Some things ARE cheaper at Whole Foods...

...like pregnancy tests. You eliminate the fancy packaging and complicated digital readings, you can get 3 tests for like 5 bucks, according to Jalanquera.



(note the brilliant use of Comic Sans)

Roc's gonna be a big brother. Yay! Our plan was that we would start working on kidB when he turns 1 (which is only a couple weeks away), but we just accelerated that timeline by around 3 months or so. What can I say? We're fortunate to be so fertile, I guess. You know how it is, you stop breastfeeding, go on vacation, yadda yadda yadda, we're pregnant.

The Shmoo is doing fine, rolling along now at 12 weeks. His/her parents are a little stressed out, though. Happy, excited, but a little anxious. Can we afford another mouth to feed? Can you raise 2 kids in 800 square feet? (Yes, you can, no matter what the McMansion crowd tells you) Can we afford another kid? How is Rocco gonna handle all this? Can we afford another kid in childcare?

We think we're going to have this baby at home, with a midwife and/or a doula. It's not for sure, but we're real close to making that plunge. Not that the hospital was a terrible experience, but we were just 2 nuts in a giant baby machine, and we want to take back some of the control we surrendered (willingly, at the time) to the myriad doctors, nurses, machines that beep insistently, paperwork, hospital food (which actually wasn't that bad) and cramped rooms, all of which took away from what should and can be a quiet, private, family event. Think about it, hospitals are set up to treat everything as a procedure, one that can be predicted and controlled. And it's profitable for the hospital. It's no coincidence that caesarean rates are almost 1 in 3. That's messed up, y'all.

We drank the punch, but we've not gone totally hippie mental. But....it's much cheaper than hospitals or doctors, by maybe 2/3, we're following all the normal prenatal care and tests, we're more than willing to call it off and head to the hospital at the first sign of trouble, and we have a hot tub at home. Bonus! Conventional wisdom says labor for the 2nd child is much easier and faster than the first. Rocco came without much trouble, so we're thinking that this is the way we should go.

There are a few hurdles before we commit fully to it, so stay tuned.

It ain't always dimples and chicken...

To add some yang to the yin around here, here's some unflattering photos of Rocco:







I kid because I love.

Where We've Been Lately

Taco has had the runs since last Tuesday, so we've been at Threat Level Mustard Yellow for the last 5 days. Doc says keep him hydrated and it'll all be over in 7-10 days. WTF?! He seems to be handling it ok, though he's not his usual cheery self, especially when the tummy cramps kick in. So, Roc's in size 6 diapers for the time being.

Couple weeks ago, Taco and I grabbed a Chipotle burrito and went to the Democratic caucus. I signed in as an Obama supporter, though I'd be satisfied if either he or Hillary were to win the nomination. My precinct elected 2 delegates each for Hillary and Barack, while 1 went to Uncommitted. I don't think any other candidate has ever stirred me into action like Obama has (I even tried to get into the big rally at the Key), and judging by the big showing by my fellow GenX'ers, I wasn't alone. Look out, Boomers.

We had "Retztagg" over for dinner on Wednesday. Made Mussels in Puttanesca sauce over linguine. Mmm. Happy 1st anniversary.

As Jala2 says, some things are cheaper at Whole Foods. More on that later.

MSFT, keep your grubby hands off Flickr!

Or Roc will slobber all over you.

Yah Mo B There

Robb turned us on to the smooooth series "Yacht Rock," chronicling the rise of the soft rock superstars of the '70's. Ardel's sick of me singing like Michael McDonald already. So what if I'm 2 years late to the party?

What I'm Reading

Here's a few parent-centric blogs that I've been reading regularly lately:

Metrodad is a designer with a toddler living in NYC. His wry observations about raising a daughter often crack my shit up. His latest post about the evils of a certain corporation (hint: rhymes with "fizznee") is spot on.

Ricedaddies puts an Azn spin on parenting, though the members of the blogroll (which includes the aforementioned Metrodad) encounter all of the universal parental issues. Mostly having to do with poop.

Daddtypes The post on early Sesame Street episodes is worth the price of admission alone.

Thingamababy Product reviews of cool stuff that won't fit in our house, and more.

One Year Left

Just noticed the Dubya countdown clock (lower right on this page) just hit the 365 day mark. I plan to celebrate by going shopping.

Mo' Money, Mo' Betta

As part of "Get Healthy 2008 With the Jalas," we're in the midst of getting our financials in order. This was a long time coming, not just because we're combining 2 households and need to make sure Roc's set up for the future, but I am terrible at managing money and we seem to be spending a lot of it lately. Considering I'm the son of an accountant, it's pretty sad. But also being a consultant, I know when it's time to bring in the experts and the value of that knowledge.

Jala2 got the name of a financial planner from a friend of a friend, and after laying out our lives with details that even our families aren't aware of, we have our report. Good news is there's no red, bad news is that the black is more of an 70% grey. Though we're not at paycheck to paycheck status, we aren't funding the goal side of our plan as much as we want. Stuff like vacations, paying down CC debt faster, replacing the Subie in a few years, upgrading Casita Jalanquera, etc. But we have a plan now, so at least we know what we need to do to get there.

We also talked about "Plan B," you know, what happens if one of us kicks the bucket. I already have life insurance from a previous life, but it's not enough to cover everyone/everything. Jala2 hardly has any. So we spent some time filling out a stack of forms for life insurance. I forgot how bloody intrusive it is, trying to maintain some dignity while explaining every fart and bloody nose we've had in the last 7 years. Then there's the pee and blood tests. We're convinced we'll get rejected, but maybe that's from watching this movie.

Next task: get our wills made.

Learning to love The Villages

If I seem unusually relaxed after this holiday season, it's probably because I'm still gellin' like a retiree.  We spent our break between Xmas and New Year's visiting Mom and Dad B. at their pad in the Villages, near Orlando, and I gotta say, I had even more fun that I was expecting.  Really, how much fun can it be partying with 60,000 of our elders?  Let's crunch some numbers:

• Golf your ass off: 22 executive (9 hole) courses and 9 championship (27 hole) courses.
• Drink your ass off: 2 fer 1 drinks during Happy Hour at the town square.  Everybody gets the senior discount, and there's dancing every evening.
• 78: about the average daytime temp. while we were there. 
  

Setting aside for a second my professional opinion about the development itself (bland architecture aside from the town squares, no visual differentiation between the different "villages," confusing wayfinding, car-oriented circulation system, etc.), I found myself caught up in the general sunny attitude of the place.  At times it did veer into the forced friendliness that you get from your average salesman but overall it seemed everyone was genuinely happy to be living there (just ask Pops how he likes it there and be ready for a long dissertation on the benefits of the Villages).  Who wouldn't, if every day was a weekend in Florida?  Even the retired folk slinging burgers at Johnny Rockets looked like they were just hanging out with their friends.

Hope you all had a wonderful Holidays, and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Rocco, take your knife and go outside and play...

One of these days I think it would be fun to attend a TED conference.

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, talks about our new wave of overprotected kids -- and spells out 5 (and really, he's got 6) dangerous things you should let your kids do. Allowing kids the freedom to explore, he says, will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer.

I agree with all of this 110%. It's a complex world, one that is both dangerous and exciting, often all at the same time. The sooner my kids understand how it works the sooner they can manipulate it to their own whims. People often equate safety with avoidance, but what happens when kids are taught to fear everything?

2007 in review

Nothing happened last year.

Merry Christmas from the Jalas

Hope you all have a great holiday. We'll be in sunny Orlando with the rest of the Blanquera clan.

MiniMaz

Maz and Niloo welcomed their little one last Thursday. Yay! He looks just like his dad.

Like a rotten hemorrhoid...

We're bleeding money out the ass this year with all the house fixes. First it was the water heater and the floors, then the sewer line backed up and had to get snaked (but not before dumping a few gallons of water into the kitchen), now the furnace, which went tits up a couple weeks ago. That one's been due for awhile, we've just been opting for the quick fix-a valve here, a electronic widget there-but now Jala3 demands consistent, reliable heat. The little punk is probably right.

We're going to get a gas insert for the fireplace. Now we can have that space back.

Next year: the roof. Fun.

6 Months, Bishes!

After 6 months of parenthood, you would think by now I've got the hang of this thing. I suppose I do, if alternating between crushing fear and goofy bliss is normal. Here's a list of random thoughts:

• Crushing fears: basically every news story about sick kids, lead paint, superbugs, etc.
  
• Goofy bliss: sometimes I sneak into his room to watch him sleep. Sometimes he wakes up, looks around, sees me, and breaks into the widest, happiest smile ever. Gets me every time.
  
• I adore my wife. Jala3 is lucky to have her as a mom.
  
• I can be up to my elbows in Rocco-poop and still sing nursery rhymes, but if the dog so much as farts I'm having conniptions about it.
• Having a child is like having an instant best friend.
• We're already talking about the future Jala4. We're not getting any younger.
  
• Whoa. (see above).
  
• My one resolution this year was to try to see the world as Roc would, where everything is new and awesome, to explore along with him.
  
• Huggies>Pampers.
• Seems like everyone around us is procreating, or is it that we're just hanging around more prospective parents nowadays?
• Despite the crushing fears, I think that we're the most laid-back parents you'll ever meet. I just want my kid(s) to be normal. In an excellent way.
• I apologize for still not getting our 777 thank-yous out yet.
• Having 2 kids is still beyond my comprehension, like it was when we were still contemplating the 1.

What, you want profound?

Raiders crush Seahawks

No, not the '84 AFC championship, but actually last week's homecoming game @ Nathan Hale. We're trying to get into the local school spirit, so the family's making an effort to attend some of of the Raiders' events, when they're home.

We only stayed for the first half, since we were long past Rocco's bedtime, but he seemed to enjoy being out in the crowd. Seemed more interested in the cheerleaders than the game. That's my boy.

We were expecting some kind of homecoming type pageantry during halftime but that never materialized. Do schools not do this anymore?

Of course!

We should have seen this coming from a mile away...

Having been part of several corporate takeovers (on both sides), it's clear to me that every decision made by Sonics owner Clay Bennett's group has been well thought out and calculated. They had a vision: End basketball in Seattle ASAP. They had a strategy: End basketball support in Seattle by alienating "casual fans," and make the team look like a balance-sheet nightmare if they continue to operate here.

Everyone around here seems to be resigned to the Supes going to OK City, including myself, I guess. I haven't been able to muster much enthusiasm for the team since the days of Payton and Kemp. Geez, wasn't that like, 12 years ago? Part of it is marketable players, guys we fans can get behind, and part of it is the basketball product, which has been terrible *cough*WallyWalker*cough* of late. Thing is, once they're gone, we're not getting it back, not for a long time, if ever. I have nothing to base that on, of course, but what does it say that the NBA deems Oklahoma fucking City as more viable than Seattle?

Downtown Freddie Brown, where have you gone?

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Copyright 2007 - Baker/Jordan Photographic Brilliance - all rights

DSCF0033.JPG, originally uploaded by Blindwriting.

Carl's posted JayBay/NikBay's photos from Triple 7's. Jersey in da hizzy. I just may have to get myself a shirt with my face on it, though J does the sneer much better than I.

Speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Baker, it was a fun, fun weekend, just got home last nite, will collect our thoughts after we get back to some kind of normalcy...

R.I.P. Water Pump

2002-2007

It was good knowing you, my little Teutonic buddy. Who would've known your cheap little plastic impeller was just not up to the task? We had some good times...remember our road trip to California? Seems like yesterday. But like your brethren (or is that sistern? cistern?), you lived hard and died young. So long.

Day Cares

Today is Roquito's first day at daycare. I had gotten used to leaving him in the morning to go to work, but seeing him lying there in an unfamiliar room kinda got to me. I think it's knowing mom isn't there either. Maybe it's the $1300 check we wrote soon afterwards.

He looked happy though, and I'm sure he'll be well cared for.

Things I never thought I'd live to see, Part 2.

Why I ever thought that Stevie would be rusty from not touring/performing regularly I don't know. What a great, fun show. Stevie had people up and dancing from the get-go. Well, there was that story he told about his mother right at the beginning, then when people sat down for that song from Innervisions (I hate it when people sit down for these concerts, is that a Seattle thing? Kenny G, sure, but Stevie Wonder?), but once the hits started flowing, we were boogie-ing on. Our favorite song: the extended jam on Ribbon in the Sky. I don't have a set list handy, but he covered all the big ones. There were a few we heard during the sound check that he didn't play, while we were waiting in line outside the chateau...All Day Sucker was the one I remember...was hoping there would be an encore, but there wasn't.

What about Rocco? He hardly fussed at all about being up late, and even slept a little bit during the middle of the show. We taped a couple cotton balls to his head so hopefully his ears weren't ringing the next day. Turns out he wasn't even the youngest kid there. A couple nearby had their 4-week-old with them. Now THAT was gutsy.

Thanks, Pete, that was the best wedding gift ever.

Sour Milk

From the Washington Post...yet another clash of science vs. profit in this rotten administration. Guess who wins?

"In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.

Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.

The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter (pdf), the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were "grateful" for his staff's intervention to stop health officials from "scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding," and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads."

[italics mine] I don't understand why people wouldn't want to breast feed--it's a free supply of food, people!. And that's the issue-ever buy formula at the store? $25 for a can that lasts maybe a couple weeks. Fuck that. This is purely a grab for more profit, and not at all about childrens' health.

True, formula is useful for supplementing one's milk supply for those lean times and for those who can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. We've used it ourselves, but avoid it if at all possible, and only the free samples that the formula companies send new parents. Roc's moving on to solids soon; you can bet I'm going to be looking at baby food in a different light. Here's the posters that were shelved and the final campaign poster, judge for yourself which is more effective:

Brain Dump

Water heater's in, nice clean install by Washington Energy. Works great, we don't have to wait that long for hot water, and it's not brown anymore. I can't believe we lived with that as long as we did. Will post pics.

Tonight we're going to the Stevie Wonder concert at the Chateau. Woot! Pedro got us tickets as a wedding present. Whadda guy. And we get to bring Taco, so he can say that his first concert was Stevie. Not that he'll care, really. That's probably like me saying that my first concert was the Glenn Miller Orchestra. But it'll be fun.

Speaking of the slobber monkey, he's doing great. He can turn over from back to front like it's no one's business, but not so good the other way around. He'll be scooting around before we know it. Yikes. Seems to prefer interaction with people rather than play with toys. Which makes it hard when we need to put him down for any reason. We're starting daycare on the 4th, half days until Mom goes back to work. She's dreading those first days in the orifice after taking 5 months off, as would anyone. I'd be happy with being the sole earner so that she can take care of Roc, but that's not really doable yet. So hi ho, hi ho...

Remodeling

Our water heater shit itself sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, relatively spectacularly (or in insurance-ese, we had a "catastrophic failure"). It looks like pressure was building up in the tank and started to force the lid off, the fittings on the top were leaking, and that's all she wrote. Our bedroom floor was soaked from the closet to about 3' all along the north wall, it was squishy under the flooring in the hallway, and the water heater closet had about 1" of standing water.

Of course, we didn't realize all this had happened until we woke up to feed the Taco on Sunday morning. At first, I thought "Great, the dog pissed on the floor again," but as the extent of the problem became obvious, we tracked it down to the water heater. ABJ called Pedro's plumber later that morning, who suggested that we contact our insurance company, that we may be able to claim the repairs. Indeed, that was the case, so Servpro came out that afternoon, and after about an hour of work, had torn out the carpet in our bedroom, the flooring in the hall, and had set up fans and dehumidifiers. Fortunately, they didn't find any damage or rot; though it appears the tank had been leaking awhile, there wasn't any mold.

So the upshot is we'll get new carpet, which we wanted to do anyway. We'll probably end up doing both bedrooms. We'll get new flooring, at least in the damaged area, possibly the living room too, if we can't find the material again. And, we'll get a new water heater. We're going to go tankless, while it's about 3x the cost of a tank, we'll get some much needed storage space and be more energy efficient. While it's not covered in the insurance claim, it's a good investment.

We've been talking about this episode as a good chance to clear out the house and start over, as far as interior design. So we may rent a storage space or POD and rethink how we're using the space. I think it'll be kinda fun, at least at first.