Friday, May 25, 2007

Does he know how cute he is?

Curtis and I often wonder at what point Thomas will be smarter than Beckham (who is one of the world's dumber cats). Beckham seems to be self-aware. It knows what is part of its body and what isn't (though it does sometimes miss its tail and wash the footstool instead). Thomas does not seem to realize that his arms and legs belong to him. Or perhaps he does and just can't control them. How do you tell the difference? Does he know who the Baby in the Mirror is? Is he trying to look cute?

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Movie Rental Review

We've had Netflix for several years. When Blockbuster came out with a competing service a few years ago, we did the free trial and were very disappointed. So we weren't expecting much when Blockbuster started its big media push for its Blockbuster Total Access. It's the same price as Netflix, and at least in Vegas, has the same turnaround time for movies. They've improved the user interface and now have a comparable selection to Netflix. The big plus is that you can return your movies to any Blockbuster store and get a store rental as well as another movies sent from you queue. This essentially doubles your movies, though the store rentals are subject to the same rental periods and late fees as usual. After the free month, we've suspended our Netflix account and gone with Blockbuster.

It's really brought home for me how much Netflix has revolutionized video rental. Going to a Blockbuster store is a huge disappointment after online rentals. Renting online gives you your choice of 10,000+ movies. You also get recommendations based on what you've like in the past. The movies are cross-referenced into several categories and you can search by actor, director, producer, etc. The store has only a couple hundred movies, mostly new releases. The movies are display alphabetically by title in only action, drama, horror, comedy, and family categories. There are tiny displays of anime, television, and foreign. It's terrible for browsing. We end up just renting "something" when we return our movies. It's really hard to find something you like unless you've selected it beforehand and it came out fairly recently. I now remember why we never rented movies before we got Netflix.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Life After Six Weeks

The baby books are right, six weeks is the magic number. Life has been much better this past week since Thomas reached that magic number. No, he's not sleeping through the night. But he has become somewhat predictable. He gets up at 5:30 every morning and will usually go to sleep after a feeding between 9 and 10pm. During the day, a good working a assumption is that he will want to eat every two hours (at the odd hours). I've been able to go to church and to the gym every day that I want to by feeding him before I leave and being gone less than two hours, in order to feed him when I get back.

He's also smiling more and cooing, which makes him much more pleasant to interact with. Now there seems to be some intelligence in his eyes, instead of a blank gaze. He's supposed to start being able to laugh soon, making him even more fun to play with.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Baby's First Gym Membership

Mother's Day


My first Mother's Day was fabulous. I scored free pancake breakfast after church then came home and took a nap while Curtis amused Thomas. In the afternoon, Curtis and Thomas stayed home and I went out and ran some errands. I had to stop myself from going to deal with the carseat and then it hit me; it was only the 2nd time in the last six weeks that I've been alone. Just having some time by myself was a great gift, but Curtis also got me a certificate for a spa treatment at Qua Baths and Spa at Caesars Palace. I can't wait to go.

Our gift for our Mom's is this picture of their grandson's smile. I'm also posting a bunch of photos from last weekend on the Flickr page.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Godparents


Thomas's godparents (unofficially until he gets baptized), Jonathan and willowlaughter spent the weekend with us. It was a little crazy because they decided Thursday night to fly to Vegas the next day after their kickball game was canceled. It was great seeing them. It'd been a long time since the four of us could just hang out. WL hit it right off with The Baby. I forget that other people my age can have experience with babies even if they don't have any. WL was a total pro. Even though it was their vacation, I felt like it was mine because she was always willing to hold and entertain The Baby. She and Jonathan had brought their camera of spiffiness and took a few (>112) pictures of The Bambino. Fortunately, they also took a few of each other.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

One Month Old Today

Today, Thomas had his one month checkup. He's doing fine. Length: 21 inches, Weight: 10 lb 3 oz. We'd noticed that he'd gained weight, since now he has chubby cheeks and (as Curtis put it,) thighs like a sumo wrestler. Here's a picture of him showing how much he's grown and one of him and his doctor today. He's happy in this photo, because it's before he got a vaccine shot in the leg.

Male Bonding - boys, beer, and baseball