Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

We started the week off with a fat lip. Not me, not Wayne, and not Star cat. Poor Paela did something (we still aren't sure what, though we have theories) to her mouth within five seconds of us both turning the other way.  read more »

After last week, we decided to get together more for lunches this week. It was a nice treat and we have learned to enjoy how close Rebecca works to home [like that was hard to do...]. Including that we found a new park around the corner from both her work and our apartment, we can make a trip of visiting Rebecca and swinging on the swing.

Paela survived her first day of church without a nap. Lucky for us it was only 2 hours long and she crashed on the trip home, but she managed to be a playful little baby with no fussing -- naps at church are increasingly difficult to obtain.  read more »

It's been a busy week at work. We're coming out of beta use this week for our product, so there was lots of to-dos on my agenda every day. You would think we wouldn't be adding/changing functionality heavily right before going into general use...but we are. It has kept me busy in the evenings when Wayne would head off to campus to try and make a little progress on his projects.

We took a much needed break twice during the week. The first was for National Cheesecake day on Wednesday. We made a chocolate cheesecake and enticed Karl and Angela and Thomas to come over during the lunch hour. We decided we should have planned time for naps, and that we should play hookey like that in the middle of the day every day.  read more »

It was our anniversary on Saturday. Our fifth.

In the morning, we drove up to Berkeley so I coud talk strategy with a colleague for my thesis projects. Paela and Rebecca came along for moral support -- and to get out of the house, I suppose. On our way back, we stopped at the mall to look for a video game (which we didn't find) and get pedicures. Paela was well-natured throughout the pampering process and I was just scared, but for my first pedicure, it was fun.  read more »

Paela had her 9-month checkup today. Yay for a visit without shots! She enjoyed meeting the doctor and not having to sleep all day long to recover.

We're pretty sure they measured her height wrong -- we saw the measuring thing angled and her head not flush with the top of the table. But they marked her at whopping 29.75 inches (97th percentile) -- that would be a huge growth from her usual 75th percentile. The weight and head circumference are steadily growing: 19 pounds (50th percentile) and 45 cm circumference (75th percentile). Solid foods are doing her just as good as milk alone, I guess. She does love her avocado!

I'm impressed we got it all (mostly) done. In the same week, I had my entire family visiting, our team at work released the project we've been working on since January to beta testers, and we moved to a neighboring town. Not a small amount of stress, and at least some fun.

Paela's early-to-bed mentality made family togetherness a trick to figure out. We left earlier several nights, but later than Paela would have liked, just to have Paela fall asleep in the car after we'd driven 3-4 blocks. We moved bath time to the morning since she wasn't home for any sort of routine for days. And several nights Wayne was kind enough to hang out alone with the sleeping baby and our kitty for company while I went to hang out with the rest of my family.  read more »

Paela got stuck behind the toilet.  read more »

Well we got approved for the apartment we applied for. Part of me wonders if this is a good choice, to move when we could probably stay here for about the same in rent. The other part sees the gas prices rising to 4.70 here in CA and thinks living closer to school/work is a very good idea.  read more »

This week marked Rebecca's first full week back at work, without unpaid family leave, because her boss won't let her work from home more than just a little bit of the morning.

After we went apartment shopping last week, we placed in a bid for an apartment and now we've been waiting all week for the manager to look over our application and give us approval. We don't know whether or not we'll be moving in a few weeks, which doesn't help us much. [apparently the manager we really need took the week off because she got married. Hopefully she'll get back soon and isn't overwhelmed trying to catch up.]

Rebecca worked all day long and all evening long after Paela went to sleep. Her team at work has a project due. Last week. So they're behind.  read more »

Well happy gummy bears day to you all. Er, happy father's day. We celebrated Wayne's first official father's day with literally pounds of gummy bears. Seriously. We saw that Amazon sells 5 pound bags of gummy bears (Wayne's favorite brand, Haribo, even), and we couldn't resist.  read more »