Updates on me and the family
So it's been awhile and I just wanted to bring everyone up to date on the latest with the family.
So we've been living at a new apartment in PG (Pacific Grove to non-locals). It's a nice two-bedroom place for quite reasonable rates in monterey terms and great rates for pg terms. Following the north-south price pricing trend, PG housing should be about $100/month more expensive for the same sort of accommodations as Monterey. So imagine our surprise when we found a place that was much bigger, perfectly located, and only about $100 more than before. Anyway, it's just nice to have space for the midget to run around in.
And she does, indeed, run. Our kid is nuts, as many kids are. We used to have her run laps around the center island in our apartment and now she does it on her own. She walks several miles a day with Jess, who is always off to a parenting class or mommy workout program. I think it's great that my kid walks more in a day than many adults walk in a week, and she just learned how to walk 6 months ago.
And her vocabulary is insane. She tries every word we say including some we wish she wouldn't learn quite yet. She now periodically stops, grabs her diaper and says 'Coo!' And when I change her she exclaims 'Damn!' from my previous reactions to the smell. But she can say words for just about all the different foods she eats including some fine distinctions like peach vs plum, most of the basic body parts, some colors, animals, animal sounds, play, and countless other words. My favorite was taking her down to the docks to see the seals the other day. We were up on the pier and one of them looked right at her and barked and she pointed to it and said 'Seawo', 'Seawo', 'Awo', 'Awo', 'Awo' and giggled hysterically. Really, that's what I always wanted out of being a dad. I love seeing her learn about things that seem so basic to everyone else.
Jess is doing fine. She's really in good shape physically after the whole pregnancy bit. She's always busy as before. She started selling baby clothes on ebay as a side job. We give a 50% cut to our friend who supplies us with clothes that wouldn't sell in her second-hand shop. And just recently she started working at the jewelry counter at Macy's out here. As usual, she went in for a basic sales floor position and wowed them so much she got the hand-picked slot at jewelry that wasn't even going to be available for another few weeks. If I could do that I'd be CIO already. I don't know how she does it. She's got so much experience with putting on a happy face to complete jerks from the food service world, I expect she'll be great at it.
Otherwise not too much is happening out here. We saw Rachael and Erin a few weeks ago, which was awesome. We're so far out of the way that we don't get too many non-family visitors. I'm really glad they made the long haul through the Silicon Valley just to visit us. We don't know San Jose or San Fran like we know Monterey so we got a chance to take them out to a place we knew was good and wasn't just Perkins. I think we kept them a bit late, though.
Anyway, the quest to move overseas is on hold for a bit while we reorganize our priorities. It's always a debate between being able to visit friends and family and being able to live in exotic places. For the mean time I have been starting to look at cheaper areas of the states to live in like Arizona or Oregon or possibly even the midwest again. The Scottsdale, AZ area is currently my prime target. I'll let you all know if we end up going anywhere with it.
That's about all from the west coast. I hope all is well in the rest of the world.
Meep
So we've been living at a new apartment in PG (Pacific Grove to non-locals). It's a nice two-bedroom place for quite reasonable rates in monterey terms and great rates for pg terms. Following the north-south price pricing trend, PG housing should be about $100/month more expensive for the same sort of accommodations as Monterey. So imagine our surprise when we found a place that was much bigger, perfectly located, and only about $100 more than before. Anyway, it's just nice to have space for the midget to run around in.
And she does, indeed, run. Our kid is nuts, as many kids are. We used to have her run laps around the center island in our apartment and now she does it on her own. She walks several miles a day with Jess, who is always off to a parenting class or mommy workout program. I think it's great that my kid walks more in a day than many adults walk in a week, and she just learned how to walk 6 months ago.
And her vocabulary is insane. She tries every word we say including some we wish she wouldn't learn quite yet. She now periodically stops, grabs her diaper and says 'Coo!' And when I change her she exclaims 'Damn!' from my previous reactions to the smell. But she can say words for just about all the different foods she eats including some fine distinctions like peach vs plum, most of the basic body parts, some colors, animals, animal sounds, play, and countless other words. My favorite was taking her down to the docks to see the seals the other day. We were up on the pier and one of them looked right at her and barked and she pointed to it and said 'Seawo', 'Seawo', 'Awo', 'Awo', 'Awo' and giggled hysterically. Really, that's what I always wanted out of being a dad. I love seeing her learn about things that seem so basic to everyone else.
Jess is doing fine. She's really in good shape physically after the whole pregnancy bit. She's always busy as before. She started selling baby clothes on ebay as a side job. We give a 50% cut to our friend who supplies us with clothes that wouldn't sell in her second-hand shop. And just recently she started working at the jewelry counter at Macy's out here. As usual, she went in for a basic sales floor position and wowed them so much she got the hand-picked slot at jewelry that wasn't even going to be available for another few weeks. If I could do that I'd be CIO already. I don't know how she does it. She's got so much experience with putting on a happy face to complete jerks from the food service world, I expect she'll be great at it.
Otherwise not too much is happening out here. We saw Rachael and Erin a few weeks ago, which was awesome. We're so far out of the way that we don't get too many non-family visitors. I'm really glad they made the long haul through the Silicon Valley just to visit us. We don't know San Jose or San Fran like we know Monterey so we got a chance to take them out to a place we knew was good and wasn't just Perkins. I think we kept them a bit late, though.
Anyway, the quest to move overseas is on hold for a bit while we reorganize our priorities. It's always a debate between being able to visit friends and family and being able to live in exotic places. For the mean time I have been starting to look at cheaper areas of the states to live in like Arizona or Oregon or possibly even the midwest again. The Scottsdale, AZ area is currently my prime target. I'll let you all know if we end up going anywhere with it.
That's about all from the west coast. I hope all is well in the rest of the world.
Meep