2 months

I've started stressing that he isn't rolling over yet. My friends who had babies around the same time as me, have all posted about rolling over, and I got nothing! I'm trying to console myself that it is ok, but I'm a first time mom... so yeah right!

He loves chomping on his hands and fingers. We don't particularly want a thumb-sucker, but he has found it a couple times. We'll see how this goes.

He's chunked up. Seriously! When did that happen? He is almost double his birthweight, and he's not even 2.5 months! (was 12lb 4oz at his 2 month appt)

Check out those legs!

He's a morning person! Who would have ever thought that I would have a MORNING person growing inside of me. He's a great smiley baby, but it is way easier to get smiles out of him in the mornings.

Check out these big smiles! (notice the PJs, he'd just woken up)

He's sleeping 5-6 hours most nights, and will go down back right after a short eating. I'm hopeful he'll drop this middle of the night feeding soon.

He loves to stand.

He can almost hold his head by himself, but he still does a little head banging.

He's allll boy! He laughs or smiles after he passes gas! It is too funny, but man does it stink!

He's had 4 different babysitters, and I'm very grateful to all of them! Especially the ones who let Matt and I have a quick double date to go see Harry Potter! It was sooo nice!

And most of all, he loves his mom! It melts my heart everytime he smiles at me when I come to his crib or pick him up from the babysitter, or how he calms down when I hold him, and how he sleeps so sweetly on me.

This is right after he got his shots.

Yes, we did move

The reason we had so much family in town is because my parents left for their mission! (see missionaries) Leeds England! How cool is that?

Anyways, we decided to move into their house to take care of it, and rent out ours. Shouldn't be too hard, right? HA! Trying packing with a 2 month old. Doesn't happen! I'm indebted to my sister and Lindsey for packing my ENTIRE kitchen.

So, add in trying to help parents get ready to leave, by going over to their house every free night to learn more about their house and things to make sure it all gets taken care of.

Don't forget to actually spend time with family while they are in town.

Then oh yeah, live your normal busy life of work and church.

Then you also must remember to keep the house clean so that you can show it off to potential renters.

Then add in a 2 month old with shots the day before you are moving. (Lack of planning and unforseen circumstances caused this.)

And don't forget to go back to first house to show it to potential renters, because you have tons of spare time.

Then

house full of belongings already + all of your belongings = my current state of entropy

Isn't it lovely!

(yes, I just took these pictures, and believe it or not, this is an improvement!)

More Summer Fun

A week after Reid's 1st swimming lesson, he got his first camping / jetskiing trip! It was tons of fun, and we practically brought the whole house! He ate terribly and was quite warm the whole time... But it was worth it! We had a blast!

Matt with his sister (and bro-in-law) in the background

Reid with Daddy on the jetski!

Here's where Reid slept

I got my red head!!!!

(ok, it's red in the sun, but definitely a strawberry blonde the rest of the time)

Just chillin' after his swim

Even the dogs had a good time

I had so much fun and look forward to it in the next years.

Update and Swimming!

We've had a wonderful time with family in town these last couple weeks.

We saw cool fireworks for the 4th with both in-laws.

We went to the Wildlife Museum.

I just love the cute things museums do for kids!

And I love the cute things kids do at museums!

We spent lots of hours playing games.

Reid received his baby blessing, it was wonderful, and I'm very excited to watch him grow up to be an amazing man!

True to form, Reid was, of course, cooperating for pictures

And Reid got his first swimming lesson!

While all of these have been fun, I was the most excited about the swiming lessons. He did GREAT! He enjoyed it thoroughly (as long as the sun wasn't in his eyes), and even tried to take a nap in the middle of it. hahaha! I LOVE water, so sharing this with my son, really brought pure joy to my heart!

I Know, I Know...

I am way behind.... everyone else is catching up on their summers, and I need to too. But as this moment I am babysitting my sister's 3 boys... 4 boys altogether, and ME! Matt will come later, but for now just me, so clearly this post must end, and I will fill you in later.

Motorized Lego Car Update

So, you may be wondering what terrible disaster has struck to prevent me from posting the fabulous updates to my motorized Lego car. (If you weren't before, you are now.)

Well, I got the microcontroller working via the serial interface. I wrote up a c++ program in Linux (I do all my c++ programming in Ubuntu because of it's built in c compiler) to send serial data to the microcontroller. This worked well, but took a bit of diving into header files and strange structures to get access to the I/O modules I needed. Using the USB port is easier in Linux because it's addressable as '/dev/TTYUSB0'. So, I decided to try it out in Windows. In windows, it's just a bus (USB = Universal Serial Bus), and the individual ports aren't addressed. But, COM7 showed up when I plugged in my USB to Serial converter cable installed the driver for it. I was able to get it working with Visual Basic 6 with only 2 lines of code. Ha ha, how lame is that?

I had gone down to DI (yes, the thrift store) and bought some old DC power supplies. You know... the bulky transformers used for cell phone chargers or power for computer speakers. I had these hooked up to power the motors with an H-Bridge because the computer can't supply enough current to drive the motors. So, the computer just toggles the voltage at the base (or gate) and switches the high-current DC power supply from the wall.

Just as I got started playing with the serial interface, the unthinkable happened...

Turns out I burnt out one of my 98¢ DC power supplies. I guess they really meant that whole 150 mA rating stuff printed on the back.

I guess it could have been worse. It could have tried to source (or sink) the current through the parallel port on the computer and zapped my motherboard. I guess this is an acceptable alternative.

Now I need to make another trip down to DI and be a little pickier about what random part I buy. Hopefully some ignorant LDS sap has unwittingly discarded the exact part I need. You know what they say, "One man's heavily-used, refurbished, and resold-at-a-discount-price hardware is another man's high-current electronics hobby."

In the meantime, we're busy packing up the house so that we can move. So, I have to pack up my hobby project for a few days. Hopefully I can find it after we unpack the boxes when we get there. We've been dropping off a truckload of boxes every time we drive over, so we've gotten a head start. At the same time, we've been helping Mom and Dad move things around in preparation for us to move in there. On top of all that, we're moving the same week as the Turnidges. Yikes.