When Carol and I started getting serious (8 years ago!), obviously the subject of kids came up. I'd always been ambivalent about the idea but Carol definitely wanted children. We settled on "One, maybe two." To me that always meant one and it turned out to Carol that always meant two. When Audrey was about 6 months old, Carol started feeling a very strong urge to have another child. I resisted for a short time but obviously I eventually surrendered. It should also be obvious that now I can't imagine not having done so.
One of our main reasons for having two kids was so they would grow up with siblings. As Charlotte gets older, the girls are really starting to enjoy each other's company.
Charlotte can't get out of her crib on her own yet, so when she wakes up in the morning she patiently (usually) calls out "Daddy", "Mommy", "Audrey" until someone comes. If Audrey is awake and Carol and I are still downstairs, Audrey will sometimes go in and climb into Charlotte's crib. We can hear them giggling and playing. Eventually Audrey will come to our room and tell us that Charlotte wants us to get up.
Of course the girls have their conflicts, but these days they play together well much more than they argue. They often disappear into Audrey's room and play with dolls or trains peacefully for half an hour.
Being full-time mom of two young kids has wreaked havoc on Carol's upper back. Charlotte is coming out of her clingy phase now, but for months she had to be on Carol's hip much of the time. Carol finally sought some help for the pain a couple of weeks ago and is now getting physical therapy and seeing some improvement.
Audrey's swimming lessons have been going very well. Audrey is much more cooperative and she gamely tries everything the instructor asks her to do. We're just wrapping up a six-week session but I'll sign her up for the next session and we'll keep it going continuously now. It's a half-hour lesson one evening a week at the YMCA five minutes from our house. I come home from work a half hour early that evening and Audrey and I go together.
I've been spending most of my free time being a geek. I've been saving for more than a year to buy a new iMac and finally bought it two weeks ago. I used to run a bunch of computers at home to perform various tasks (my own mail and web servers, for example). Now I've coalesced most of that onto the new iMac. Someday soon I'll buy a big external hard drive for backup and then I'll be able to power down the last "extra" computer that is still running for that purpose. I started controlling when computers are running (instead of the old 24/7 for several of them) a year ago and I can see a significant change in the monthly power usage graphs we get with our electricity bill.
One of the main reasons I wanted a new Mac was for video editing. I have a collection of 8mm color movies from my maternal grandparents. I also have the camera and projector, which date back many decades. The movies go back as far as 1947 and show my mother as a teenager. The latest are from about 1968 when I was 8 years old. I will capture them all digitally. I started this project two years ago but the tools I had at the time were too limiting. Now I have excellent video tools on the new Mac.
I project the film on a homemade screen, aim my digital camcorder at the screen and capture the resulting digital video to the computer. Then I'll edit it all to put it in order (the film segments are randomly spliced together). After that I'll record audio commentary from my parents and sisters and finally produce a DVD that preserves a good chunk of visual and oral history of my family.
School has been on winter break. That was excellent timing because it gave me time to play with my new toy. This semester I'm taking "Microarray Bioinformatics", which is a very core area at my workplace (although not directly in my job). I found the midterm last week to be pretty difficult, but when grades came out I scored well above average. So I guess everyone found it pretty hard!
Finally, with the arrival of Spring bike season is getting underway. I've been commuting year round for three years now and I still love the fact that I don't have to struggle for physical conditioning in the Spring like I used to. I can just start adding miles. Yesterday was a cold but otherwise gorgeous day and I rode 55 miles with my Saturday riding group and felt great.
