It's the Day before Halloween!

We saw the movie I talked about in my last post last night. It was really cute, and really good. I've seen a few other reviews of it from when it was on the film festival circuit earlier this year and they mentioned that the ending had a twist that resolved everything and didn't feel like a cheat and. . .they were right. It was very well done! I think I'll want to own the dvd whenever it comes out.

In other news, Gwen didn't want to take her nap this morning. Well, no... she didn't cry or anything becuz she knew she was tired, but she still fought it. To the point that when she couldn't keep herself awake anymore she was still sitting up. Instead of falling back, she fell forward, and this was the end result:



Too cute!

New Movie Trailer

Back when I was at Ricks College, there was a guy named Daryn with whom I became friends. In a "small world" coincidence, I ran into him in Aurora, CO several months later since I'd been called to the Denver mission, and he was temporarily serving there while waiting for his visa to go to the San Fernando, Phillipines mission.

Why this backstory? Becuz he directed a film, that's why! Here's the trailer:



I think it looks cute, and I'll admit to having had a crush on Alyssa Milano ever since "Who's the Boss?" back in the 80's. I look forward to seeing it in order to support my old friend, even if I haven't seen him in a very long time.

More "PenGwen" video

Ever since Gwen's been able to "army crawl" she more or less stopped rolling around, but today she decided it was a fun way to play, so I got the camera out and took this video:

Vital Statistics

Gwen had her 9 month doctor visit last week. She's now 18.0 lbs, and 28 inches tall. This puts her at the 75th percentile for her height and 35th for her weight, meaning she's tall and skinny. She was "short" when she was born, so she's been outpacing that growth curve, but as far as weight goes she's been consistently on the 35th percentile line.

In other news, she is loving solid food. It's hard to even snack on anything without her crawling over and begging for a taste. She loves the vegetable baby foods, but so far hasn't been too keen on any of the fruits. She enjoys the Gerber Graduates and also loves bread. Don't worry, we only give her little bites so she won't choke, but she'll go through a complete slice of bread in a single sitting, as well as some nibbles of string cheese and a half a tub of baby food to boot. And yeah, she'll chase it down with 2 oz. of her bottle on top of that.

Funny thing about her crawling is that while she can crawl up on her hands and knees, she generally only does it in her crib or when she's reaching up to the furniture to pull herself up, but otherwise prefers the "army crawl" on her elbows/forearms. And yeah, she cruises the furniture too, albeit slowly.

She's finally fully cut a tooth to boot. We can see 3 other teeth hanging in her gums, and she's had teeth pop out then go back up before, but this one's staying out for sure this time. She likes to reach into her mouth to feel it with her thumbnail.

And another big milestone is that last night she slept for a 7-hour stretch, which is her record for longest ever single sleeping period. Her prior record is about 5 hours, which she's only ever done once. A typical night still sees her up about every 2-2.5 hours. Hopefully the long stretch last night is an indication of good things to come. She had a good nap this morning as well and finally doesn't have dark circles under her eyes anymore.

Hopefully this picture of her in "jail" is cute enough to accompany this post ;)

New Fun Stuff

Yeah, I know. . I don't update. Bad me and all that. I just don't often feel the urge to write anything here.

But, we've been able to make a few videos of Gwen the past day or so and I thought I'd share them.

A new nickname?

Gwen was visiting her grandma the other night while Teri and I were on a date. Grandma told us this story when we got there to pick her up to go home:

Gwen had been playing with 2 of her cousins, ages 2 and 4, for a while. When it was time for her cousins to go, the 2-yr old said "I want to keep playing with Penguin!" Or should that be "PenGwen?"

Either way, we thought it was cute, and now Teri's taken to calling Gwen "Penguin" and wants to start decorating the place in a penguin motif. We'll see how that goes . . . . .

Baby Update for 4-17-10

I couldn't believe it but. . . Gwen rolled over from her back to her front tonight. It seems a bit early for her to be doing that, but.... I watched her do it. She was rolling up on her side last night and this morning, but her arm was still "in the way" so I didn't think much of it, but tonight I had her lying down and I was playing with her and she was smiling big at me and then suddenly she just flipped.

She's growing up fast.

Family Photos

My nephew recently was doing a fundraiser for his school which consisted of getting a family photo for $13. Wotta deal, right? But of course they also try to upsell you to getting more, and we actually did want a picture of Gwen too, and they were quite reasonable for a 2nd & 3rd shot, so we got the additional 2. We have a few to pass out to the family, and if you haven't got one yet, family, we'll get them to you before long. But here's a preview:

Baby Update

Gwen's started reaching for and playing with things in the last couple of days. She's done it semi-randomly for about a week or so, but started showing real progress in it on Tuesday. today, she was unerring and had a blast playing with the "hanging toys" while on a mat on the floor for a couple of hours today. She's also started to laugh a little bit in the past week or so also, but the odd thing about it is she only does it for a second or so, and only Teri can get her to do it.

In other news, job search continues apace. I went to the DWS office the other day and they blatantly stated they're trying to make it so everything is done online anymore and the physical locations be phased out. They showed me a few ways to more effectively use their site, but that's about it. I also talked to a certification school about looking into working toward an MCSE cert, since I'm thinking that might help me break the barrier into Netadmin/Sysadmin-type jobs, which is where I've always been looking to take my career path. I'm a darn good desktop support guy, but my work experience beyond that is pretty limited, so methinks a cert would help to show potential employers that I do possess at least the fundamental knowledge and I can build on it quickly.

Sadly, I know the test will have a lot of questions that are trivia, and not well suited to an actual working environment. One place I interviewed at had a test to take before the interview that asked things like "How many pins on a DIMM memory chip?" Who cares? You just match the ram with the slot, and who cares how many actual pins are in the thing? It also asked the hertz speed of PC2700 ram. Again, who cares? I'd just put PC2700 ram in about 400 machines in the prior 2 months at my old job and never once did I care what its hertz speed was.

But you know that you still have to be able to regurgitate that kind of trivia for the tests, so....

Cert house programs look to be quite expensive, so I'm thinking I'll be needing to simply buy books on the subject and self-teach. Frankly, I can't see that as being any less effective than having someone else read the book to me in a classroom and having me pay them for the privilege.

And in completely trivial news, I got my Shadowknight to level 90 in EQ2 a couple of days ago. Yay me, and all of that. . . .

Blogs are like journals, right?

And this is what Gwen looks like now.

A lot has happened in the past 3 months, but I've not really felt the "inspiration" to write about it. Here's a quick recap:

• Gwen was born 12/12/09, but had some breathing and eating issues, so we didn't get to bring her home until 12/17/09.
• My other 3 kids came out for the Christmas break on the 21st. I took 2 weeks off work so I could be with them the whole time. They loved their new little sister and a grand time was had by all.
• On 01/06/10 I was let go from my job, completely unexpectedly. I am still unemployed as of this writing, but actively looking and interviewing.
• On Feb 21 we named and blessed Gwynneth Fey Camp at my sister's ward in Lehi. We did that because she and her husband were blessing their adopted baby girl Eliana Caitlin Spencer the same day and we had a lot of family in from out of town and it was easiest to have the blessings in the same place. My sister wrote about it here, if you're interested in reading it.
  
• I got a CPAP machine and began using it and I feel a lot less tired now than I used to. I don't snore anymore either. Downside is that now that I'm sleeping with my mouth closed I've started grinding my teeth, but I went and found a mask that mounts on a mouth guard, so that's been nice the past few days. This one's awfully delicate though... I found this morning I've somehow managed to break the small tubes that connect from the big air hose. Fortunately it came with replacements, but if it broke in only 4 days.... not looking promising.
• Teri and I finally got our house in NM sold. We had to put a lot of money into it last year in order to get it "sale ready" and after paying the broker's commission and also the full cost of the place for the past 4 months without a renter in it while we were selling it.... we lost quite a lot of money on the sale, in spite of theoretically having a decent chunk of equity in it. Ah well... at least we don't have the monthly cost anymore and can simply work from a "local" budget now.
• Teri's maternity leave ended today and so I'm being "Mr. Mom" while doing my job searches. Gwen's actually sitting in my lap right now as I'm typing this. Teri's not really happy about needing to return to work, but.... life is. Once I get a new job we'll see how it all goes.

On the gaming front, I'm doing EVE still and playing just enough to get enough ISK to buy game time, so it's effectively free for me anymore. I re-subbed to EQ2 when the expansion came out, but no longer on the "Station Pass" -- just a regular sub this time. I've been focusing on my shadowknight and trying to work up her AA points. Got her up to 150 now (from 132) with 90% of my xp going to AA on the slider. I've gotten about 60% of a level also, so theoretically I'd be level 86 now if I hadn't been working so hard on the AA's. I've actually not set foot in the new zones at all yet, but am working on finishing all the old quests from RoK and TSO that I never did. The TSO quests are something of a pain with a lot of running around, but I can't say I really expected any differently.

I'm playing DDO under its "free model" also. There's another blogger out there who's organized a "static group" that I've joined up with and we're gonna see how far we can go with it. I've also checked out Allod's Online - a new F2P title - and while I think it's ok, it's nothing special either. It's free, so I've not uninstalled it and may log in from time to time when I'm not doing anything else, but I doubt I'll ever really do much with it.

And you can't tell, but Gwen's had her diaper changed, been fed, and is fighting not to fall asleep now so I'm gonna go focus on her until she is napping.