11 weeks and counting...

Jack has enjoyed 11 weeks of life and he's spent the last few weeks working out his back and neck muscles enough to accomplish his latest stunt. He can now lift up his head and hold it steady! He gets pretty pumped because he's been working really hard on it.

He can hold it up for quite a while, but then he's gotta take a rest.

He met Mia for the first time last week. Mia is Mark and Natasha's daughter. She's one month older than Jack. Could Jack be trying for an older woman?

Kristine came over the other day to enjoy scrapbooking, hangin' with Jack, and playing some Wii.

The family came over the other night and played Wii bowling for the first time. They did awesome. Joanne's mom got a 190 on her second game!

Daniel and Preston celebrated their 30th and 2nd birthdays together and had us all over to their house to celebrate. Amy did a great job organizing a super Elmo birthday party! Daniel set up a birthday party Triathlon including mini-basketball, water jug bowling, and sudoku!

Presto even had his shot fighting his dad at Wii boxing!

And just last night, Alan came into town for the Long Beach Grand Prix (since he's an assistant race engineer for Forsythe Racing). He met Jack for the first time!

Jack's been so happy lately...always smiling and giggling. He makes my day perfect just by giving me a smile when I come home from work.

Peep Show

Check out the latest Peep Parade for 2007. If you aren't familiar with my Peep collection, I have been collecting one Peep each year for the past 4 years. Here is my blog entry from last year (LINK). Now that 2007 has come, a new Peep has been born.

From left to right, there is Peep 2004, Peep 2005, Peep 2006, and Peep 2007. Peeps 2004, 2005, and 2006 are all rock hard, but you can see the pink color fading as they get older.

Peep 2007 is happy to be here to ring in the new Easter season. Happy Easter!

Nintendo !!!

With all the Wii excitement, I have found a website with 100 Nintendo games you can play within your own web browser! (LINK)

Daylight Savings Takesie Backsie?

So, it sounds like the change to an earlier Daylight Savings did not amount to any significant energy savings and only managed to cause chaos to computer systems nationwide. Guess they might go back to the conventional early April Daylight Savings next year. (LINK)

Wiimarkable !

This past Sunday I finally took the plunge and went to go pick up a Wii. It's been out since November, but they are still selling out! They've sold 4.8 million of them already. I woke up Sunday morning at 6:30 while Jack and Joanne were sleeping. I showed up to WalMart at 7:00 and I was the second one there. They only had 4 of them! Crazy! Anyway, I was very happy to be successful on my first attempt. I have 4 games now: Wii Sports, Wii Play, Excite Truck, and Wario's Smooth Moves. Haven't played the latter 2 much yet. After just a couple days of playing with it, I love it! It's wiimarkable! By the way, Joanne (my wiife) hates all words that start with 'wii' now.

Things I like best about the Wii:
- the design is very clean and simple
- the wii controller (wiimote) works so well, and is very responsive
- the games are fun and simple
- I can browse the internet on our TV!
- creating an instant slide show directly from my camera's memory card
- Joanne likes playing the games with me
- I can download old Nintendo games (Super Mario Brothers and Zelda!)

The Wii even has its own email address and flashes a light when it has wii-mail. Speaking of, Jack and Buster just got new email addresses.

Come on over sometime and play with Wii with us!

Jack's First Trip to Disneyland

Last week, Jack made his first visit to Disneyland. Boy, did he enjoy it. His eyes may have been closed most of the time, but you could tell he had a great day.

We didn't go on any rides, but we walked around quite a bit and had corn dogs for lunch. Everyone mostly shopped all day, except Joanne spent much of her day in the 'Baby Care Center' making sure Jack was well fed. Jack (with a little of my influence) did start up an autograph book and he already got 2 autographs! He got both Eeyore's and Merlin's autographs with his eyes closed!

Grandma especially enjoyed the day...

It was really nice having my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandma come visit. They all met Jack for the first time. Jack met his Great Grandma Grace (GGG) and they spent quite a bit of time together.



With my Grandma visiting, we had four generations represented!



Thanks again for visiting, Uncle Bob, Auntie Joyce, Jennifer, and Grandma!

Transformers and Simpsons

The new Transformers movie poster came out and it has good ol' Optimus on it.



Also in July, the Simpsons movie will come out. Gotta see this one, too.

What we have learned as 2-month old parents

Jack turned 2 months old last night and as I sat there watching UCLA defeat Pittsburgh in the NCAA regional semifinals (Go Bruins!), I couldn't help but think of all the amazing events and learning experiences we've had so far. Everyone always told us the first two months were the hardest. That's probably because the greatest number of life changes (for us and Jack) happened in these past two months.



Here are some of the things that we as parents have learned in the past 2 months:

- If he's crying, it's either because he's hungry, has gas, needs a diaper change, or wants to be comforted. The trick is finding out which one is the cause.
- Comforting him might be as simple as being held or as complicated as employing a combination of the 5 S's: Swaddle, Swing, Shhh'ing, Sucking (pacifier), and laying on his Side. I have yet to have one of these not work.
- Learn to swaddle him nice and tight. No, tighter. There you go, that's it.
- Smiling and laughing are his greatest rewards to us. At first he'd only do them in his sleep, but now he likes to share them with us while he's awake.
- I think we got lucky that he likes diaper changes. He didn't like his first diaper change, but now it's one of his favorite activities. Good thing, too, because he was up to 9 diaper changes a day. Now he's down to about 5 or so a day.
- Bath time is one of his other favorite activities. He really didn't like his first bath, but just like the diaper changes, he loves them now.
- Buy lots of wipes. A baby never grows out of wipes.
- Add at least 20 minutes to your expected departure time.
- Learn to deal with a couple hours of sleep at a time. Be thrilled with 3 hours.
- The hardest part of the first 2 months was definitely the feeding (and I'm not talking from first hand experience). Breastfeeding is hard...takes a while to get used to and is constant. That's definitely the most tasking thing for Joanne. I try and do whatever I can to help her out when possible.
- You can never have enough blankets. We received lots of blankets as gifts, and we're using them all...as bed padding, swaddle blankets, travel blankets, etc.
- Take lots of pictures. He changes every day.

Look at that face. He loves getting his hair done.


Here is a quick rundown of our favorite baby items that we couldn't live without:

1. Diaper Genie II - gotta have it, just make sure you get lots of refills; one-handed operation!
2. Soothie Pacifier (shown left) - he loves it and it still cracks me up. Look! It's smiling! Get a few of them; they're easy to lose.
3. Snap 'n Go - just a lightweight stroller frame that easily allows you to snap in the car seat. SO much easier than pulling him out of the car seat each time.
4. Bouncer - great spot for him to hang out on his own; especially great that he can be at the dinner table with us!
5. SwaddleMe - swaddling is great on its own, but the SwaddleMe lets him stay bundled up through the night.

He's ready to go!

KFedoogle

Yes. Finally there is a search engine that we can all rely on: www.searchwithkevin.com

Move over Yahoo. Move over Google. KFed is here to serve all your web searching needs. You too can play with fire and search with KFed. The best part? Every time you search on SWK you have a chance of winning some sweet KFed gear. Autographed photos, albums, or T-shirts! I don't know about you, but all my searching will be done with KFed by my side. Don't forget to install the Firefox toolbar...it installs an extra search option at the top right of your browser.

Boeing 7-8-7

The Airbus A380 arrival yesterday was entertaining, but I have to give props to my company for their soon-to-be-released Boeing 787. They are selling quite a bit better because they aimed for fuel efficiency as opposed to super size. I just found out that they plan on completing the first plane on July 8, 2007 (7-8-07). Very nice. Look forward to the first flight sometime in late August.



The Boeing 787 is achieving the increased fuel efficiency by using composites (carbon fiber) instead of steel. The result is a fuel efficient, non-rusting, low maintenance plane with less parts and bigger windows! Amazing what a bunch of string and glue can do. Here's a picture of the factory building long strips of carbon fiber tape. Layers and layers of this stuff will build the fueslage, wings, and tail of the new plane.



Here's a nice link to a site that shows you where the plane is being built and assembled. (LINK)

Airbus A380

The Airbus A380 jumbo jet debuted today at both LAX and JFK International airports at 9:30 this morning. We all went to the roof to check out the landing. Using our work provided strategic viewpoints, I was able to capture a picture of the A380 stopped for a welcome ceremony. The A380 has a number of activites today, including some testing at the gates (this thing is huge). Here is a map as well as a comparison of the A380 with the Boeing 747. (LINK)

Sweet 16 !

Well, the madness of the past 4 days has come to a close and the field of 64 teams has been reduced to the Sweet 16. Three of the six Pac-10 teams remain in the tournament: Oregon, USC, and UCLA! That's the most entries of all the conferences! The games continue this Thursday when #2 UCLA plays #3 Pittsburgh.

The victory against Indiana was primarily due to great performances by Darren Collison and Arron Afflalo, but it may also have been due to Jack's deep concentration during the last minutes of the game. He was all geared up yesterday:

Go UCLA !

March Madness is at its peak and even Jack is celebrating with us! He wore his UCLA socks yesterday to insure UCLA's defeat of Weber State. Tomorrow he'll be wearing his UCLA onesie to insure defeat of Indiana. Gotta love the madness...



Hope everyone's brackets are doing well and if you're a Duke fan....HA!

Summer Movies

Spiderman 3 will be coming out on May 4th and the good news is that a picture leaked out with Venom attacking Spiderman. That should make for some very interesting fight scenes. Can't wait.



Transfomers: The Movie comes out exactly two months later and it sounds like the creators are dedicated to keeping the same "dynamic" of the original characters (like Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream, etc) despite their obvious departure from the original vehicle designs. Apparently the American car companies did a great job selling their vehicles for the part. Bumblebee is a Camaro instead of a VW Beetle, and Jazz got downgraded from a Porsche Turbo to a Pontiac? Oh well.

Optimus Prime:


One of my big questions about the movie was how they were going to shrink Megatron down to a handgun and not make it look hokey? Well, it doesn't look like Megatron is just going to be a handgun this time around.

No, I'm not moving !

If you ever wanted a home on an island, you probably weren't imagining anything like this. This establishment in China refused to move despite all of its neighbors being bought out by a large development (for the Beijing Olympics). Apparently, since they have government connections, they didn't have to move. That didn't stop the bulldozers from doing their work. (LINK)

R2-D2 Mailboxes !

Hopefully this is what you'll be looking like when you mail your next letter. The United States Postal Service is helping Star Wars celebrate its 30th Anniversary this year. They're making special R2-D2 mailboxes just for the occasion. I just hope they put one in my area.

They've set up a website at www.uspsjedimaster.com. Nothing up just yet.

Growing and growing...

Jack turned 6 weeks old on Monday and he's getting pretty big. He's been eating a ton and is as happy as ever. He went to Costco with us last night and managed to sleep the entire time. He stayed up and watched last week's Lost episode with us. (Was that not one of the lamest episodes ever? Nothing happened!) Shortly after, we went to bed and he set an all-time record with 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep! Until now he's only been able to pull off 2-3 hours at a time. What a good boy!

As I've said, Jack's been eating very well. Look at his milk belly!


Jack in his playpen with his fuzzy friends:


Joel and Tony came over Monday night for dinner and Joel took this picture of us. Great family picture!


See you guys later!

Happy Ti3P Day !

Russell hopes you enjoy Talk in 3rd Person Day. Russell wants you to go out and spread the 3rd Person cheer to everyone you meet today.

Joanne is very excited about Ti3P today also.

Talk in 3rd Person Day

Don't forget! Tomorrow is 3/3! Russell wants you to spend all day talking in the third person. Go to the official website and blog: www.Ti3P.com

Bunny Game

If you're having a rough day, a game with a bunny bouncing on bells should help cheer you up. Simple game. Just move your mouse to control his jumps! (LINK)

March Madness

I'm sure you know that March is the month of leprechauns and basketball, but there's lots more. Mark your calendars!

March 3rd - The 2nd Annual Talk in 3rd Person Day is almost here! Get ready. Russell can't wait!

March 9th - 300 (the movie) comes out. I'm just excited by the great cinematography present in the trailers. (LINK)

March 11th - Daylight Savings starts up three weeks earlier this year as part of the Energy Policy Act. Daylight Savings ends on November 4th, a week later than normal. Daylight savings is 4 weeks longer this year! I talked about this last October in one of my blog entries. (LINK)

March 13th - The 2007 NCAA Basketball Tournament begins. Go UCLA!

March 17th - The day the leprechaun comes out from hiding. (LINK)

March 21st - Spring begins. When Southern California's weather changes from great to great.

Have a great month!