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Archives for January 2003

Christine Goes Back to Work

This is Christine. I went back to work this week starting on Wednesday. After only a two day transition period, Patty did a great job taking care of Katherine and managing the house. Every day, Katherine made more and more progress to take the bottle from Patty.

  • Monday: She only took 2 oz after crying for 10-20 minutes and ate nothing else from the bottle the entire day – despite Patty’s valiant attempts.
  • Tuesday: We didn’t have much more success, until Patty remarked that the Avent nipple seemed too big for Katherine. I pulled a Gerber bottle out of the back of a drawer, and voila…Katherine emptied the entire bottle! She drank about 7.5 oz that day.
  • Wednesday: Patty switched entirely to the Gerber bottle. She fed Katherine 10 oz over a couple feedings (right before she fell asleep) and brought Katherine to work so I could nurse her.
  • Thursday: She drank 14 oz. over four feedings, although she ate only when she was tired.
  • Friday: Katherine drank 14 oz. readily over three feedings with no crying or fussing at all. This has been huge progress!

Katherine is now drinking from a 3-6 month moderate flow Gerber nipple. The only downside is the fact that we invested in 10 Avent bottles and a bunch of Avent nipples (which she still refuses to take), but this is a small price to pay for bottle feeding!

Other huge news – Katherine started to sleep through the night this week. She fell asleep at 9AM Tuesday night and slept the entire night! I work her up, much to her dismay, at 7:30AM the following morning to feed. Her schedule has started to solidify. Both Wednesday and Thursday nights she feel asleep by 8:30PM. Unfortunately, she did wake at 1AM Friday morning with a wet diaper, but it was an uneventful night otherwise.

Between her sleep schedule and acceptance of the bottle, parenthood has gotten so much easier. Our only remaining challenge is Bisco, who came down with a nasty case of kennel cough after our LA trip. While he is no longer congested, he’s sneezing quite a bit. On Wednesday, Katherine came to work with white stuff in her hair. Patty explained that Bisco sneezed on Katherine’s head, and that she wasn’t able to clean it all out. Oh Yuck. ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine is also developing her motor skills. She grabbed her little plastic keys from my hand a few nights ago and shook them enthusiastically as I made my dinner in the kitchen. She’s also taking walks with Patty around the neighborhood in her Baby Bjorn facing forward. I’m looking forward to this weekend and spending two quality days with Katherine, learning more about her developments this week.

I’ve include two pictures Steve took of Patty playing with Katherine.

Port Magic Alpha Released

Last week, Pure Networks released an alpha version of Port Magic on the web. We got a lot of positive feedback for the problem we’re trying to solve: automatically open ports on an Internet gateway when a user plays or hosts an online game. Modern Internet gateways (LinkSys, Dlink, Netgear, etc.) all interact with the user using a web interface. To configure your Internet Gateway, you type in http://192.168.168.1/ into your web browser. Since the UI is based on HTML, the Internet Gateway vendor has very few tools to work with to design good UI (wizards, state storage, controls). Most of the configuration UI is simple HTML controls they have a 1:1 correspondence with a setting in the gateway.

Port Magic automates the population of the port range forwarding dialog of a LinkSys Internet Gateway. We chose to use the http protocols over UPnP because using http works across all versions of the LinkSys Internet Gateway. We caught some heat from a couple of UPnP zealots on the forums for picking http over UPnP. We’re not anti-UPnP or trying to develop a competing protocol. We set out to solve this customer problem of automatically opening and closing ports when I launch and close an online application.

Patty Salgado

Last week, Christine and I hired a nanny for Katherine: Patty Salgado. Patty is an experienced nanny who loves children and is also our age. Katherine and Patty bonded from the beginning (see photo) and we’re excited to have Patty join our family. Christine and I can go to work confident that Katherine is in good hands. Patty speaks fluent Spanish so Katherine will hopefully be bilingual. I’m hoping to brush up on my Spanish skills, too.

 

Katherine and Her Mobile

Katherine is totally fascinated now with her mobile. We turn it on and she just stares at it. Recently, she’s started talking to it. Totally unintelligible baby babble but Christine and I are amazed at the new sounds she’s making. She’s also getting tall. Katherine is a little over 2.5 months old and she’s already growing out of her 3-6 month clothes. She’s just too tall (Steve’s genes).

Katherine is having trouble sleeping. We think (baby debugging) this is due to her having a growth spurt, wanting to play with us, and/or gas bubbles from feeding. Katherine is running Christine and I ragged. Like most parents, we go through our laundry list of things to try:

  • Hold and walk around with her until she falls asleep. Katherine’s getting heavy now so this is no longer an easy task. Christine and I are glad we got in shape before having Katherine ๐Ÿ™‚
  • Burp her. Sometimes I wish Katherine could just talk. I never know if she needs to be burped or it’s something else that’s bothering her. In the end, she always gets burped until she starts to get drowsy. Burping is the catch all when a diaper change isn’t the cause of her discomfort.
  • Diaper change. Check and change it. Most of the time this is a simple task but it inevitably results in Katherine being wide awake.
  • Baby sit ups. I place Katherine on my knees and do sit ups with her. Her legs compress slightly and it seems to help relieve gas problems. I dunno if this really works but when you’re tired you’ll believe anything.
  • Baby distraction devices: rocker, shaky chair, foot rest. The rocker and shaky chair are well known. Not so well know is using the foot rest to the rocker (it moves too). I place Katherine on it and start rocking (you have to hold her). Once she falls asleep, it’s easy for me to scoop her up into the crib.

These photos were taken with my new digital camera.

Nikon D100

On a recent trip to Portland, I purchased a Nikon D100 digital SLR camera from CameraWorld. Over the holidays, Christine had dropped and broken my Nikon 990 so I got permission to purchase a replacement high end digital camera. I bought Christine a Canon Elph 230 for Christine so she could carry around a digital camera in her purse. The Elph takes great pictures given it’s form factor, about wallet size. I was looking for something that had better optics and results at the expense of portability.

I researched the high end offerings from both Canon and Nikon. Our digital video camera is Canon but all of my film SLR gear is Nikon. For Nikon it came down to form factor versus the ability to reuse my Nikon lens and accessories. The form factor choice (small without sacrificing optics or results) was the Nikon CoolPix 5700. It was small enough to fit in my North Face jacket pocket (barely) and offered excellent optics and result. The flexibility choice was the Nikon D100. The D100 is a digital SLR camera that takes all of my Nikon lens and accessories (I did have to upgrade my flash to a SB-80DX). After much angst and a call to my camera buddy Raman, I decided to go with the Nikon D100. I’m very pleased with the decision and it produces excellent digital photos.

Now that I’m producing high quality digital images, I need a high quality photo printer. My next purchase is the Epson 2200 Photo Printer. This is latest and best consumer photo printer from Epson.

Portland Weekend

The weekend on January 10th we road tripped to Portland with the LeVines. For Christine and I this was going to be our first weekend away with Katherine and Bisco, the whole family. We packed the Volvo full of stuff for Katherine and Bisco, Christine and I shared a bag, and set off for Portland Saturday morning. The trick to road tripping with babies and dogs is to set your expectations low as to progress. Portland to Seattle is 3.5 hours at an easy pace. Unfortunately, this is longer than both babies could handle. We ended up stopping at the factory outlet stories in Centralia to feed and change. Our next stop was Fry’s Electronics in Wilsonville. Eric and Suzi picked up some electronics gear but Steve decided to just window shop and buy online. We left Fry’s at 4P and raced up I5 to check into the RiverPlace Hotel in Portland. We had arranged for a pair of nannies to come at 5P to babysit Sidney and Katherine while the adults had dinner at Lucere Restaurant.

The food at Lucere was excellent. Eric got a bunch of great Portland suggestions for dinner and breakfast from Mark Squires’ Wine Bulletin Board. A lot of helpful people on this bulletin board. Eric the wine aficionado brought an aged Bordeaux for all of us to sample and enjoy with dinner. Eric’s become quite the wine expert and we all reaped of rewards of his newest hobby.

Dinner was going great until my cell phone went off. It was the nanny and she couldn’t get Katherine to sleep or stop crying. So much for the relaxing dinner on the town. Christine ran upstairs while I gathered our dinner and had it sent up to our room. Our dinner away from Katherine turned into room service.

I’ve heard for friends that hotel operators put families into a special part of the hotel because their kids are often noisy. Well, I hope the RiverPlace has this policy because Katherine would wake up in the night and start crying. Christine and I would wake up panicked and try to quickly calm her down before she woke up the neighboring rooms. Up until now, I had taken for granted how nice it was to have a house where we didn’t have to worry about disturbing others.

Sunday morning we got a late start and had a delicious breakfast at the Bread & Ink Cafe before shopping downtown. After breakfast, Christine and Suzi headed off to Saks while Eric and I headed for CameraWorld. I used to love shopping online at CameraWorld.com before Ritz Photo purchased it April, 2002. After Ritz bastardized the CameraWorld.com site, I switched to BHPhoto.com for my online photographic purchases. I was anxious to shop for a new high end digital camera at the CameraWorld retail store (no sales tax). Christine had accidentally dropped and broken my Nikon 990 digital camera so I was in the market for a replacement (read the details). I ended up buying a Nikon D100 SLR digital camera. I own a Nikon F100 so I can reuse all of my lens for the new SLR.

After shopping, we began the slow journey back to Redmond. Katherine and Sidney had to stop several times for feedings and diaper changes. About 3/4 of the way home, we decided to stop the caravan and just make our way home at the pace allowed by our respective infants.

The first photo is of Katherine and Bisco riding in the Volvo. Bisco shared the way back with Katherine’s Pack and Play. Katherine shared the backseat with our luggage.

The next two photos are taken from our room at the RiverPlace Hotel. The RiverPlace allows a dog in the room with a modest cleaning fee. Bisco received the VIP treatment from the staff upon arrival, a welcome dog treat and doggy bowls.

The next photos are just us on the road.