Go Boy Go!

Could little Jamie be a future tour champion? Here he is doing a little stationary cycling. I think he needs to work a little on his cadence but other than that, good form all around (well except for that terrible posture).



He was actually sweating up a storm after his "workout".

Jamie's first camping trip (sort of)

Well the weather this weekend was outstanding. Which can mean only one thing! Camping season is upon us. We decided that we should set up the tent in the front yard and hang out outside this weekend, partly as a test to see what Jamie thought of the whole thing. He didn't seem to mind one bit. I napped out there with Jamie while Christine did laundry and Christine played with him while I did yard work. I think we spent the majority of the day Saturday with some of us in the tent just hanging out. We can't wait to do it again. (Maybe for real next time?)





Sunday we went for a nice long hike at Gunpowder Falls State Park. We didn't realize that it was going to be so hot. Temperatures were in the 80's. We tried out a new baby carrier backpack. Turns out Jamie was still a little small for it. He fell asleep and ended up rubbing his little nose raw on the front of the pack. Needless to say he was not a happy camper when he got back to the truck at day's end. He did really like hanging out by the river though. I think he really liked the noise of the rapids and the sparkle off the water.



One more: I'm not sure at this point who is winning the baldness competition.

Test!!!

This is a test of the Christine posting system. This is only a test. In the event of an actual Christine posting, her own words and thoughts would follow. Repeat, this is only a test.


Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

3 Months Old

Jamie turned three months old this last Thursday. I think we can officially ditch saying "He's X weeks old" now that he has a significant number of months under his belt. It always bugs me when people say that...

Here's a few pictures for you:

Yeah, the weather's been crazy. It's still pretty cold here. Here's Jamie all bundled up and ready to go:


Time for the Springtime Mama shearing. Christine decided that she was tired of Jamie spitting up in her hair so she cut it all off. So here she is all shorn.


She had about 1 foot of hair which she was kind enough to donate to "Locks of Love" for children with cancer.


Jamie still hasn't found thumb, but likes his fingers, meanwhile plots many things we don't know about yet.

Chemistry Lab.

My boss is out of town this week and I've been covering her classes. This week's lab involved photo-chemistry which is pretty cool stuff. I went down and went through the lab to make sure I knew what I was doing before the students had a crack at it. It was a real simple lab actually. Make a pinhole camera, take a picture, process the film. I ended up with what I thought were a couple of cool shots.

The camera directly exposes the film so there is no negative, this means that the picture comes out as a negative mirror image. Here's the first picture I took of my bike on the bike rack out back of the lab. The exposure time was around 90 seconds. I just set the camera on the ground and opened the shutter.



The picture is a little scratchy looking because I neglected to clean the scanner.

Now here's the same picture reversed and inverted with Photoshop. I think it looks pretty cool.



Now here's a random shot of some weird pipes out back of the building. I left this one as a negative for a cool lit-from-within effect.



Fun stuff. I think I enjoyed it more than the students did.

April Fools!

Or why the Easter Bunny wants to bust a cap in the Groundhog....

We've been having somewhat of a cold snap. Saturday morning we woke up to about 1/2" of snow. Nasty. Where's Spring? Under 1/2 of snow it seems:

Dogwoods:


Forsythias:


The new lawn chairs:


and dog with dandruff:

New Pictures at Last!

Well we finally took some new pictures of the boy. So here they are!

Jamie loves his little piggy Leon. Last night Jamie was upset for some reason so I gave him Leon. He grabbed Leon up and sort of cuddled him and calmed right back down. Sweetest thing ever.



Yes, Jamie's hair really is falling out. It's all perfectly normal. Oddly enough he's really starting to look a lot more like his father now. I guess it just took some male pattern baldness for us to figure out who he looks like!

Almost two weeks in review.

Sorry no new pictures...

Well there's really nothing new to report on the Jamie front. He just keeps getting bigger and all his hair seems to be falling out (which oddly enough, makes him look more like his father). Other than that, not much new.

I ended up not going to Vietnam. The Vietnamese Embassy didn't see fit to issue my visa and the US State Department didn't see fit to follow up with them until it was too late. As far as I know the Vietnamese still have my passport. It's all very annoying. The week before the trip was scheduled was horrendous, having to pack and make preparations and then having the whole thing get canceled was really stressful for all of us.

On the plus side, I got to stay home with Christine and Jamie and didn't have to feel guilty leaving them and going halfway around the world. We ended up celebrating Christine's birthday with lots of sushi and plum wine and then headed down to Richmond, VA to visit Christine's sister for the weekend. We had a great visit.

Because I was supposed to be out of town all last week our friend Robena came up to visit. We had lovely weather last week. Robena babysat, and Christine and I took our first bike ride together since Jamie was born. We ended up doing 13 miles on the back roads near our house. Wednesday night, my friend Brian and I got out for our first trail ride of the season at Patapsco. The trails were finally dry enough to ride. It was my first ride on dirt since December. We were both a little rusty and breathing real hard after every climb. I can't wait to hit the dirt again this week.

Saturday, Christine and I had a lazy day around the house. In the evening we loaded up Jamie in the stroller and rolled him over the bridge over to West Annapolis to the grocery store to pick up some eggs and other sundries. Having a stroller with a little basket is pretty nice. I always feel bad about taking the truck to the store when we only need a few things because the store is so close. With the stroller we can carry almost one bag of groceries, plus we get a little exercise and Jamie gets to go for a ride.

Well that's the week in review. Maybe next week, I'll post pictures.