In July, we had Scarlett's 15-month checkup and all is well. She remains in the 90th percentile for height and is simply growing like a weed. Her lightish-curly hair has taken over her head and she's more vocal than ever. No real words just yet, but she can answer simple questions and point out certain things. It's absolutely mind-blowing to see ( Read more... )

Scarlett is beyond thirteen months and continues to grow and excel. More and more of her personality is coming out and she's using her body in more risky ways. What I mean by that is that she's begun climbing furniture, running, tripping over everything, and standing on things that she falls off of. She also throws proto-tantrums and is very much a ( Read more... )

It has happened! Scarlett is walking! It began a couple weeks ago but really got going when she was with us on our trip to be with Nicole's immediate family in California for Christmas. More on that later, but Scarlett continues to astound and achieve. With her walking, she's now more capable and squirrelly so it's become even more challenging to ( Read more... )

We didn't see the pediatrician at the three-month-mark but we did a week ago for the four month mark. Scarlett is just thriving. She's now fifteen pounds and 26.5 inches long, putting her in the 99th percentile for height supposedly. They weren't concerned about anything and outside of the trauma of getting poked with needles for vaccines, all was ( Read more... )

This is it! We're within two weeks of our first child's due date. The next time I write a journal entry in late March, I'll be a father! So this is my last entry as a non-parent. You could draw a line right here between entries where my life was one way and all the rest where my life is another way. Nicole and I have discussed this journal being a ( Read more... )

Well 2021 was kind of more of the same of 2020. Here's the summary:

January was our first real month in our new house where we weren't wall-to-wall renovating 24/7. In February, the weight of responsibility of the house got to us and caused despair. Things got better in March as rooms took shape including my very own home office.

April saw us ( Read more... )

My buddy from high school, Bryan, had his 40th birthday earlier this month. For his birthday, we pulled off a nostalgic gift that succeeded in taking away a bit of the sting of turning 40. My brother, Ryan, has a hobby of collecting old school Apple iBook laptops from twenty years ago and while browsing eBay a few months back he stumbled upon a ( Read more... )

July was supposed to be the month that my team and I plus a hundred other coworkers were being recalled back to the office after nearly a year and a half of working from home during the COVID pandemic. We all had the date on the calendars and they even had seminars and meetings to get us all ready to return to campus. We weren't looking forward to ( Read more... )

I'm sure 2020 will go down in history as one of the strangest years in recent memory in America. For Nicole, Chip and me, it's been an interesting year. Let's recap.

In January, we began a low-carb diet which cut out fast food and junk food of all kinds. We've continued the diet ever since. February saw us take a vacation on the Oregon coast which ( Read more... )

Another month has floated on by. Hard to believe how fast time seems to be going. Things are still mostly the same; Nicole and I are living life as best we can given the world is still gripped with COVID-19 and my sister and mother still aren't speaking to me. We're still house-hunting and still hunkering down in our apartment daydreaming of home ( Read more... )