Way behind on this blog. Sort of falling behind on Connor's blog, too. Need. More. Time.

Laura goes back to work next Monday, so it'll be just me and Connor during the days. Sort of nervous. Hopefully, I can pull off all the things I need to do correctly. I think the hardest part will be feeding times and getting the milk warmed and ready and all that. Hard to time how long he will sleep and stuff.

Went to Wesley's b-day today. This morning Laura's family came up to visit for the event. We ate brunch at Bravo's and Connor slept all through that, and he actually slept from 11am to about 2pm. As he woke up, we fed him and got ready to head to Kelly and Ryan's for Wesley's birthday party. He started getting fussy shortly after we got there and he didn't get much good sleep while we were there. After three hours or so, we headed home. He's been fussy the last few hours (I called this happening yesterday!), but hopefully he sleeps long soon. Don't want to have another difficult night.

Mother's Day is coming up and we're not sure what to get my Mom. She's coming here in 3 days, on Thursday, for 6 days, I think. I hope it goes well...

It's come by so quick. 2 more full days of work and I'm going to be a stay-at-home-Dad!

I'll post back with training details and such later. Gotta try and get some sleep before we tend to our boy tonight. It might be a long night.

It's almost as though this blog is merging with Connor's blog, since what he does is basically what I'll be doing as well. I'd hate to stop writing in my blog though. I need to think of another idea to keep it going.

I have 1 more week of work left and then it's full-time at home for me! Going to Tulsa I believe next week for a few days. Then, my Mom is going to be visiting from 5/3-5/9. After that, it's going to be uneventful until our 2-month pediatrician appointment...whoa, I'm already talking about 2-months from now! He's a bit over 2 weeks right now. Time flies even faster when you have a kid!

Among other news, this past weekend, I entered 2 photo contests that I thought I might do good in...we'll see. Total cost was around $50, so I hope I get SOMETHING out of this... both will have their results around mid-May, so I'll report back then.

Yup, it's hard to blog both for Connor and me at the same time...

Anyway, all's well so far and he was born on 3/30/2012 at 2:44am after a grueling 18.5 hour labor by Laura. She did great, though. I don't think anyone else could have done what she did in the way she did it. She got through those contractions via how she practiced in her pregnancy and did great. Love you!

Work has been good the last 2 days I came back. Not having too much trouble staying awake, but I'm definitely tired.

Connor did great last night, too, but the first night was sort of rough. We went and saw the pediatrician on Tuesday. After a stupid 30+ minute wait, Connor is doing well and he's already back up to his birth weight. Laura and I totally forgot diaper change stuff and, of course, he poops as we see the doctor. Thankfully, they had diapers and stuff in the office.

Now it's just getting into the rhythm and hoping that he sleeps more!

Sorry, been forgetting to write in here. We've scheduled the induction for tomorrow morning at 7:30am, so the next time I write in here will be after the baby is born! I'll have a website for the little guy, trying to blog in there everyday, but I'll try and not forget about MY blog, too.

We have a lot of the stuff already ready, but I'm sure we'll have some last minute stuff tonight.

I rented an iPad 2 so we can use it in the hospital, the guests can use it, etc. Other than that, I think we're both getting nervous and the countdown has certainly begun!

Love you bub. You're going to do great. I think I'm the one to worry about more!

Come on baby!

We had some good rain the last couple of days. Soaked the seeds I threw around the yard pretty well. Hopefully they start to grow as it gets a little warmer.

Had an appointment with the doctor today. It looks like she updated the due date to just a couple of days ago, so it doesn't seem as though Laura is that much overdue, just, a few days now. We had another appointment for next Monday, but she thinks we'll have the baby or some sort of activity by then. That would be good. We even got everything we needed packed into the car because we had thought we might induce today, but, now we're just ready, I suppose.

I've been sleeping out on the couch, well, I guess just yesterday, but now tonight as well. Laura just snores a bit loud after she falls asleep and it gives me trouble going to sleep. I don't sleep as comfortable on the couch, but I feel a little more refreshed in the morning. Tonight, I'm going to try sleeping on the guest room bed. Hopefully it'll be good.

Tomorrow is essentially my Friday as the university gets Thur/Fri off for spring break. Woot. It would be a good time for the baby to come, too!

Got to leave work about 45 minutes early because our director let us since it was a nice day. I think it was because she was leaving early and felt bad, but works for us!

Still no baby. We have an appointment on Tuesday to discuss inducing. We're hoping that it happens this weekend so we don't have to induce. Laura hasn't felt much in terms of activity, however, so that's not promising, but it could be any day, so. Cross our fingers!

Sorry about the sporadic blogging. I guess there goes my goal of writing every day. It lasted for a while. I did start up another site for our boy, so I'll probably start writing more/every day over there. I'll try not to forget my blog.

I got some bermuda grass seeds today and threw it around the yard. We want grass since most of our yard is weeds. I would spray weed killer, which I did in some places today to see how well it works, but, at least with the weeds we have, as long as it is mowed once a week, it keeps our yard green. Everywhere it's starting to get green, however, which is nice. Although, that also means that it's going to get hotter and hotter. It's quite warm already, as high as the mid/upper 80s. Summer's going to be blistering again I think. I did "till" a little of the back yard where it's dirt/sand. It's weird that it's sand. Hopefully, it rains the next week or two and the seeds start to sprout. I'd like a lush yard.

Other than that, just waiting on the boy. It can't come soon enough, although, that means we'll be non-stop tending to him, ha.

Got a half-day today at work because the university shut down their power while they worked on something. Got in in the morning and had issues turning my computer on, etc. The lights in the office would dim like every 10 seconds or so. After a while of this, perhaps an hour, the university called the day off because people were frying their computers or something. Anyway, left work around 11:30a or so and went to the store to get some stuff for dinner. Played a little Dungeon Defenders. I'm installing WoW right now...I might start playing again a little bit to pass time once the baby gets here. Who knows. I may or may not have any time at all. The thing is that there's this perk for active players (i.e. Chris) to send an invite to someone to get back into the game and they get a mount and I get a free level 80 character. Sounds good to me!

Sigh...I dunno why I am always tried during the day, but awake after 10:30p and then stay up until like 12:30a or 1:00a...

One more week until the original due date! i.e. he could be here anytime!

Some more people of my work know that my last day is a little over a month from now. One of the development officers came to tell me how she heard that I'm going to be a full time Dad. The student work and my office mate overheard, so, yeah, pretty much our side of the office should know that my time is nigh. The other side, I'm not so sure. I now know that the director knows, though. Guess I don't have to be all nervous now.

Allergies have been kicking my ass though the last week. I've been taking Claritin for about a week now...I'm not sure if it's helping or not, but man, in the first half of the day, I feel like crappy, with sneezing mainly and stuffiness. I wonder how it would be without the Claritin? I got some Flonase, but I haven't tried it yet. It seems weird to spray something up my nose...I'll try it someday when I can't stand it.

I mowed the lawn this weekend because I couldn't stand the crappy weed lawn that is our front yard. Looks much better. I want to spray the front with Spectracide that I picked up at The Home Depot, but I'm afraid if I do, since our lawn is basically weeds, we won't have a lawn. At least if I keep mowing, it'll look green. Maybe there's something that JUST takes out chickweed? I dunno.

Watched Bridesmaids last night. Not that good of a movie overall, but parts of it were funny. I think the big lady that was all hardcore and made funny remarks made the work. Otherwise it was meh.

After saying I'd start to get back into it, a week goes by...it's so hard to keep up. Like, every day the last few days I told myself that I'm going to go to the computer and do a blog. Not sure, but I just get so tired during the night that I forget. No other explanation that I can see. 

Anyway, a lot has actually happened since the 21st. I've told my boss that tentative "quit" date after learning that Laura's leave got approved and all that, but only for 6.5 weeks, which sucks, but oh well. We got much of the rest of the needed baby stuff from Babies R Us. We closed our baby registry, so yeah, I guess that's it for that. Hm...what else...ohhh, I can't forget buying a new TV this past Saturday!

This is the TV I've been eyeing since it showed up on Slickdeals.net. It was a great deal: 50" (well, 49.9 they say), plasma, 1080p, blah, blah, all for $549! Best deal I've seen in a long time. It is a Zenith brand, but after doing some research, it looks like the consensus is a re-badged LG model, so that's good. I really like LG products, so. Anyway, all the reviews were great, so I dwelled on it for like a week or two. I was bugging Laura a lot and just bringing it up whenever I could. Finally, I cracked under the pressure and decided to buy it. The big catalyst was going to Sears and looking at the TV first. Tax almost killed the deal since it added another $46, but that's okay. Thanks to Laura (and our big spendings), we had saved up about $350 in Amazon points, which we put towards the TV, or rather, the credit card statement. So, in essence, the TV cost us about $250 total. Not bad. We probably won't buy one for a while, so, that's a good investment. 

If you think about it, I bought our smaller 32" LCD TV back in, 2006 or 2007 and that was $750..and it was a GOOD deal! I can't believe it. Granted it's been what, 5-6 years and we've gotten good use out of it. Heck, we still use it quite a bit everyday. It's a great brand. Never heard of Olevia, but who would have thought? 5 years adds 18" and knocks off $200 in price. Technology is crazy. 

Anyway, I got it mostly set up good, channels and HD programs look great. We haven't watched any movies or anything yet, but I'm sure we will soon. It sucks that the Wii only does 480p, not 1080...maybe someday. I want to move our Blu-ray player to the big TV sometime and try out the Blu-ray DVDs we have via HDMI and see how it looks. I think it'll look great, of course. We only have like 2 Blu-rays anyway...The Lion King and Harry Potter I think. I don't even have an HDMI cable yet.

So, we did that and actually the weekend was supposed to be our last "weekend without the baby" sort of thing. We went to Big Truck Tacos that Laura found and that was good. Went to Babies R Us like I said and tried to relax. We took the top of the armoire down because it wouldn't fit. It's in the garage at the moment. We went and bought a piece of wood to put on top of the bottom of the armoire and stained it so it matched up pretty good. It really looks nice for $25 worth of materials. We're not sure what we're going to do with the "smaller" 27" tube TV. 

Just today, I turned in my resignation letter to my boss since he asked for it so they could start planning on finding a replacement for me. Thinking about it, it's really right around the corner. It's only just under 2 months away...sort of scary to think about, but we should be fine if we budget good. 

What else...that's the big stuff. Laura is 1 centimeter dilated she told me...9 more to go! I think we've decided on a name for the most part, unless something better comes along out of nowhere, which I doubt. I've been reading through the breastfeeding book that Laura wanted me to read. I've been reading during lunch. I'm about halfway done I think. 

Well, I'm going to try and get some sleep tonight. Been falling asleep around midnight on average the last few nights after watching Netflix and trying to fall asleep. I think I'll need all the rest I can get before the baby gets here.

Sitting here, listening to some old Japanese tunes. Finishing up taxes, paying some bills, getting this form to get distributions from my retirement account, and trying to get this website for the church ready to launch. Things are getting busy and down to the wire, it seems like. Actually, I think everything that we needed to do kind of came down to the wire or something like that.

This weekend, we just decided that we should have some sort of relaxing weekend where we do something that each of us want to do before the baby gets here, which, technically could be anytime going forward...that's crazy to think! Maybe it could be a February 29th birthday. That'd be weird, but I think pretty cool. I'm not sure how they do it in legal stuff...I suppose your birthday would be the 28th or something.

I'll probably tell my boss tomorrow the more exact fact that Laura will get 6 weeks of leave starting when the baby arrives. Still not a definite date for my work, but that's really as close as it's going to be for now. It'll be exact when the baby arrives.

I've been starting to get bored at work since there's really nothing to do the past week or two. Hard to find something to do out of nothing...can't really surf since my cubicle-mate sits behind me, although facing away from me. I guess I could, but it would be too much stress. There's a lot of foot traffic near my desk. Oh well..2 months to go. That's weird to think...

For some reason, the last few weeks, I've really been wanting to take a trip to California to see my old friends that I recently connected with again. I guess I could have tried this hard a year or two ago when I actually had the time and money. I have that problem a lot...procrastination. I need to start learning to just do it. That 50" plasma still shows in stock at the Sears near our house. If it's still there when we get that retirement distribution, which should be about $1550 or so after all the taxes, I'm gonna get it, I think. Sucks that the account is currently sitting at $2400, but $85 goes to taxes!

Anyway, I should get to sleep. It's almost midnight.

The drive from OKC to Tulsa wasn't as bad tonight. It went by faster than normal. Perhaps it was the episodes of Engines of Our Ingenuity that we were listening to. It was interesting. It's this program that I heard on the classical station I usually listening to during my commutes. They narrate short, 3-minute snippets of interesting information about inventors, etc. from the past. I like it. I recently downloaded a lot from the program's archives. I might start listening to it on my commutes since I can put lots on my USB drive for the car.

Tomorrow I'm getting lunch, as I believe I mentioned, with an old friend from the park service. Haven't seen him in like 7 years. Should be interesting what we talk about. I will probably fall back to gaming since that's what we had in common.

Posting from work. Just over an hour until home.

For most of the day today I was contemplating on ordering this 50" 1080p Plasma TV from Sears. It was a good deal at $549 + tax. I just didn't know what to do! I think I still have it in my shopping cart, which it looks like prevents other people from buying it. We really don't need it, but if we do get it, we'd have to rearrange some stands and possibly get a new stand for it, so...it sort of costs more than it costs, if that makes sense. On the other hand, Laura does have a $350 or so credit from Amazon points, which we can apply to her cc statement, so that essentially brings it down to about $250 after taxes. Pretty cool deal. Still dunno though!

Tomorrow we head to Tulsa for Laura's shower. I'll be taking photos there. I'm still deciding on whether or not to upgrade her parents' computer with the spare parts I have. It really shouldn't take long, but these things usually tend to take longer than expected. I also may eat lunch with an old friend from the NPS job I had years ago. He moved to OK about a year ago and lives in Tulsa, pretty close to Laura's parents' house.

I wish today was Friday, though.

Arg. This is how it starts. First it's a day. Then two days. Then it's four days like this time where I skip a blog. I dunno how, but it just escapes me to write a blog daily. This weekend went by quick. Saturday was Laura's birthday. We tried to find a place to eat. It was actually sort of stressful. We went to Inspirations, the tea place near our house, but they were rude (like the reviews said) about having to have a reservation and that it was Valentine's Day weekend or something so it was just a set course meal for lunch. Anyway, we left there and starting driving SW. Laura wanted to go to Mimi's Cafe. It looked packed, but the wait was like 5 minutes. It was pretty good. Afterwards, we went to B&N and home. Later that night, Kelly made pumpkin pie for Laura so we went there, getting Bravo's to go on the way there.

Sunday...I can't remember what we did Sunday...I think just lounged around. So far, it's been an uneventful week, I guess. Work is good. They know now. My boss asked me if I knew any more details on my departure, but I really didn't know, so I told him that and that Laura is still fighting with HR about leave.

That's about it. See ya, hopefully, tomorrow.

My hands are pretty cold at the moment, making a little hard to write.

Just listening to some old Japanese tunes on Youtube. I'm amazed how much of what I listened to in the 90s are on here. I'm beginning to think EVERYTHING is on here. I should mark these as favorites to rip sometime.

I told my work today about quitting late April/early May. I was thrown off guard because I had originally planned to have the meeting at 3pm. In the morning, however, there were some technicians drilling holes and stuff around my boss' desk so he couldn't sit down. He asked out of nowhere if I wanted to have the meeting now instead or wait. Now, I actually had said "If we can wait, that'd be great." Obviously, he heard a little different and was like, "Great, let's go in the great room." I thought to myself, dammit, I'm not ready!

So, we walk over to the table and get to discussing. Everything went surprisingly smooth. He was really understanding and was sympathetic and told me how he liked me working there. He asked if I did as well.

Weird thing was, his boss and the director walked through the great room on her way to the airport while we were talking. That was pretty awkward. We were both like, uh, have a good flight. It was sort of like the movies where the viewer knew everything, but the bosses didn't. Anyway, he's going to tell his boss and probably the director tomorrow, which means, I'm not through with this yet. I still need to get through the aftershocks. Hopefully, they're nice about it. My director is sort of loud and in your face when she converses. Just how she is, I guess.

Well, at least it's Friday.

The baby's coming soon! A few more weeks. Getting nervous.

Missed the entire weekend, damn! I'm slowly starting to get behind on my blogging.

Anyway, it was a good weekend, albeit fast. Hm...now I can't remember what we did Saturday. Oh, Dawn, Ron, and Laura's parents came down to hang out with us. We ate at Lottinvilles and then to Kelly's for a little bit.

Sunday, we ate some pho at this weird little restaurant downtown. It was good, though.

And now it's Monday. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can set up a meeting with my boss about when the baby comes. A couple more days to prepare for me...sigh.

I got the first page of my fantasy book written. I literally stared at the screen for like 20-30 minutes to write the perfect first sentence. I hope it turns out good.

One of the few times I'm able to blog from work. It's raining like crazy now, although, actually, it just died down. The thunder was loud though. Laura and I were both thinking about Callie.

Counting down the hours and minutes to go home. Three more hours...sigh.

This weekend Laura's parents and Dawn and, I think, Ron are coming to visit us and Kelly. We're getting lunch tomorrow and they're seeing our houses. We need to clean a bit tonight, but our house is mostly clean!