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.

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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.