly reminded via the proxy server that I am violating corporate policy and if I continue attempt to access IM it will be reported to my manager. Yet-another-reason I’m glad I’m not an employee.

Riles birthday party is fast approaching. With it comes the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii. If I’m not reading about GH3, I’m telling Courtney about it. While Riley’s birthday party will be fun, I will also be enjoying a few competitive “battle of the bands” round against Drew and Chad.

A conversation between Courtney and myself:

[13:55] brokenindu: do we have to dress up for riles birthday?
[13:55] Courtney: yes!
[13:55] Courtney: i was going to tell you!
[13:55] brokenindu: dammit…
[13:55] Courtney: at Target they have an adult size gorilla costume
[13:56] brokenindu: you’ll look good in it.
[13:56] Courtney: its too big for me
[13:56] Courtney: you will have to take one for the team

The weekend started out with a bang but ended in a 3 am Charlie Foxtrot Monday morning. Let me explain:

Feeling feisty and hungry Friday night, we checked Riley into the “Grandparents Motel” and headed out for the evening. In search of a good steak we decided to hit Red Stone in Minnetonka. We enjoyed a fine 3-course meal sprinkled with wine and vodka. The only thing better than the food was the impeccable service. At one point I called over the manager to give kudos to our waiter.

Still Riley-free Saturday morning, we did a little birthday shopping for him. I don’t want to ruin any surprises but lets just say he’ll really appreciate all the new clothes we got him. We were beat tired from the night before so we settled in for a quiet night at home. Court put Riley to bed and I began reading Into the Wild. We hit the sack early and called it a day.

An hour later we heard a barking seal from Riley’s room. We listened for awhile as the seal got angrier. Riley awoke from his slumber angry and frustrated. The coughing kept Riley up. We were concerned because his breathing was quite labored and he was gasping for breath. With my history of asthma we’re overly concerned when we hear things like this. We hopped in the car and headed to the emergency room. By 3am Riley had been diagnosed with croup, an inflammation of his throat, and we were heading home for a little sleep.

Sunday we spent over at the folks house watching football. None of the three of us had slept much the night before. We made it through the ‘rents on sugar and caffeine. We all crashed early. Called it a night before night began.

My work pager rang at 2:30am. It was an urgent issue that needed attention. 2:30am is no time to be thinking, especially about work. Some item wasn’t showing on the website and it needed to be active by 5am. When in the T.V. biz this stuff happens at all hours of the day. I spent the next 2 hours troubleshooting and waking up many other poor souls. At the end of the night it was someone else’s mess up that got me up in the middle of the night.

This morning I’m flying on little sleep and even less motivation. I’m waiting for today to come and go. The kicker is that I will get no more extra sleep tonight. I have a scheduled upgrade for work at 2am. I may just have to call in sick tomorrow.

Last night when I arrived home Riles was in a stellar mood. Court had been watching him play on the floor by himself for some time. As the night progressed we noticed that he was being quite pleasant all night. During dinner he sat politely and ate. We happened to notice while he ate his eyes were half closed. Riles isn’t typically a tired child, he’s on the go all day long.

We started running the stats and something wasn’t adding up. He was focused and played alone, he ate without incident and appeared tired. Court gave him the ol’ Back-0f-the-hand thermometer test (much more pleasant than the official rear-end check). We debated for awhile whether he was warm or not. But by 7pm it was quite evident that he was running a temp. He was quite tired and ready for bed. There wasn’t much we could do except give him some ibuprofen and put him down for bed.

When we started this whole parenting thing I was quite afraid of knowing when was the right time to do something with Riles. How was I to know when he’s hungry? tired? sick? If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I will never know when any of those things happen.

Over time I think we’ve learned that our best guess is probably good enough. There’s no point with struggling to get an exact temp when the forehead test will suffice.

In case you were curious if Riley was still alive. He’s managed to survive 9 months of us.

If you were wondering if we still had a child — yes we do. Riley turned 9 months old a few weeks ago. About 6 weeks ago he figured out crawling. Shortly there after he figured out how to pull himself up on everything. Courtney and I haven’t sat down since. We spend our time with him making sure he’s safe. It’s a tough job when he can get into just about anything.

We are looking forward to heading to the fair this year. We will be one of those “wagon people” this year and we’re quite excited. Sure, every other year we’ve gone to the state fair we’ve complained about those inconsiderate people who stop in the midde of the walking paths to futz with something/someone in the wagon. Well, the benefits of watching Riley giggle and laugh (and probably scream a bit) outweigh what other people think.

The picture is from early July. Riles was 8 months and a week old. I call Riles the drunken sailor because, while he’s able to stand up and cruise about the furniture, he does so with an funny swagger in his step. He’s definitely a ways away from walking.

Another fabulous Memorial Day weekend passed us by. We spent it drinking and being merry with the family. We got smart this year and invited everyone over to our house to cut down on the double-dinner problem we have with every holiday. The weather held out and Riles enjoyed being the center of attention.

Sunday we spent the morning watching Courtney at a horse show. It was Riley’s first horse show and he seemed to love it. He’s a big fan of animals and loved to meet Calvin. Courtney rode beautifully even if Calvin was running a bit hot at the beginning.

This weekend Riles really took to mobility. He seemed to have figured out how to quickly get from point A to point B by rolling side to side. Its fun to watch him want something, ponder how to get there, then attempt to get there, adjust plans, and finally figure out a way to move. He’s never been one for laying down so the sooner he gets mobile the happier he is. He’s also become quite the sitter too. We can finally sit him down on the ground and he won’t immediately fall over. He’s learned the hard way about falling over. We’ve had our fair share of head bangs. But it appears that after all the bumps and bruises he’s finally get it down.

Coincidently we just picked up the same camera as Jamie. I was quite amused to discover the movie time lapse feature he demoed. I had to try it out myself.

So, here’s Riley and me playing. All 46 seconds of it:
[ev type="google" data="8683128572583772573"][/ev]

Our Riley media setup is slowly being rebuilt. Courtney’s old Canon SD400 mysteriously stopped working after a long night out on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m still trying to remember if I dropped it or not. Lets just say that I *may* have. I’m not going to admit fault though. Shortly after that I lost yet-another-hard drive in my main computer, costing us the ability to archive our photos. After filling up the SLR we finally bit the bullet and replaced her camera. I also have a new hard drive on the way which should get us back up and running.

Update: My dad cued me in to the fact it might be hard to figure out why Riles is moving in double-time. The video is a timespan of about 40-60 minutes compressed into 46 seconds.