Garrett Knows His Body Parts

Garrett’s 1st Birthday – Smash Cake

Video of Garrett at 9 Months

Easter 2010

Happy Easter!

St. Patrick’s Day 2010

On St. Patrick’s Day it was such a pretty day we rode down to Kemah and walked around on the boardwalk.  Then we went down to Galveston to see the spring-breakers.  It was a nice little road trip.

Garrett's First Top Tooth

Garrett's first top tooth cut through his gums earlier this week.

Camera Kaput

I accidently smashed our camera last weekend.  I knocked it out of Kelly’s hands and it landed on the concrete, denting the lens and scratching the lens surface.  Luckily when we bought the camera from Best Buy back in July of ‘07 we also bought the 4-year Performance Service Plan with the Accidental Damage due to Handling Protection which protects it from stuff like that.  We took it back to Best Buy and they airmailed it to the service center.  If they can repair it we should get it back in a couple of weeks.  If they can’t repair it we get a new one in about a week.

Garrett is 9 Months Old

It’s hard to believe he is already nine months old.  That’s probably how I’ll start every post about him from now on.  “It’s hard to believe he is already ___ old.”

 

View Full Album

 

We took Garrett to the pediatrician yesterday for his nine-month checkup.  He is 29” long and weighs 21 lbs.  He is in the 90th percentile for his height and the 60th percentile for his weight.  Basically he is a giant kid and growing fast.  He’s pretty tough too.  He got a shot in the leg and barely cried and when they pricked his finger to get blood he didn’t cry at all.  The doctor said he was doing excellent and we go back to see her when he is 1 year old.

His days start at 7:30 am sharp every morning.  He gets an 8 oz. bottle of formula and some cereal and a fruit and plays for a little while then get goes down for a little nap around 9 am.  Then he wakes up around 11am and has another bottle, some veggies, and a meat.  He’s up for a few hours playing and then around 2:00 he takes another nap until 4:30 or 5:00 pm.  Then he drinks another bottle, eats some meat and veggies or fruit and plays for a while longer.  At 7:30 we give him a bath and then he get’s his last bottle and passes out, and sleeps all night.  Then he does it all over again.

He crawls all over the place really fast and tries to get into everything.  He can pull himself up on whatever is close by and cruise around holding on to it.  He can stand up on his own for about 5-10 seconds before he realizes what he’s doing.  Once he figures it out, he sits down.  He can also take a short step from one couch to the other or from the couch to the table.  I’ve put covers on all the electrical outlets and kid-proof latches on the cabinets in the kitchen.  His favorite things to get into are the TV cables, the potted plants, Abigail’s water dish, and stacks of magazines.  But his absolute favorite trouble to get into is pulling rocks out of the fireplace.  So far we have been keeping one step ahead.  Telling him, “No!” just makes him giggle.

He still likes his “Your Baby Can Read” videos and American Idol but he really likes Kung Fu Panda.  He even light up when he hears Jack Black’s voice in other shows.

He’s got a million funny facial expressions that crack us up all day long.  He likes to be upside down too.  If he wants to see behind him, rather than turning around, he leans his head way back and looks over his shoulder.  He also likes playing tug with Abigail and she is warming up to him a little more.

He is a happy, healthy, hilarious, handful.

Crawfish Boil

Our friends Melanie and Chad had a crawfish boil at their house on Saturday.  I offered to cook and they came out pretty good. We had 60 lbs of crawfish, corn, potatoes, and sausage.  The weather was perfect for beer and bugs.  Afterward we played beer pong and then went out and sang karaoke.  We had a great time.

Valentine’s Day

Garrett and I made Kelly a Valentine’s Day card out of construction paper, glue, and ink.

 

For the last few years we’ve been going to The Melting Pot on Valentine’s Day for a special dinner. We went again this year on a double-date with our friends Angel and Jonathan.

The Spazmatics at Scout Bar

We went with a group of friends to see The Spazmatics at Scout Bar in Clear Lake.  I had never seen them before but Kelly had seen them a couple of times.  They are an 80’s cover band and they dress like… well… spazmatics.  They put on a really good show.  The place was packed and every song they played had me dancing and singing at the top of my lungs.  They play there every month so we are definitely seeing them again.

This is a video I shot from that show.

Garrett Christmas 2009 thru January 2010

New home movie of Garrett's first Christmas, standing up, and playing in his walker.

Jimmy’s 36th Birthday

We had a bunch of friends over for my 36th birthday. It was a blast. Lots of good food and drink with great friends.

View Full Album

LinkedIn Recommendation

A couple of months ago my boss' boss left our company. Yesterday he asked me to write him a recommendation on LinkedIn. I wrote a honest and stellar recommendation for him and he returned the favor with this recommendation:

"Jimmy is an incredibly talented developer, architect and project manager. He was brought in to help us totally re-architect a failing system...while keeping the old one running day-to-day as the business grew explosively. Jimmy developed a scalable & reliable architecture, led the team that built the system in record time, and also helped improve our entire Development organization by introducing us to Agile methodologies. Jimmy also worked tirelessly to support the old system as he raced to fully deploy the new one. He worked with Sales, with customers, and with IT customer service teams to provide great service and enhance an industry-leading product. Jimmy is a real asset to an IT shop: he's technically astute, a clear communicator, a great project manager, a team-builder, and a mentor. I'd be honored to work with Jimmy again in the future."

For someone who I hold in such high regard to take the time to say a few kind works about me pretty much made my day.

Garrett’s First Tooth

Garrett’s first tooth poked through his gums today.   It’s his lower left central tooth.

Garrett is 7 Months Old

Garrett is 7 months old today. It seems like just yesterday when he would hardly move at all, now he is a happy little ball of energy. It sure does go by fast.

He’s eating solid food now. A few weeks ago we started him on rice cereal then moved on to barley cereal, this week it’s carrots and next week it’ll be squash. He’s a really good eater. You just have to hold to spoon up to his mouth and he opens wide. Of course, a lot of it gets spread from ear to ear and nose to neck on the first try but we're working on it. He can also feed himself a whole bottle.

He’s crawling now too and he gets around really good. When you set him down he’ll crawl all over the room and check out everything he can get his hands on. He’ll crawl from the living room, around the kitchen, out by the foyer, toward the front door, back around to the utility room to spill Abigail’s water bowl. One of his favorite discoveries are the metal springy doorstoppers. We took the tips off of them to be safe but likes to plunk them because they make a loud twanging noise.

He pulls himself up on everything he too. He’ll walk up to a table or chair or box or anything and pull himself all the way up to standing. He’ll then take a step or two around whatever he’s holding. Earlier this week he pulled himself up on a chair then reached out to his bouncer that was about a foot and half away so he was holding onto both, then he let go of the chair and moved over to stand next to the bouncer. He’s was pretty proud and let out a high squeak.

Every day he learns so much. He’s an amazing little guy.

Cold Cold Cold

We are all sick over here at the Strube house again. I think it started when we went shopping on December 23rd. First Garrett got a runny nose and cough and then Kelly and I got it. We took Garrett to the pediatrician on Dec 26th and she said that there's nothing we can give him and that since he didn't have a fever it would just have to run its course.

That was a couple of weeks ago and for a little bit it looked like we were all going to get better but now we are sick all over again. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and she said I had a throat and ear infection and gave me some antibiotics. We're taking Garrett back to the pediatrician today.

On top of being sick Garrett is also teething so he has not been a happy camper, especially when at bedtime. It sucks to start out the new year sick.

The weather isn't helping any. It's 25ºF here so we've got the pipes wrapped and the plants covered.