Happy two month birthday, Elijah! It’s hard for me to leave the house each morning* and know that I won’t see you again until the evening. In these past few weeks you’ve started to smile a lot and you’re beginning to have some control over your crazy arms that swing everywhere. It’s exciting to watch you discover your world! I look at you and think how tiny you are, but then when I look back at your first photos, I’m reminded how much you’ve grown. There are already big stacks of clothes that are too small for you.
Your mom and I haven’t slept through an entire night since June 14. I think we’re starting to adjust to the lack of sleep, or at least we are smarter about going to bed early with you to piece together enough sleep to get through the next day. For now you’re sleeping in a rocking bassinet in our bedroom so we have easy access to feed you as soon as you start waking up. On a good night you’ll go 3 hours between the start of each feeding session and then you fall back to sleep pretty easily. Other nights you need to eat a lot more and/or you have a hard time going back to sleep.
Tyla and I are both looking forward to the month of September when I will be on paternity leave and won’t have to work for the entire month. We’ve started giving you bottles every once in a while which let’s Tyla get out of the house for a bit. We’re so thankful that you are completely content taking room temperature milk from a bottle. I’m guessing that Tyla has a lot of ideas for things she wants to do in September while I’m at home and feeding you with a bottle!
We don’t have much personal experience to compare to, but I think you’re a pretty good baby… for now!
*Ok, that’s not completely true. On those days when you have a huge diaper blowout, I don’t mind missing the cleanup. I think you poop above your weight class.
My Subaru is nearing 100K. Hopefully I’ll get another few cheap years out of it, but then I’ll have a decision to make. I’m really interested in the possibility of getting an all-electric car. My commute is ~12 miles each way which seems easy for almost all the electric cars out there today. There are lots of free charging stations around the area and there are so many Teslas and Nissan Leaf’s around here that you hardly even notice them anymore.
The more I use SkyDrive, the more I like it. It’s an easy way to share files between computers and devices, and it’s a great way to share files with other people. On top of all that, it’s free. At work we use the professional paid version of SkyDrive and I keep all my work documents out there.
Seattle generally has great summer weather, but this one has been extraordinary. The forecast every day is 80 and cloudless sunshine. That generally starts in July but this year it started in early/mid June. If you want to read all the details, check out 
Happy Birthday to the incredible mother of my son! I know it’s a little weird to say that and then use a picture of Tyla and Oskar, but I thought she’d enjoy the photo (from just after we met in 2008.) I wonder how long it will be before Elijah is as big as Oskar?
Our little man is now seven and a half weeks old and he’s not so little anymore! He’s gaining wait at a good rate and seems to be very healthy. He can hold up his head while laying on his stomach and is just starting to give us some of his first intentional smiles. When we’re out and about, we keep him in the Moby wrap most of the time because it both keeps him really calm and quiet (or sleeping), and it helps us avoid passing him around a lot. Pertussis (whooping cough) is still at crazy levels, and I just heard that there are a disturbing number of cases of measles appearing in the area and he won’t get that vaccine for quite a while. So we’ll be the over protective first time parents and keep him in the wrap.
The other day I was wandering through the grocery store looking for some sweetened condensed milk and when I saw the “Carnation” brand, something clicked and I realized there was a big Nestle farm in the town of Carnation, WA. I ride past it on one of my favorite motorcycle loops.
If you’re worried about Prism and the NSA, have you ever stopped to think about that device you’re carrying around in your pocket? The government doesn’t have to worry about tracking where you are because you’re doing it for them. At a minimum your cell phone is reporting which cell tower it’s connected to and sometimes it will report GPS location which is more exact. I’m fine with that, but I also feel that if info like this is being collected about me, I want to have the data! This stuff is cool!
When babies are in the womb, they have quite a noisy environment with all the blood rushing around in addition to the muffled noises from outside the womb. So it makes sense when they are born that it’s comforting to have some white noise playing while they sleep. There are tons of white noise generators on the market, but we picked up an hour long MP3 called “
Treehouse Masters
If you only watch one episode, check out the finale called “Love is in the Air.” Pete builds a treehouse on their own property so he gets to do exactly what he wants and wow, it’s a whopper of a treehouse! What’s even cooler for us is that we saw them building this while we were there. The film crew wasn’t there that day, but they had gotten the metal bridge supports in and were working on the main treehouse building. Pretty cool!
I’m so thankful that we stayed there last summer before this TV show hit. Even then it was nearly impossible to find an opening 6-8 months into the future and now they don’t even offer online booking or prices. You have to email them. I imagine they are flooded with requests!