i don't livejournal.

Four month sleep regression. Bah!

( Kid pictures )

Long overdue, but I seem to be starting all of my entries like this.

I'm falling into an endless round of proofreading and editing and composing at work, with interesting work sponsored trips and recruiting activities, and quite honestly even doing Dickens as semi-halfassed as I feel it's going (read: not Fezziwigging it) it feels like it's taking up too much of my time. Time I could be spending on interesting projects at work. Time I could be fiddling with an Arduino or making wire-embedded lace. Or, um, writing. Yeah.

Looking to move, looking at how possible (or impossible) it would be to go out and buy a place, looking at the looming specter of co-habitation again... and I am... strangely peaceful about it all. I keep trimming my LJ to remove people I'm just not reading anymore, and it's not helping much.

And while life is stressful, it is also really really happy.

So there.

It cracks me up when Iris calls me "sweetheart".

Neil has started moving, inchworm-style. And he now rolls from front to back by using his legs to push his butt way up in the air and then over to the side. (He's been rolling front to back for a little while, but he was originally doing it by pushing up and over with his arms.) He also discovered his feet.

Zinnia has really gotten into grabbing things to put in her mouth. She's also started taking really solid, long naps.

Both now and in general. 2009 is probably the most notable year I can recall. It must have something to do with how busy I've been. Too busy to write in my LiveJournal, that's for sure. And there's been growth and development on all fronts: intellectual, financial, personal, interpersonal, professional, physical, etc.

At the same time, there are daily issues to overcome, stress of many projects and upcoming deadlines, and the occasional bout of exhaustion. I still need to pull my finances into better order, get my semi-professional brand out there as an umbrella for all my projects, and figure out at what point will I retire from pure technology. Most of my major projects are so long-term and require a constant stream of smaller projects to support them, I'm not sure I'll know when I've succeeded.

It may be that what I'll ultimately end up doing is moving where there are more people doing what I really want to do. Living here means I'm completely surrounded by startups and technology, so I can't help but spend cycles thinking about that. It frames my thinking and inspiration.

We'll see.

Both babies are now able to out-pee a disposable diaper overnight. Bah. I guess this means I'm back to having to actually get out of bed and change them when they wake up in the night. (On the plus side, the fleece sleep sacks kept the bedding dry.)

Iris got to visit the doctor this week, too. She's growing well - 83rd percentiles for both height and weight. (38.5 inches and 34.5 lbs) The doctor was impressed with her speech, since she was talking almost the whole time. The most surprising thing was that her ears were ( cut for grossness ) Iris was amazingly cooperative throughout the ordeal and then got two shots without crying. Who is this kid? It's like there's this switch that flips when we go out and all of the whining stops when other adults are around because it's so wonderful to get out of the house.
A few hours later, Iris ran up to me crying that her band-aid hurt. I was immediately scared that she was having a vaccine reaction and took off her band-aid to check the spot. I could see the two pinpricks, and they looked fine. But the entire area under where the band-aid adhesive had been was bright pink. Her skin looked a lot better after a bath plus a few hours. But we're going to call the pediatricians' office tomorrow morning to see if we can find out what she might have reacted to.

Pictures from the TbtB holiday party. (They're on Shutterfly and I'm not sure how well this linking is going to work.)

Click here to view these pictures larger