“It’s 69 degress in here! It’s freezing!”

We decided to Ferberize Lonan Kai tonight (i.e. “cry-it-out” or let the child cry do that s/he leans to soothe itself rather than depend on the parents for sleep and whatnot). He wailed for a mere 45 minutes or so before falling asleep. I was a bit dumbfounded; I’ve rocked him for far longer than that before. Where’s epic multi-hour benders of the summer?
Maybe I should count my blessings, although the night is still young.
Armando was happy to see me this evening and was bouncing about the office and managed to hit an external hard drive which then fell to the floor. It is now making an awful sound, but it has not completely died. I am trying to get as much stuff off it now, but it will take a while. I do have my important stuff backed-up offsite, but it will still suck to lose a half terabyte drive.
Perhaps LK has convinced the universe to torture me in return for torturing him. Heh.

11 OCT 2008 : SATURDAY
I went to the gym. Amanda thought about going after I came back but decided to stay home and take a shower instead.
We went to baby sign language class. It was fun.
LK was very fussy all day and refused to sleep at night. Bummer.
12 OCT 2008 : SUNDAY
We went to the Japanese Garden. There were a lot of people there as there was music and dancing and whatnot. I did not see any little koi, so perhaps they have been incorporated into some bird of prey.
We went to Larry and Martha’s for dinner. There was a coworker of Larry’s also there with his family (4? year old and two 9 month old twins!). The twins were already mobile. We managed to stay quite a while before LK started getting tired and we had to quickly make it back home.
13 OCT 2008 : MONDAY
Amanda is working. I worked in the morning. Then I tried to go to the gym, but I ended up fiddling with the scooter for hours instead because it refused to freakin move. It does not like the cold. I was going to actually upload some pictures to the photo gallery, but the scooter has eaten up the non-working time today. Now it is time to work a bit more before retrieving LK from school.

It has started getting pretty rainy around here. I probably will get something to help keep LK dry when I pick him up from daycare. I don’t mind getting wet in cold weather, but it probably isn’t too good for him. I have been just keeping him in the Ergo, sticking a sweater on him, and using our one little fold-up umbrella to keep him dry. I may get a rain cover for our jogging stroller or perhaps a bicycle carrier (since we have wanted to get one once LK could hold his head up).
Or maybe not since the stock market and whatnot have been melting down. It’s a little crazy how much I’ve lost in the market over the past week. I used to do a lot of trading, but that was before I met Amanda and had a kid and all that, and financial trading took a lot of time to keep up on things, so I stashed pretty much everything in mutual funds when I met Amanda.
I suppose I should be happy that only my IRAs were affected (although I fortunately already had one account out of equities a couple months ago); I took our “working savings” out of the market last year. Still, the majority of our net worth was tied up in my IRAs (Amanda has only just started retirement savings), so we have really significantly less $$$ than two weeks ago. Fuck.
I probably will start doing more active money management and trading again. I can at least try to recoup some losses in this volatile market.
It’s good that Amanda has a recession proof job. Hopefully it is also depression proof. I still have consulting money coming in, so that is good.
So, yes, other than the historical economic meltdown, things are as usual. Amanda works downtown, I work at home, LK goes to school. It is definitely getting colder and rainy here. Not cold in the northeast winter sense, though. LK is lucky because we have the heat on in his room at night while the rest of the family gets nothing (cause it isn’t really cold). Anything to keep him from getting more sick than infants get and keep him sleeping through the night. Although piglet has stopped sleeping with us and now sleeps in LK’s room to take advantage of the heat. She is no dummy.
I let Armando sleep in the office now instead of the garage. I don’t think I will let him in the rest of the house, though.

04 OCT 2008 : SATURDAY
Amanda went clothes shopping with Carrie, although I am unsure if she bought anything. I watched Lonan Kai. He has had a series of fevers recently, but is otherwise cheerful.
We went to our first baby sign language class at Shannon’s place with many members of out former PEPS group. It was good to see them again. The instructor was cool; both of her parents are hearing impaired so she learned ASL very early.
I watched two commentary tracks on the Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle DVD while Amanda and LK slept. They weren’t nearly as good as the movie itself. I also multitasked by reading various tech documentation.
05 OCT 2008 : SUNDAY
Amanda went grocery shopping, but not with Mandy as she had gone yesterday because there was a football game today.
There was a work group party in the P-Patch, so I spent much time clearing vegetation and pruning. We had borrowed a wood chipper, so everything got munched down for compost or mulch. We did not really finish breaking everything down before the chipper had to be returned, so the remains will have to wait until next year probably. Time moves slow in P-Patch land.
We had pesto for dinner. I have been making a lot of pesto regularly and freezing it because basil has been cheap for the past eight or so weeks at the farmer’s market.
LK’s latest fever broke sometime today, which was good for him. It was also good for me because he could then go to daycare tomorrow rather than staying home. It was a struggle to get him to sleep, though; he had been going nuts for hours. I remarked to Amanda that during his freakouts I always think back to his first four months of life when he was like that practically all of the time. So what’s a couple of hours of screaming now? Although he is considerably louder at seven months.
06 OCT 2008: MONDAY
Amanda is a work. LK is at daycare. I will do the usual combination of working and looking for more work and hopefully go to the gym.
It is my birthday today. Apparently due to various medical conditions I am actually 56 years old. Oops.