Driver2165

Electric Rollerskates I gained enough seniority with the company to get weekends off! Seriously man this is great, I haven't had weekends off since I was a part-timer 4 years ago. There's 8 or 9 people under me that have weekends off! What a deal.

I've also started working on an actual college degree which should take me, oh, about 14 years to finish. I have English Comp and Architecture something-or-other this fall. And other than that? Let's call this whole selfish post a start of a new leaf or something and next time I won't have to be so selfish about it!

Bethany had an ultrasound yesterday. It was really cool. We found out we're having a little girl. So excited.

My ears kinda hurt.

Bethany went consignment shopping at sweet winter coat bag

The kid in the picture looks happier than a clam. Happier than two clams.

We went to American Apparel bodysuits and tshirts for a huge discount if you buy two at once.

This morning we woke up way too early (8 o'clock) to go to a birthing class. It consisted of a few videos featuring a lot of vaginas with heads sticking out of them and a lot of education from a lady who apparently has figured out that if she talks really slowly she can take two hours of information and stretch it out to a seven hour class, thus three-and-a-halfing the income. That two-hours-worth was nice to learn, though. We have an idea of what to expect now, and got to see some random cute kid in the nursery. Afterwards I worked for six hours. I picked up a guy who talked about his Creative Zen for two minutes and WWF for 20 minutes. It rained a lot. It's been a long day. Tomorrow I plan to sleep in, go buy some chips, make nachos, drink beer, watch the Vikings, turn it off midway through the first quarter in disgust, and maybe bring myself to do something useful.

Oh yeah. Did anybody else notice we had a tornado watch today? And it's supposed to ice/snow/rain for the next three days now? I had a very elderly woman on my bus who said she's lived in Minnesota her whole life and was absolutely shocked to see that lightning today, in the midst of November. Seriously, just when you think the weather here can't get any weirder... oh my beer's finished. Goodnight.

We're at 39 weeks, with five days until the due date. We've had the nursery finished for a few weeks, but haven't gotten around to taking pictures while it's still clean. The extra twin bed is just for the first week when the baby's grandmother is going to be staying at our place and the kid will be in our room in the bassinet. Sweet. By the way, the Bugaboo isn't in the picture to show it off, we just put it up there a few weeks ago to keep it out of the way for the New Year's party. We got the mural from ReadyMade, but we changed it up a bit to fit the room.

Our baby was born yesterday, January 11, at 6pm. She's 7 lbs. 15 oz. She's incredible. She doesn't cry much, but she'll only sleep if she's being held, so we haven't had much sleep. Bethany was in labor all night long, but she was amazing. Geoff Farina's brilliant song The Left-Handed Way was playing when she was born. She apparantly likes Sigur Ros and I Am Robot And Proud. I just came home to clean up a bit and share a few pictures, so we'll share more later, after we get out of the hospital.

Here's a few pictures from the first few days of hanging out with Eliot. I'll do my best to not push mountains of baby pictures on everybody; instead, I believe I'll set up some sort of

I've come to terms with the inevitablity of poop. Not just a short part of the day anymore, it's been elevated to the main part of my life. Honestly, this kid poops all the time. We're talking 10 or 11 times a day. We're working on getting this The Daily Eliot. It's got it's own RSS feed, so if you're interested in seeing cute stuff every day, go right ahead. I'm still working on the design, but the photo part is set up nicely. And thanks to Automator and iCal, my lappy will yell at me every morning at 8 am if I haven't put a new picture up.

Eliot finishes her first week out of the womb today. Yesterday we had a following visit from a nurse. After 5 nights, somebody finally told us we don't have to wake up the kid for regular feedings. She just shouldn't go more than 5 hours at this point, and we can make up the rest of the 8-12 feedings during our regular waking hours. So we tried it. This kid would sleep right through the night if we'd let her. It's crazy. So we're only waking up once per night now, and let's hope she keeps it up because this is great.

She's starting to get strong and start to roll around and pick her head up. I love this kid she's so much fun. We'll start taking her out occasionally after friday, when she has her first pediatrician visit and Bebe Babble (44th and France) is having a sale.

Yesterday we took Eliot out on her first excursion outside the house, and she did great. Just like at home, she didn't cry once, and she held off on pooping until the last store we visited. Bethany was going stir crazy in the house, so the three of us went for a quick trip around Lake Harriet and we stopped at Bebe Babble, a newish boutique for kids at 44th and France (no website yet). We forgot the store closes midday for an hour, and that happened to be the time we got there, so we went next door to Caribou for terrible drinks (typical Caribou) and to figure out what to do for an hour. We decided we'd go back to Linden Hills and check out the most incredible nightlight ever, the lantern comes off and is just enough light to change the kid in the middle of the night without having to blind both of us with the nursery lights. I got to try it once last night, and she pooped about a can of soup's worth all over my arm. I should have seen it coming when she farted for ten seconds just prior.

I realized today that Eliot looks like Patton Oswalt when she's pissed that I woke her up.

I just noticed I hadn't made a real post in 6 days, other than the Patton Oswalt thing and the ok-sure-10%-baiting-dugan post [that didn't really work out so well in the baiting department] which tells me that we must have been busy.

Now that getting pooped on is thrice-daily occurrence, I'll have to come up with something new. What I would like to know, however, is how come nobody told me how loud babies fart? It's hilarious! I cannot keep from laughing every time Eliot farts louder and longer than I ever have. She peed on me while I was playing Scrabble yesterday. It was just a problem with the gDiapers, we didn't notice that we didn't quite have it on right.

Speaking of the Paper Source, and went to Calhoun Square to look for a changing table. We ended up changing her on the floor on the second level. NO TABLE in the men's room, and a nasty ass table in the women's room. Lame. After that we spent some time at the Ink Lab on Lake St, and then off to IKEA for thicker curtains [we need to sleep in longer now and the sun comes right through our current very pretty but on the thin side ones. We watched Woody Allen's Match Point and it sucked.

I hate A&D cream. It smells terrible, and it's nearly impossible to wash off. You have to use a mixture of peanut butter and gasoline, just to get it off your fingers.

Solution: Today we stopped at the Wedge with a $2 coupon for diapers thanks to Burt's Bees Diaper Cream, 20% less than I paid, on Amazon

After five years and three months driving bus, as they say [why they don't include the 'the', i do not know], I've finally arrived. Not only am I no longer making less than the full wage, but today, for the first time ever, I was able to actually pick weekends off. I've had them before, but it was on the extra board, which changed weekly, or it was filling for senior drivers while they were on vacation. No, this is something completely different. So here's what I'll be driving for twelve weeks starting in March:

Today we moved the Eligator up to the a American Apparel runs so small on adults. She's still in Gap preemie, but she's almost in AA 6-9. Such is life. Anyway, we're still big fans of the AA bodysuit. Pacifier has a great deal on them, and they even carry the organic cotton ones.

I was awoken by the theme from Calhoun Beach Club for an extra hundred. Who needs a yard in the City of Parks & Lakes, anyway?

Bethany started working again this week. She's going to do two four-hour shifs per week. This week it was just me and the kid for the first time. It took her a while, but I think she's finally come to terms with my not being her mother. On wednesday, she woke up after about an hour and acted hungry, but she wouldn't take the bottle (Playtex Vent-Aire). It was still 45 minutes before playgroup at the Porch, so I put her in the Baby Björn and we went down to the record store. It was a nice 45 degrees outside, but it was pretty much hot in the store; we weren't in there for more than 3 minutes before she starting lettingme know how much she hated the heat. We'll have to go back another time when she's in a better mood. She was also starting to poop. So i decided to just go down to the playgroup on 46th instead of home to change and feed her [the record store is on 43rd], and it was such a nice walk [45° and overcast YUM] that I decided to walk instead of take the bus. It's only 3.5 blocks after all [or just shy of a half mile]. Turns out the wind was north, so we froze. As soon as i was in no-man's land between bus stops, a nearly empty 18A drives by. Oh, well, if the short line comes by, the next long line is usually late, so I just keep walking. Two minutes later a very full 18E [that probably was supposed to be five minutes ahead of the A] sneaks up behind me. We made it, though. She likes the Björn. She was finally hungry enough to eat, but I left the Playtex, thinking she didn't like it anymore, and only had the Medela bottle. The hole is too big on it, so the milk comes out way faster than Eliot can drink. I only had one spare onesie. Thursday, she liked the Playtex.

That morning at 9:30, I woke up to "I'm leaving for work, here's Eliot" and having a wiggly, vocal kid set on top of me. Yiiiiiiikes. She was up all morning.

We'll get the hang of it.

We recieved a gift of Blue Sky Guide. Eliot was comfortably wearing one of her 3-6 AA bodysuits, and the Hanna bodysuits were far too big for her, so we got them for her next stage. That next stage turned out to be 8 hours later, when suddenly she didn't fit in what she was wearing. She was crying for thirty minutes, and we couldn't figure it out until we finally noticed her bodysuit was tight. We tried the new one on her and she fell asleep right away.

Did she grow an inch and a half today?

She's having a great time. Two months arrives tomorrow. This week she started making a lot of sounds other than grunts. And she's laughing now, and trying to hold her head up for more than 30 seconds. She'll be meeting Zakcq tomorrow.

We took Eliot in for her two month tune up today. We changed her doctor to the Partners in Pediatrics on 32nd and Hennepin, mainly because of it's convenient location [one less 952 safari for us!]. The doctor we ended up with was pretty great. So Eliot had her first shots, and let me tell ya, she took it like a man. I cried more when Dean Johnson. But seriously, she didn't cry until just before the third shot (of three), and was finished within 30 seconds. We had her cracking up by the two minute mark. Incredible. A trooper, etc.

Turns out our baby has gained enough weight to elicit two "whoa" remarks from nurses, jumping her up to the 90th percentile in weight and height, but she maintains her tiny head, which has only recently grown out of hats labeled "7 lbs" [she's not quite big enough for the next size hat]. She's 13.5 lbs now.

I hope cutest kid ever, by the way]. Right now, by the way, she's staring at three wooden bears and cracking up.

Does anybody have any tips or good resources on refurbishing an old bicycle frame and converting a ten speed into a single speed? I need a new bike. The one I've got is a mountain bike I've had since middle school that must be made out of solid lead.

ABC is $8.95 on Amazon; supporting your local bookstore is an even better deal]

We took the kid in for her four-month checkup. Her 10% head has grown in and now stands at 50%. The rest of her kept growing, though, so her weight and length are both 90%. She's enormous. 26 inches and 16.5 lbs. Last time, she didn't mind the shots so much. Yesterday, she hated them. Such is life. She's been so much more verbal lately, like the other day, she rolled over for the first time, and would not shut up about it. She was so stoked and proud of her self, she was almost hyperventilating. Adorable. Also big new, I'm headed to the Wedge to get her some baby cereal. That's right, solid food. Time passes quickly.

Last night a guy put a five dollar bill in to pay for his buck-fifty fare. I told him I could give him a few passes for the next few days, but he just rolled his eyes at me and asked for a transfer. I thought it was interesting that low-grade gas was listed at $2.95 at the beginning of my shift at all three Hennepin stations at the start of my work at about 3. At about 6:30, the price was $2.85, and on my way back at 7:30, it was back to $2.95. It pisses me off when talking heads start talking about how that's still cheap for Europeans, because they get taxes out of the deal instead fat old men lighting cigars with our commutes, and their goverments don't limit the number of small cars to the extent that ours does. It's no wonder Americans have so sense of geography or world context.

I saw an Good Food made me wonder if this "seven courses of beef" is quintessentially Zakcq or not.

Why is it that every time I'm walking somewhere with Eliot and we pass somebody who's walking their dog, and the dog person looks at Eliot and smiles, why do I feel the need to look at their dog and smile?

That rain the other night was awesome. Did anybody else see the manhole covers flying off? I have no idea what caused all the pressure, but water was shooting out of the manholes downtown. One was five stories high. Another tore the siding off a skyway. We got an all-call on the radio to pull over. Five years of driving and I've never heard that. The rain was so intense that one of the stoplights in Northeast decided to flash red and display solid green at the same time.

I saw a please complain here].

We took 535, which is the best route we've got. It took like 5 minutes to get downtown. The Twins spent most of the game running around the bases like it was Track and Field day. The kid was pretty cranky about all the noise at the beginning. We had Homerun Porch seats, and in the fourth row, there is quite a bit more noise than I remembered from other areas. She took it better once she had a nap during the fourth inning.

So I stood up during the last out of the last inning in a game in which the home team scored 8 runs and gave up only two and our hometown boy went 4 for 5 with 5 RBI, which I figured was worth a standing ovation. The "Dodger fan" behind me complained loudly, and then the "Twins fan" next to her started yelling at me for blocking his view. Have I been out of the loop? Is it impolite to stand for the last out of the last inning? Have Americans become so obese and lazy that you have to assume they're incapable of standing up on their own?

You know, I'm thinking the World Cup would be a little more fun if it wasn't during the baseball season, the Tour De France, and Wimbledon. Just when I was getting the hang of it, Ghana loses and the more interesting sporting events started to get under way.

I was searching the internet for a clock like the one in the Singapore shophouse on page 163 of the June '06 issue of July.

Wedge. I cooked it last night in a Bolognese sauce with these cute little letter-shaped pastas. It's more fun now that we're beyond mashing up various fruits and vegetables, and she can eat more complex meals.

We took Eliot to the state fair yesterday. We went in to the Miracle of Birth barn where she loved the baby ducks and piglets and was unmoved by the calves and baby small horse pony things. She also went into the building with the fish, which are an animal that continue to amaze her. If we had a few bucks to rub together we'd consider getting her a fishtank. Bethany spent most of her time trying to win an iPod and taking candid photos of extremely fat people eating [deep fried Hot Pockets on a stick?]. That's not to say we didn't eat ridiculous food. We had a terrible bratwurst [bratworst, more like], mediocre french fries, really great locally-grown kabobs, and some decent fried vegetables from across the street. Bethany is still bitter that we didn't get a pickle. There were buffalo balls in the disappointing Eco building that were delicious. The fair pretty much blows. This is the part of the year where it's hard to convince me that Minneapolis is a cold Kansas City with a baseball team. Come to think of it, I'm trying to think of a part of the year where that's not the case.

We stopped at photo of the kid for awhile. It should be fixed soon and we've got a backlog just waiting to go up.

Morneau should be the MVP.

Right now, she's asleep and I'm having a midnight snack of cheese crackers and wine (no comma - we keep it prole here at Dr2165 Industries). It took us about a week to figure it out because, at first, her only symptoms were red cheeks and waking up at 4am (normally, she sleeps straight through the night for ten or eleven hours, a habit she picked up during her first month; one might not be mistaken if the conclusion taken here is that sloth is genetic). But once she filled a diaper, her pants, her blanket, and, hyperbolically, her room roughly an ankle deep with a cute self all day long. No fever, no pain, just red cheeks, intermittent sleep (Many parents are used to this. However, we've been spoiled rotten and I'm starting to feel like Ed Norton at the beginning of Fight Club), and toxic sludge. Look out.

Not A Box [Amazon]
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Eliot learned a new way to deal with something she doesn't like: revenge. She's been sick since Sunday, hitting the one-year-old trifecta with a cold, an ear infection, and popping a new tooth (number eight, if anybody's keeping track). We also found out she takes after me with a cat allergy. Because of this, her nose has been running uncontrollably, so we've been swiping her upper lip with Puffs. She hates it. After five days of fighting it, pushing us away, today she suddenly got a determined look on her face, grabbed my nose with one hand, and wiped my face as hard as her little arms could.

We've also found that she's rather listen to real music than children's music. She couldn't care less when we put on a Wiggles or They Might Be Giants CD, but when Deerhoof or Why? or the Advantage is on, she gets down, and when Joanna Newsom or Julie Doiron or Blonde Redhead is playing, she starts singing along (she makes up her own lyrics: "Yah yah yah yah"). She already has far better taste than the average listener of the Current [pdf].

Really, though, it's been a week and I couldn't think of anything worth talking about other than my sick kid. Also, I like pointing out how horrid the Current is.

Eliot grabs chunks of her own hair and yanks as hard as she can. Repeatedly. If we try to get her to stop, she cries.

Jon from Bikescape was on Resonance FM's The Bike Show this week. That would be the bicycle radio equivalent of having Santana and Liriano in your rotation. Speaking of bicycles, I'm just waiting for my new handlebars to arrive in the mail and for my new matching cranks to be installed and I'll finally take a picture of it so people can recognize me (it happened twice with the last one!).

The kid has had sippy cups from three different brands of sippy cup for at least six months, and she's never figured out how to use a single one. She has no idea what to do with a straw. She's mainly just been drinking out of a glass, which she can usually do without dropping by now. We've taken to just asking for an adult glass at restaurants for her (another reason is they're glass and kids cups are almost always chewed up off-gassing death traps of low-grade plastic).

Enter the new Camelbak bike bottle. I bought one on Tuesday at Boehm's (I had a coupon and we wanted to explore St. Paul for it's relative awesomeness) for starting my training this spring. Bethany let Eliot try it. She figured it out immediately. Now she just walks around all day in pigtails with my Camelbak helping herself to water and juice whenever she feels like it. She honestly looks liberated.