Still Around

Paul at Chris and Misty's Easter Egg hunt

I haven't been posting so much lately because I've been pretty busy for the last few months. Between taking a cross country roadtrip to California, participating in GeoQuest 2, and working on three new projects, I haven't had as much time as I would like to update.

I've been working on integrating Zen Cart in Wordpress for one of my projects, as well as developing a "ZenPress" friendly theme. Paul has been pretty interested in watching the proceedings and seems to have figured that writing code does something. He's banging away on his Vtech laptop, occasionally announcing that he is an "awesome coder".

I'm also in the early planning stages of Paul's Halloween costume. He loves to pretend that he is a robot, which presents a little bit of a challenge. I imagine the few robot costumes available at the store aren't going to jive with his image of "robot", so I'll have to play around with it until I come up with a toddler friendly design.

Back, I think…

I haven't really had time to write as much as I'd like to for the past half year or so. Staying at home with Paul all day usually tends to fry my brain to the point where it's hard to sit down and write. We've also been on 4 roadtrips during August to the beginning of December, which plays havoc with everyone's schedule. But life finally seems to be calming down a bit and my mother in law was right - things start to get much better around the second birthday.

Paul's communication skills have gotten so much better, even in just the last month, that it's not even funny. It even sucks a little, because I thought I had another half year or so before I'd be hearing "NO LIKE YOU!!!!" from Paul's mouth. But I guess that's balanced out by him telling me things like "Want waffles", "cook pizza!", or "milken!" or even "Oh no! Diaper! Grrrossss!".

He did get his own computer (one of the first IMacs), so that does help free up a little time for me to catch up on housework. I'm hoping to have more time to write after Christmas Day. My mother in law found a nice train table for Paul, and I'm setting that up in my office area. Hopefully he'll be enthralled with his pretend train play to let me write a bit and catch up on my blog reading. (Sadly, Bloglines says I have about 15k of unread entries to catch up on.)

The Guest Blogger

I've been out of town off and on since mid May. My guest blogger was also traveling with me, but he fell down on his end of the bargain. I always bring my laptop with me, and I can get online using my cellphone so long as I'm in a major city or near an interstate. However, my guest blogger decided he'd rather talk to our puppy and wave at everyone we passed. So to catch everyone up, here are some of the things he would have written about.

• When Mama drives 900 miles in one night, she doesn't appreciate her hotel bed being used for gymnastics at 5am.
• The cat does not like hugs, and he doesn't like me copycatting his hiss.
• My command of the English language is cute until I drop the cordless phone in the toilet and walk out saying "Yay! Yay!" and clapping.
• How not to wake up Aunt Anna: Don't dump dry catfood on her pillow.
• Signs that you're a big boy: Saying "Coke" clearly enough at the drive thru and the order taker asks if you want another Coke.
• Help Urgently Needed! How do you get your 5 year old cousin to stop carrying you like a baby?
• How I Spent 06-06-06 at a Denny's in NJ talking to a geocacher from Seattle, Wa.
• How to get MawMaw's computer to yourself by locking yourself in the office during naptime
• How come grownups always get to drive, even if I get in the driver's seat first?
• Rant: Mama and Daddy aren't supportive of my newfound skills in circumventing the gates, climbing out of my crib, or dancing on tables
• Why did Mama think the callers and DJ in Charlotte, NC were so funny for thinking Riding Dirty meant when you got busted for not cleaning your windows after going mudriding?
• I still think Daddy would have rather had a card with a golf tee or beer bottle opener taped on it than the one with words.

OpenId Comments

Since I know a few of you use LiveJournal, I decided to go ahead and install Singpolyma's updated Open ID for Wordpress plugin. So long as you have an open session on LJ, you shouldn't have to do anything but grant permission when LJ prompts you. If you have any problems with it, let me know.

New Year’s Resolution #1 -Site Redesign

I've been meaning to do a redesign of Random Text for quite a few months now, but Paul has been keeping me busy. He's finally enjoying playing on his own for more than 15 minutes, which will hopefully leave me time to actually accomplish something. I have a few people in my family who are not really that comfortable with computers, but still enjoy reading about what I'm up to.

Read more »