Tuesday, December 29, 2009

First Snow this Winter

IMG_0411 Quite a different experience with the snow this year!  Last year I bundled up a 5 month old Des to take some snow pictures and he was not happy with me when I sat him in the cold stuff. 

Today when he woke up from his nap it was snowing for the first time this season and Desmond was so excited!  “Noh!” he keeps saying over and over.  I have a hard time peeling his nose off the window for anything.  We did bundle up and head outside for a few minutes to go get the mail.  I think I’ve found someone to love the snow with me!IMG_0422

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Christmas Morning

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Christmas morning we spent together as a family of three.  Desmond slept in until 7am which was nice.  We enjoyed a breakfast of cinnamon rolls, eggs, bacon, and orange juice.  Then we read the Christmas story out of Desmond’s Bible, and he listened to all of it.  Next we brought out the gifts, and this year Desmond knew exactly how to open them.  It was funny when Davin and I moved on to our gifts for each other.  Desmond saw another present, held out his arms and said, “Hey!”  It was so cute!  Later that afternoon we joined up with my family at Aunt Marcia’s house for a few hours.  It was nice to not have to drive far.  Desmond has been enjoying playing with his new toys, and I am increasingly thankful and amazed that God gave us the gift of His Son.

Disneyland 2009

 IMG_0142We just got back from a family vacation to Disneyland with the Lees.  What a trip it was!  Driving 1000 miles in one shot with two small children can be a bit tricky, but driving at night while they’re sleeping sure helps. 

We arrived on Wednesday, December 16th and went into the park for a little bit on our first night.  Thursday and Friday were both full days in Disneyland and California Adventure.  Desmond’s favorite ride was Dumbo, and we also enjoyed taking in some of the parades and fireworks shows.   The new Toy Story ride was also a highlight.   

Saturday morning Desmond got sick.  It was his first time ever to throw up.  Not fun.  We missed most of Saturday but after a doctor’s visit and an obviously feeling better little boy, we went enjoyed some of Disneyland that evening.  Our one goal for the night was to ride Dumbo for Des. 

Sunday was a mostly normal vacation day in the parks.  We took Addison for the evening so the Lees could have a date night.  Desmond was still working on getting back up to par so we didn’t stay out too late.  Unfortunately, that night Davin and I both came down with whatever it was Desmond had.

Monday was our final day at Disneyland.  The Lees took Desmond for the day (thank you so much!), and Davin and I stayed behind at the hotel feeling quite crummy.  We took some medicine to try to feel tolerable enough to go into the park that night for our scheduled date night.  We ate dinner at the Blue Bayou… our tradition from every Disneyland vacation.

Overall it was a fun trip, but I sure wish we could have skipped the flu.  (Poor Addison had it for the day we drove home.)  Davin and I missed going on lots of the big rides since we did most of the kids stuff early on and the crowds were so bad in the evenings it was difficult to just walk around sometimes.  Still Christmastime is beautiful in Disneyland, and I’m already thinking ahead to our next Disney vacation.

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Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Big Boy Bed

IMG_0009Desmond is really turning into a little boy, and somewhere along the line when I wasn’t looking he left the baby stage.  When we were at my parent’s house for Thanksgiving we came home with my old twin bed, and I was excited to set it up.  We got a new mattress, safety rail, and warm flannel sheets.  Desmond really likes his new bed, especially the fact that he can get in and out by himself.  We’re working on him staying in bed when he’s falling asleep.  It took putting him back in bed 20 times the first time, 3 the next, and zero the time after that.  I know we’ll have to revisit this lesson from time to time, but I’m proud of how well he’s doing with his big boy bed.IMG_0025 IMG_0031

Monday, November 30, 2009

My First Race!

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On Thanksgiving morning I ran the Oregon Mid-Valley Road Race, my first race ever.  I have never been a runner; it takes too much effort, but I’m actually starting to like it.  Just after the one mile mark a photographer was taking pictures and here I am

I signed up for the 5.2 mile scenic challenge.  Interpret “scenic” to mean “hills.”  There was one stretch of “significant elevation gain” about 2 miles in.  Most of the runners around me turned left and ran back for the second half of the flat 3.75 mile run, and I turned right up the switchback road.  I managed to keep my jogging cadence up rather than relaxing into a walk, but near the end of the killer hill a guy who was walking caught up to me and we were going the same speed.  Oh, brother!  I’m a sloooow hill runner.  He motivated me to keep going.

Near the 4 mile marker I was tired and wet. (It rained the whole time.)  A few ladies passed me and I tried to keep up with them since one of my goals was to not be last.  Another goal was to finish in less than an hour.  As I rounded the final corner and crossed the finish line I saw my time: 59 minutes.  Alright!  I also heard the announcer call out another runner after me who finished in just over an hour.  Whoohoo! 

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I checked my stats online later in the day and saw that I met two of my goals by one: I was 178 out of 179 runners and my time was an even 59 minutes.  It’s hard for me to do something I know I can’t win or even be anywhere near the best.  I keep reminding myself that about a year ago I couldn’t even run a flat half mile so I’ve improved a lot.  I should be even better next year.  Now I just need to heal my shin splints.  They’ve been bothering me for awhile so I was resting a lot before the race rather than training like I wanted to, but now they’re hurting again.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

How Many Words?

I was recently reading an article about the common gender differences in early childhood development.  By 18 months the article says boys typically have around 50 words and girls have 90.  I knew IMG_5517Desmond had more than 50 since a couple months ago Davin and I counted about 30.  So out of curiosity I made a list of all the words Desmond can say on his own.  Here’s what I came up with and I’m realizing all the time that there are more words I haven’t remembered or didn’t know he could say.

  • 1. 1-2-3
  • 2. a-b-c
  • 3. Addi
  • 4. Airplane
  • 5. Apple
  • 6. Apple sauce
  • 7. Baa
  • 8. Baby
  • 9. Bagel
  • 10. Ball
  • 11. Balloon
  • 12. Banana
  • 13. Bath
  • 14. Beans
  • 15. Bear
  • 16. Beep
  • 17. Belly button
  • 18. Bike
  • 19. Bird
  • 20. Bite
  • 21. Blanket
  • 22. Blue
  • 23. Boat
  • 24. Boo
  • 25. Book
  • 26. Boots
  • 27. Bowl
  • 28. Bread
  • 29. Broccoli
  • 30. Brush
  • 31. Bunny
  • 32. Burr
  • 33. Bus
  • 34. Button
  • 35. Buzz
  • 36. Bye-bye
  • 37. Camel
  • 38. Camera
  • 39. Car
  • 40. Cat
  • 41. CD
  • 42. Cheese
  • 43. Chicken
  • 44. Choo-choo
  • 45. Circle
  • 46. Clock
  • 47. Cock-a-doodle-doo
  • 48. Comb
  • 49. Cow
  • 50. Cracker
  • 51. Crayon
  • 52. Cup
  • 53. Daddy
  • 54. Dark
  • 55. Desmond
  • 56. Diaper
  • 57. Ding-Dong
  • 58. Dirt
  • 59. Dirty
  • 60. Dog/Doggie
  • 61. Done
  • 62. Donkey
  • 63. Down
  • 64. Drink
  • 65. Duck
  • 66. Ear
  • 67. Eat
  • 68. Elbow
  • 69. Elmo
  • 70. Eye
  • 71. Feet
  • 72. Fire truck
  • 73. Fish
  • 74. Fork
  • 75. Gina
  • 76. Gorilla
  • 77. Grapes
  • 78. Green
  • 79. Green beans
  • 80. Hair
  • 81. Heart
  • 82. Hexagon
  • 83. Hi
  • 84. Hippo
  • 85. Home
  • 86. Hot
  • 87. Hush
  • 88. Jesus
  • 89. Juice
  • 90. Key
  • 91. Knee
  • 92. Knock-knock
  • 93. Koala
  • 94. Leaf
  • 95. Light
  • 96. Lollipop
  • 97. Macaroni
  • 98. Meow
  • 99. Mickey Mouse
  • 100. Milk
  • 101. Mommy
  • 102. Moo
  • 103. Moon
  • 104. More
  • 105. Mouse
  • 106. Music
  • 107. Nana
  • 108. Nemo
  • 109. Night-night
  • 110. No
  • 111. Nose
  • 112. Oatmeal
  • 113. Off
  • 114. Oh-no
  • 115. On
  • 116. Oops
  • 117. Orange
  • 118. Out
  • 119. Outside
  • 120. Oval
  • 121. Owl
  • 122. Papa
  • 123. Paper
  • 124. Peanut butter
  • 125. Peas
  • 126. Pillow
  • 127. Pizza
  • 128. Please
  • 129. Poop
  • 130. Pop
  • 131. Potty
  • 132. Puppy
  • 133. Quack
  • 134. Radio
  • 135. Rain
  • 136. Rainbow
  • 137. Raisin
  • 138. Remote
  • 139. Robot
  • 140. Rock
  • 141. Seal
  • 142. Shoes
  • 143. Sit down
  • 144. Snack
  • 145. Sneeze
  • 146. Socks
  • 147. Spoon
  • 148. Star
  • 149. Sun
  • 150. Teeth
  • 151. Tick-tock
  • 152. Toes
  • 153. Train
  • 154. Truck
  • 155. TV
  • 156. Twinkle
  • 157. Uh-oh
  • 158. Up
  • 159. Vacuum
  • 160. Vroom
  • 161. Walk
  • 162. Water
  • 163. Whoa
  • 164. Word World
  • 165. Wow
  • 166. Yellow
  • 167. Yummy
  • 168. Zebra

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Permission to Get Wet

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Today Desmond and I went to the Children’s Museum for the first time.  Wow!  I thought he might be too young to really enjoy it, but he had a blast!  They do a great job making many of the exhibits cater to a variety of ages.  We played for two hours straight, and Desmond could have gone longer.  His favorite area was definitely the water.  We started and finished there.  We may need a membership to this place…

Desmond playing in the water

As we left the museum

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Giggles, Jabbers, and Song Requests

Desmond’s language is really taking off.  He has quite the little vocabulary with new words popping up daily, I think.  He’s also quite skilled at keeping himself awake for naps these days.  I finally got him down for his afternoon nap and had to share our giggles with you.

Desmond has been up in his crib happily jabbering and laughing to himself for almost an hour. Everything has been thrown out of the crib by this time except for his special “bay-det” that he’s chewing the corner of.  I open the door and quietly tell him it is time to go to sleep.  I pick him up and go sit in the rocking chair.  He just giggles at me.  “Shhh,” I tell him.  “Ssss,” he giggles back.  I start singing softly to him, “Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” but he starts singing along, “Upa,” he says with a big smile.  Okay, maybe I should skip his favorite and do a different song, and I’ll just hum it this time so he’ll quiet down.  I start to hum, “Rock-a-bye Baby” since, strangely enough, I’ve only recently introduced it to him, but when I get to the “when the wind blows” part, he laughs and starts blowing.  Great!  He still hears the words in his head!  Here we go, I haven’t sung this one in a little while.  I softly sing the words, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make…”  “Appy!” he chimes in.  What?!  I can’t help but laugh out loud which only sets off his giggles again, too.  “It’s time to sleep, okay?,” I remind him.  “Eeep!” “Yes, you need to sleep,” I reply, trying in vain to keep a straight face.  “Geekle, geekle,” he says smiling up at me.  Oh, a song request is it?  Back to the favorite.  “Okay,” I said, “but you need to close your eyes.”  He squeezes his eyes shut and stuffs the soaked corner of his blanket back in his mouth.  I quietly sing “Twinkle, Twinkle” again and by the third time through he’s snoring and doing the cute dream smiles.  Whew!  I carefully lay him down and sneak out.  Silly boy!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

IE6, IE7, & IE8 On My Box … At the Same Time!

IE6IE7IE8I just installed Windows 7 on my desktop machine. Today I set up XP mode ... cause I can. And the first thing I did was to create two virtual machine ... one running IE6 and one running IE7. So there you have it. I can now run IE6, IE7, and IE8 on one box. The image is a screenshot of my box with the proof. This will make website debugging so much easier. Although for the most part I've kinda let IE6 go, but at least I can know how bad it will look.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Fun Fall Day at the Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday morning we went with some friends to the Twisted Creek Ranch.  Desmond caught a nap on the way out, and the first thing he did when he got out of the car was to fill both hands with gravel.  We saw the fish pond, farm animals, a fire truck, and jumped in the bounce house where Desmond got hilariously wedged in between the floor and the side and I almost got stuck myself trying to help him out.  We finished it off with a wagon ride to pick out a pumpkin (Desmond’s newest word), and once we got loaded up, he was out for his second nap. 

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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Enjoying the Last Few Sunny Days

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During the late afternoon fussies, I’ve been taking advantage of the nice sunny weather.  It’s amazing how playing outside really helps!  Desmond loves to play in the “duht” with his “gucks” in I guess what you’d call our front yard. This has also been our time to practice obeying mommy by not wandering too far away.  The rain is coming later this week so I think we’ll take to puddle jumping very soon.

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Friday I took Desmond to Laurelhurst park where we fed the ducks.  Desmond was somewhat interested, but ended up wanting to eat the bread himself.  He’s a boy after my own heart and chased after this squirrel for awhile though he couldn’t quite toddle fast enough to cause any real concern on the part of the squirrel.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

A Princess Birthday Party

A few weeks ago Desmond’s friend Addison turned 3 and she had a fun princess birthday party. We were all invited to dress up for the event, so I dusted off my princess dress that Mom made me for my old college fairytale themed banquet. I love any opportunity to wear it! Desmond wore his little prince crown the whole time, and we enjoyed the beautiful day at the Flower Farmer. One of the highlights was riding the train out to see the farm animals. Happy birthday, Addison!

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Sunday, September 20, 2009

My Boy

IMG_5240This morning I cut Desmond’s hair out on the patio.  He did fairly well while I tried to entertain him with things outside of his normal toy repertoire.  (The floss lasted the longest.)  After we were done he was running around with his shirt off carrying the stick we use to bar the patio door.  Such a good boy picture.  I love it!

 

LightSaberDes

 

Daddy’s boy carries a more powerful weapon.  The force is strong with our little one!

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Pivoting SQL Data

So, the other day I was trying to pivot some SQL data that was basically in this format...

RecNumber ColNumber FieldName FieldValue
1 1 FirstName Davin
1 2 LastName Studer
2 1 FirstName Melissa
2 2 LastName Studer

I wanted to see it like this ...

RecNumber FirstName LastName
1 Davin Studer
2 Melissa Studer

It took me a while to figure out the syntax for this, but here it is. It uses the SQL pivot keyword.

This first portion dynamically creates the column names to be used in the pivot.

declare @cols varchar(max)

    select  @cols = stuff (
        (
            select '], [' + FieldName
            from table
            group by FieldName
            order by min(ColNumber)
            for
            xml path('')
        )
        , 1, 2, ''
    ) + ']'

This next part creates a query within a string that we will run with the SQL exec command.

declare @query varchar(max)

    set @query = '
    select RecNumber, ' + @cols + '
    from (
        select RecNumber, FieldName, FieldValue
        from table
    ) dta
    pivot
    (
        min(FieldValue)
        for FieldName in (' + @cols + ')
    ) pvt'

All that is left to do is to execute the query that was created. I ended up putting this into a stored procedure.

exec(@query)

Catching Up on the Last Month

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We enjoyed a family hike with fellow Baby Boot Campers to the top of Multnomah Falls at the end of August.  It was a good hike and an even a better work out carrying Desmond.

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Desmond walking around the zoo.  We forgot the stroller and he LOVED his freedom!  Des and I visit the zoo often with our friends Gina and Addison.  The kiddos really enjoy playing together.

IMG_5218The strange rash Desmond broke out with after eating hummus – which he’s had before with no reaction.  He also broke out like this after eating a cinnamon sugar pretzel.  Hmmm.

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Fun at the state fair!  Desmond’s favorite part was the corn bin.  He did NOT want to get out.

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Playing at home: This week I pulled out my little table and chairs from when I was a kid.  Desmond thinks it’s so cool.  He also loves carrying around the new Twistables crayons.  He doesn’t color much yet, but at least he can’t eat them now.