Liam is now eighteen months old, and trying to either disassemble or climb on everything he sees. I keep my camera ready, looking for those rare quiet moments.

In April our friends planned an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos. After looking upon individual eggs with wonder, and giving all his eggs to mommy to make sure she had enough, he wound up with very few himself.

Though he inherited my horrible allergies, his newfound love du jour seems to be slobbery dog kisses. We finally brought in the big guns and let the lawn service conquer the backyard jungle, so it’s quite the little place to run around now. The pup pups are enamored with him, and tolerate even the most awkward of ear tugs and tail pulls.

L’s other newfound love is the telephone. Every ring elicits a loudly yelled “MAMA!!”, no doubt having had the phone associated with E’s evening calls to home during late work nights. Though we continually position the phone out of reach, he continually finds chairs to push over to the high table and scoots himself up to fiddle with the buttons and call people from the saved phone number directory. At one point we caught him having successfully started dialing “011 44″ followed by not much of anything on his part as we quickly snatched the phone away.

But no matter what destruction befalls our home by his hand, every night when he sleeps our twenty four hour amnesia kicks in, and to us he reverts back to being just our pure, angelic little munchkin.

I had put together enough of the cabinets that I got my time down to ten minutes per cabinet. Despite that, it took me three hours to do the uppers, mainly due to a shitty studfinder that turned the whole stud finding process into a comedy of errors. It began with knocking on the wall to listen for solid areas, and ended with four unneeded drill holes through studless drywall. I finally got pissed off enough that I went to Home Depot and dropped $30 on a studfinder that actually worked. After working on cars, houses, electronics, and everything in between, I’ve found that 80% of fixing anything is having the right tool.

The uppers mount to a rail that’s drilled into the studs. The mounts are standard IKEA keyhole l-brackets.

One of our problems was the placement of the electrical lines for the vent hood. I was able to cut out two small holes in the drywall, feed the lines back through the stud, and down the wall far enough to perfectly line up with the input hole in the hood. We then patched the wall and repainted that section.

Here are the upper cabinets and vent hood, midway through mounting the countertop on the wall of lower cabinets.

I’ve talked for ages about how I’m going paperless, to the point it might as well be a New Year’s Resolution. But after month after month of scenes like the one above, I’m fed up enough to fulfill my own wish.

In the past, there were a few stumbling blocks in my way, that have all been recently resolved.

First, more and more companies are archiving statements online in .pdf format, and allowing completely paperless billing solutions. This will cut down drastically on the amount of papers that actually need scanning, and reduce my endless procrastination on what before seemed a hopelessly unattainable goal.

Second, I bit the bullet and acknowledged that our HP All-in-One printer/fax/scanner/copier is actually good enough to do the job, if I don’t put overbearing time constraints on this project.

Third, I broke down and invested in a redundant storage solution. After tossing a number of ideas around and reading reviews, I went with the D-Link DNS-321 NAS, and two 500G hard drives in a RAID 1 array.

Lastly, I was informed that our city dump has an absolutely enormous shred-it-yourself shredder to get rid of all the resultant unneeded paper.

I’ve still got some dread about wading through years of paperwork and sheet-feeding endless bills and receipts, but possibly eliminating the need for a file cabinet is truly exciting. The key is going to be whether or not I can scan papers and dispose of them faster than they are coming in the house.

Or, should I say, they are on him. All over him. On his hands, his seat, the entirety of his clothes, his bib, his face, his hair. Very little, if any, actually makes it to his mouth.

He seems to be under the distinct impression that feeding himself is already his job, and that making a fist around the business end of the plastic purple baby spoon full of goopy fruit-foods will somehow accomplish this task.

Until he is a little less overzealous, making any headway at feeding time usually requires continual relocation of his arms with a quiet explanation that they’re better off at his side than wrapped around what he’s trying to eat.

At 6:50pm tonight, L will be four calendar weeks old. He’s grown quite a bit, and can now fit into his Baby Snoopy outfit, I think it’s the first outfit that was bought for him before he was even born.

He got his first bath last week. We had to wait awhile until his umbilical cord tip had fallen off, and it happened just in time for him really needing a bath. It wasn’t his favorite thing in the world.

Things are still pretty surreal at times. Everything has run together in a sea of endless diaper changes and feedings. In the midst of what has become routine is still the amazement that he looks less like a newborn, and more and more like a little person. He has mannerisms, gestures, facial expressions, and behaviors. When he sleeps, he looks like a miniature adult.

I don’t know if the glow will wear off completely. I imagine when he starts puking in greater volume and throwing food spoons across the room, things will get a little tiresome. But for now he’s still pretty angelic and well-behaved.

L is now almost 2 weeks old, and I can tell a huge difference in him from even a week ago. He’s making a lot more little noises, his eyes are open a lot more and he’s looking at the world around him. He’s even holding his head up by himself and trying to head-butt me when I burp him. He’s starting to be awake more during the day, whereas a week ago he slept almost round the clock. As such, he’s more fussy and wants to be held to be soothed a lot more.

A few days ago we entered the period where everything started getting really difficult. In between all his feedings and holding-time, there is laundry to be done, floors to be vacuumed, showers to be taken, groceries to be bought, trash to be taken out, and six dogs, two cats, and five reptiles that all need to be fed. We’ve trouble adjusting, to say the least. I worried a week ago what would happen when I am back at work full time and E is home by herself, but we’re just taking it a step at a time.

I went back to work today for the first time, and it was pretty gut wrenching. I thought before we had L that I would cherish time away, but I was horribly sad and missed my family terribly the whole time I was gone.

I’m finally starting to upload some photos of L and the birth.

I thought I would be way more in contact with everyone throughout the last few days, but instead found myself just wanting to have private time with E and some of our family members.

The birth was rough and we’re all still a little shell-shocked. After he was delivered, and the placenta started to be delivered, E wound up with her uterus on the outside of her body. Apparently the way to soften the uterus and get it back in the body is to administer nitroglycerin, a relaxing agent. The anesthesia techs accidentally gave her 150 micrograms of nitroglycerin instead of 50 micrograms, so E immediately started crashing and was rushed to the OR. Every nurse and doctor in L&D was there, she lost tons of blood but wound up being okay in a very short amount of time.

I was left in the delivery room with Liam, who had fluid in his lungs and needed a little TLC to start coughing it up. They cleaned him up, and once E was stable and stitched up, we went in an OR recovery room to have the moment together we missed out on after the birth.

Everyone is in fantastic health now. L is quiet and feeding nicely, cooing and gurgling and acting very content. E was able to stand up and walk around late this morning, which was tremendous progress. All her IVs are out and she was able to start eating.

After that long day yesterday, everything today is very, very quiet and relaxed. They kept us in L&D overnight to monitor E, and now we’re up in a normal room in postpartum.

It feels completely normal and natural to have a son, all my fears went away when he came out. E is a natural at being a mom, as well, she’s doing great with him, and he’s breastfeeding fantastically.

We are very grateful and happy, childbirth is really an amazing and wonderful experience. Our son is beautiful and miraculous to us.

I purchased Liz as a hatchling from a local pet center almost eight years ago.  In my mind it was a total rescue operation, as pet store reptile acquisition and care practices are frequently dodgy.  She had legs like little sticks, was slightly underweight, but adorable to be sure.

I went through various trials and tribulations relating to stomach bacteria often found in bearded dragons, and there were several trips to the vet for poop tests and nights with plain yogurt eaten off plastic spoons.

The low point came almost three years ago, while I was in the process of moving out of my apartment.

There were a few nights where I didn’t sleep at home, but had not yet moved Liz to the new digs.  In an act of sheer protest, or at least in the throes of some sort of separation anxiety (or so my dramatic love for her would have me believe), she ate part of her tank litter and her intestines became impacted.

I noticed a change in her eating habits, and watched for a week or two as she became more and more sluggish, eating less and then nothing at all.  A vet trip brought two overnight stays, stomach medicine and several enemas.  She finally passed what amounted to be an intestine shaped tube of concrete, and looked a bit better.

Thinking the worst was over, I brought her home, only to have this behavior repeated again and again.  I learned that in severe impactions, in animals as well as in humans, the bowels can actually cease to operate properly.  Liz didn’t poop on her own accord for what wound up being several months, and didn’t seem to be improving.

I was distraught, to say the least.  I endlessly rolled over numerous options in my head, and finally made the teary-eyed and difficult decision to have her put down.  I made the appointment and brought her to the vet.

I gave them Liz, they took her to the back of the animal hospital.  I talked with a vet tech and began signing the euthanasia papers.  When I was done I sat there for a few minutes, and was on the verge of a meltdown when I called for the vet.  I couldn’t go through with it, and implored, ”Is there no other choice?”  She told me to hold on.

She was gone a few minutes, and reappeared holding a huge pump syringe with no needle, and a long rubbery catheter.  “You get to give her enemas,” she said.

And give her enemas I did. Flipped over, KY Jellied, catheter plunged, bloody hand clawed to shreds enemas.  And they worked.

I don’t know why the home enemas were the end all solution while the vet’s enemas weren’t.  I imagine, in my scientific ignorance, it was just a matter of weathering the storm until her bowels started working again.  I’d like to think that it was the extra tender love that came from me as her owner performing the tedious task, but that could just be my cinematic optimism.

She’s been fine ever since.  Floating in our bathtub, scampering around her tank chasing crickets, and nuzzling her little nose into the crook of my neck.  Hopefully for years to come.

After jumping through several hoops, we found the Texas Tenant’s Union and attended their free weekly workshop. I’m now convinced that the information presented should be “required reading” for anyone renting a property.

The basis for their presentation was that all tenants should know what legal procedure to follow throughout the course of their tenancy even in landlord/tenant communication, in order to prevent situations later in which the tenant, although correct in a dispute, lacks any supporting documentation. The lecture moved through key points of the standard TAA lease and what the legal terminology means in everyday tenancy. Discussion included rights during eviction proceedings, etc.

I was surprised at the number of mistakes I’ve made in the past out of lack of legal knowledge, and E is in the same boat. Both of us have landlords who have been very kind, and with whom we’ve developed a congenial rapport. There have been things I never had properly documented, from existing apartment damage upon move-in, to damage done through violent incidents with drugged out neighbors. My trust rested in verbal discussion and the assurance by the landlord that “It will be taken care of”. What I see now, especially through the degeneration of Eilene’s situation with her landlord, is that it’s very important for landlords to appear congenial and create a false sense of security for the tenant, so that when something blows up the tenant has no documentation of anything and no legs to stand on.

I would highly recommend to anyone that they find a local meeting of a similar organization. It’s worth its weight in gold.