Potty Training

Well, the saga continues… We’ve had Alice out of pull ups for a few weeks now, but 75% of the time she wets the bed, so on Monday we put her back in pull ups for the night. I would wake her up to pee before I went to bed, and then again in the night when Nathaniel woke up, but this didn’t guarantee a dry night. On the up side, she would wake up when she peed, but just couldn’t seem to wake up before she had to go. So we’ll save a few loads of laundry for awhile, and try again at some point (not soon!). She seems happier, because she’s not waking up at night!

Nathaniel at 8 months

Well, our little guy is full on crawling now, moving from room to room exploring his world. Don had to put the gate back up in the kitchen, and we have to try to remember to close them when Nathaniel is in the room! Of course, he’s still not sleeping through the night…he never has been a big sleeper. He wakes usually 2 times/night, and is up for the day between 5-6am. Dr. Pow said he’d likely start sleeping through the night once he started solids- that was 2 months ago, and nothing has changed! We’re fearing this is his way, but of course won’t be on bottles forever, and I think in 4 months this night time feeding business will be over… Nathaniel can also bring himself up to a kneeling position; last night we found him holding on to the bar of the island stool, kneeling and then brought himself to a standing position! Don moved his crib down to the low setting yesterday, as Nathaniel loves to hold his crib rail while kneeling…we don’t want topple over baby! Chase is indeed quite concerned about Nathaniel being mobile- anywhere Chase goes Nathaniel is sure to follow! Poor Chase…

Crawling to Sitting and Back Again

This morning Nathaniel was crawling around on the doffice floor, while Alice watched one of the new movies she got for her fourth birthday. I turned my head, and then Nathaniel was sitting on his bum I’ve never seen him do this before. Technically, I still haven’t seen him do this, only the final result. I’m not really sure how he manages to get from tummy/hands/knees to his bum. By the way, Chase is not very impressed with all this crawling business. He liked Nathaniel a lot more when he stayed in one place. The first time I saw Nathaniel crawl, it was to try to get to Chase. As you can imagine, babies think you should always grab fur, paws, tails, whenever you get close enough to your cat. As with Alice, Chase is pretty understanding about this abuse – he usually just runs away.

Alice updates

Well, it doesn’t seem fair that we don’t blog much about Alice these days– she’s passed through all of the developmental stages of early childhood, and is now a big girl. There are noteworthy events as of late, however. September 3rd: Alice begins her second year of pre-school, going M/W/F from 1:30pm- 3:45pm. She is now in the same class as Bethany, a friend who lives right across from the purple park. September 4th: Alice and I go to Corteo, a Cirque Du Soleil production. Don and I saw it the week before (on a date!!), and through the whole thing I kept thinking how much Alice would love it! So Alice and I went while Meghan looked after ’taniels, a 4pm show. We had front row seats (only the best for my girl!). At first she thought it was too loud, and kept covering her ears. Then she was okay cuddling with me during the loud parts. I’d offer M&M’s and popcorn for distraction, which helped (What 3 year old doesn’t want treats for supper???!!). For the second half of the show, she was so into it that she forgot to cover her ears. It was so cute, I wish I had the camcorder just to record her! Every time there was a character or scene she liked, she’d start clapping, even if no one else was, and smile and laugh… it was wonderful. Whenever there was a character that came to our part of the stage, they would look at Alice, smile and do a little wave, and Alice would wave back. How cute is that?

Nathaniel starts crawling

Our little guy has been moving about the last week or so; at first, just rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, which progressed to a bum hop (how cute is that!) and now he can crawl, moving his arms and legs.

Upgrading OpenSolaris 2008.05 Build 86 to Build 95

I’ve just managed to upgrade my OpenSolaris 2008.05 machine from build 86 to build 95. The instructions were inspired by Updating Your System to OpenSolaris Development Builds. The process was a little finicky, so here’s the script I used:``` #!/bin/bash

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Nathaniel at 6 months

Nathaniel had his 6 month visit with Dr. Pow August 1st, and his vaccinations Aug 8th. His measurements are: 17 lb. 1 oz 27 1/4 inches long So he remains in the 50th percentile for weight, and 75th for length; as the nurse described him, “long and lean”. He looks smaller than many other babies his age, cuz he’s just so darn solid! Not much chub, he bounces around in his jolly jumper too much for that! Don always says after he gets Nathaniel out of it after his early morning workout, his legs are hot! If he’s in the right mood, Nathaniel is happy jolly jumping for an hour or longer. He has recently taken to swinging in it from side to side as well. Thank you Auntie Chrissy for letting us borrow this most valuable piece of equipment! Nathaniel is now full bore on solids, and enjoying all of it, except peas, and some things he finds sour ie/ apples. He is still up at least once/night, lately for 1-2 hours at a time- yikes! But if this is the case, it tends to be the only time he is up, and has 2 feedings worth during that period. IE/ last night he woke at 11:30pm- just after Mommy fell alseep from being at work at a 50 person hors d’oeuvre party- and he ate 160ml, was awake until 1:30am, but had another 140 ml in there somewhere (I don’t remember when)… I always go back to bed and let him try to settle himself, but he moves around and rolls too much, and eventually gets stuck and/or frustrated and I have to go rescue him. By 1:30am last night (or I guess this morning) I went in and picked him up- he was flailing away and not happy. So when I picked him up, he completely stopped moving, and just stared at his blue night light. After only a minute or so, his poor little head fell onto my shoulder, and he was fast asleep. It was so precious, I wish I was more rested to be able to enjoy these moments more!!! But, on the other hand, the one good thing about doing the night feedings is that I get one on one time with him, which is the only time of the day/night I get this. So in some ways I look forward to it! Also, when Nathaniel was exactly 6 months, that day nana and papa were here, and Nathaniel sat up by himself for several minutes. Nana even got a photo! We’re glad that we all got to witness such a wonderful thing, as is rarely the case!

IP Change Now Complete

Shaw was having routing issues (which was pretty obvious from my traceroute). Now that those issues have been resolved, I’m back up and running again. It’s unfortunate that this IP change led to ~9 hours of downtime.

Helping Daddy Change the Static IPs

Shaw notified us a while ago that we were getting new static IP addresses. This is part of their, “ongoing commitment to proactively manage and upgrade” their internet network. Whatever that means. The old IPs (70.73.128.39 and 70.73.128.40) became inactive around 1AM today. The new IPs (96.53.0.246 and 96.53.0.250) were to become active at 6AM today. This is where Nathaniel became involved. At 5AM our Number One Son and Heir awoke. As happens most early mornings, he wakes up very cheerful. And why wouldn’t he be today? After all, he was going to get to help daddy work on the dmurray.ca network infrastructure. Having received my 5AM wake-up call, I gave him a bottle. I then made myself a cappuccino to kickstart my sleep-deprived brain. We then headed down to the doffice to see whether Shaw was on time. So far, not so good. Forward and reverse DNS are working correctly for wart.dmurray.ca: dmurray@euler:/home/dmurray 0> dig +short wart.dmurray.ca 96.53.0.250 dmurray@euler:/home/dmurray 0> dig +short -x 96.53.0.250 wart.dmurray.ca. But I’m able to do nothing more than ping the gateway IP (96.53.0.249). I’m able to resolve external hosts, but unable to reach any of them. Hmm. I tried a traceroute on wart.dmurray.ca: root@wart:~# traceroute shaw.ca traceroute to shaw.ca (204.209.208.8), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 * * * 2 rd1no-ge7-0-0-2.cg.shawcable.net (64.59.131.210) 9.615 ms 9.261 ms 8.978 ms 3 * * * 4 * * * ... 30 * * * Right. The only host that responded was rd1no-ge7-0-0-2.cg.shawcable.net. Time to make a call to tech support. Yuck. Since there wasn’t much else Nathaniel could do, he decided to roll around on the floor. Back to front, front to back, play with toys, play with toes, back to front. He’s getting really good at rolling over. But he’s still not sleeping through the night – up at least once, if not twice.

Got a Prescription Now....

For Father’s day I went to a walk-in clinic. I’ve had my cold since at least Mother’s day, so enough was enough. The Dr. listened to my lungs and prescribed Symbicort Turbuhaler 200mcg. This is a puffer of a synthetic corticosteroid and a “long-acting beta-agonist bronchodilator”. He said I could also come back for an antibiotic if I thought I needed that. Uh… did I mention that I’ve been sick since Mother’s day? Yeah, let’s go with the antibiotic, please. Now, please. So I’ve also got Azithromycin 250mg. I took two of those yesterday, then take one a day for 4 days. I naively hoped I’d be feeling a little better today, but alas I’m still kind of miserable. My sinuses switch between plugged and dripping, and I’ve been coughing more than I did yesterday. Maybe this is part of the recovery process…. Nathaniel came down with a cold a few days ago, but he’s mostly recovered. Alice has a bit of a runny nose, but she’s on the mend. Corinna? Well, she’s got a cough and a sinus cold. Her strategy: tough it out. I’ve long since given up any hope that I could use that approach.