Happy Halloween!

First shots

Vivienne went to the pediatrician today. She weighed in at 10 lbs, 2 oz and is 21.5 inches long. Also, she had the first rounds of her vaccinations today. Two shots. She got all red in the face and wailed when the doctor gave them to her. Then she came home, got a bath, and visited with relatives who came over. It was exhausting for her. She slept through most of the afternoon. Hopefully she will sleep through the night tonight. She has been so good about that lately. Last night was the first night all week that she’s gotten up before 5am, and we blame that on daylight savings time.

Great White Menace

Lunar, the goofy looking, pissed off, white cat of our's has a downside.


I know it's hard to believe that a cat like Lunar could have his drawbacks, but I assure you it's true. For one, he's taken to hunting these little guys and they refuse to listen when I warn them:


I suppose I wouldn't mind it that much if he didn't decide to do it at 4:00 am then howl about it, but I'm really starting to enjoy sleeping again. Anyway, I'm rooting for the mice.

Here's a pic of Viv:

4 days

Last night made day 4 of Viv sleeping all the way through the night. It's looking promising.

I think she might just be playing sneaky though, she has that look:

Wednesday

Twice

She's slept through the night, from around 10 until 6, for two nights in a row now. Alice is starting to get pretty excited about it but I'm not so sure it's a pattern as much as luck.

Walk in the park

We took Viv out for a walk for a few hours in Audubon Park today. Al and I had a bit of a picnic (8 piece chicken w/ beans & rice and biscuits from Popeye's) as well. The Popeye's was quite a treat since we still don't have have one anywhere near our house since Katrina. Turns out that even squirrels love their biscuits:


Then Viv saw something:


This something seemed to puzzle her, it can only be described as the tail-less bat squirrel:


Later, we dressed Viv in a silly outfit:

It's hard to take a picture of a baby in a moving swing

This next one was taken during a non-fussy part of today, which was definitely the smaller part of the day.


I finally managed to get some yardwork and other tasks done around the house. It's amazing how little of your time is actually yours once you have a kid. It's well worth it, but it is certainly an adjustment.

Here's an interesting fact- people hadn't invented the measuring tape in 1891. I know this because I'd planned to lay down fiberglass insulation in our attic and I went up to measure things today. The spacing between the rafters ranges from 14 to 21 inches, averaging somewhere around 18.5 or so with a huge standard deviation. Needless to say I'm not going to be insulating the attic with fiberglass.

Anyway, here's one more pic of Viv:

Much weirdness

We're making strides here in New Orleans. We've switched from the random "I gotta bag 'a crack" violence to "I think I'll cut her up and cook her" kind of violence. Check Nola.com if you're outside N.O. and I have you confused :)

Weirdness abounds here, but focused violence is preferable to random violence as far as the general population is concerned.

Here's Viv:



Don't irritate her, or she'll marinate and bake your pinkie finger (her tummy is still pretty small).

Big Date

Last night Curt & I braved the world for our first date as parents. We decided to go to Santa Fe Restaurant on Frenchman Street. This area of Marigny has seen a recent wave of shootings and robberies, but we love it and did not want to let fear of crime keep us away. Well, any fears we had were assuaged right away. Before we reached the restaurant, within a five block area, we saw three police cars. There was a deputy sheriff out front of the restaurant the entire time we ate and more deputies in the restaurant upstairs. The other patrons and our waiter all seemed as happy as we were for the increased police presence. Best of all, we got to get dressed up and have an adult night out on the town, just us, having good food and drinks.
Vivienne stayed home with her Grandma Kathy & Nonna Linda. She stayed awake for the first part of the evening, but then got sleepy. She woke up fussy and Grandma tried giving her a bottle, but Viv was having none of it. We got home at about this time and, after trying to feed her again, decided she must be tired. Curt swaddled her and she slept for eight hours. What crazy good luck! All that and a Saints win today. It has been a fabulous weekend.

Bottle!

Vivienne had her first bottle of breast milk today! I have been pumping once a day for about a week now, and we have around 20 ounces of milk in the freezer. We decided to try out the Playtex drop-in system bottle with the low-flow, latex nipple. We considered using a silicone nipple, but since neither of us has a latex allergy and latex is supposed to feel more like a real nipple, we selected it. Viv approved. She took to it right away and emptied her bottle in no time. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities to me. Still, we'll likely stick to our usual routine with Vivienne practicing on the bottle here and there so she'll be ok with my return to work. Needless to say, Curt got the honor of feeding her. And, I had been warned that some babies won't take a bottle with their mom around, but Viv let me stick around to see and photograph the big event.

Weird Night

Last night, when I opened the back door to let the dogs in, I could have sworn I saw another dog in the yard- a big-ass, mean looking dog- the kind of dog you chain to an engine block. It freaked me out a little, considering we have a 7 foot fence around our entire yard.

At any rate, I let Jamie and Angus in and spent a good 10 or 15 minutes looking around and beneath the house with a flashlight to no avail. I figured I must have just seen Jamie in some weird light through a dirty window and a magnifying glass.

So, this morning I let the dogs out and the big-ass, mean looking dog is indeed in our yard. It turns he's a bit of a wuss even though it looks like he could kill and swallow a goat whole. Alice realized that it's the dog that guards this shed/slash garage around the block from us (the owner of the garage hasn't heard of doors and just uses Brutus/Cerebus/Big-Ass Dog instead) so I end up marching him back there and chaining him back up.

The sun is barely up and I'm in my pajamas walking the dog equivalent of Mike Tyson back to his shed. Great way to start the day. Turns out he broke loose and jumped into our yard from a debris pile of the neighbor behind us.

Well, I don't have any pics of the beast, but here's one of Viv:

Another Grandparent

My mom was down this weekend and seems pretty pleased with Viv.



Viv also gets pretty worked up over her mobile:

Reminder

I'm going off on a non-Viv tangent again, but that's bound to happen from time to time. We just saw a bit on the news that estimates that the current population of New Orleans is 43% of what it was before the storm. In our neck of the woods we're at 37%. We're nowhere near back to normal here and still have a long, long way to go.

Here's our neighborhood just a touch over a year ago:


In this picture, our house would be one block closer on the bottom right hand side of the photo, if it extended that far.

Now, here's a map of the entire New Orleans area, this map covers about 150 or so square miles- our house is marked and we had minimal water by comparison to most of the metro area. The red line shows approximately where the water stood when this image, and the one above, were shot on September 2, 2005.



Why do I bring this up now?

We still don't have stoplights on our street. Mail delivery to our house just resumed a month ago. We still don't have a grocery store within 25 minutes of our house (and keep in mind, we live in what use to be a major American city). It took 4 months to get power back, 7 months for gas, and 10 months for phone.

As of September 29, '06, 379 billion (yes, billion) dollars have been spent on Iraq- and we can't get a damn streetlight working here.

We have a national election in a little less than a month. It's time to change the way things work in, and for, this country. Send the rats back down the hole and let's hope it's not too late.

Stompy!

EeeeeeaAAaEEEEEAAOOAAEEEaaaeOO!

That's pretty much what this sounds like. We hear it a lot.

Here's a picture where she's not howling:



Fortunately she spends a lot more time not howling than she does howling but it hasn't felt that way the past few days.

Also, for those of you interested in an Angus update: He's doing great since having his spleen removed a couple of months ago. He's also on a combination of Rimadyl and glucosamine (he's been getting a little stiff in the hindquarters) and it's been doing great for him. He's back to his old self.

Update

Alice and I have decided to try and get Vivienne to get to sleep earlier in the hopes that it will result in us getting back on a bit more normal of a schedule. We started last night and she was somewhat fussy during the night and has been very, very awake all day today. She's currently sleeping in her crib and with any luck she'll eat again and pass out in her bassinet in our room shortly.

Also, I've realized (aftering attempting to prepare for an exam I took this morning) that tasks, even the most simple ones, take at least 2 to 3 times longer than they normally would when you have a young one around. We're adjusting, albeit 2-3 times slower than we thought we would :)

Rabid Viv!

Viv has the ability to propel ridiculously large quantities of various fluids from both the front and back end, at any given time. This is an example of front end, I'll leave the back end shots to your imagination.

She also did a 5k run/walk for breast cancer awareness with her mom and grandma Kathy today.