Sir Grumpstein of Toothybush

I am finally getting back to writing something on the blog. It was something of a crazy week since we last spoke. For example, I had and interview, was offered the position, and turned it down...and that is just the last two days. Well, that is not exactly true as I am going to call and give it the final turn-down tomorrow. The job was a physics teaching gig at the California Art Institute, which sounded fun but the pay was about half of what I was expecting and I was a little worried that the amount of time I would have to put in to making lessons, etc. would not make it easy to supplement that income and give Emmett his own physics education. Anyway, the school is a training ground for future commercial artists, and it was the first for-profit school I had ever been around. The people seemed nice, but there was definitely something strange with the whole bottom-line feel permeating the place. It was funny showing up before the interview and having to sit down to fill out an actual application asking about prior convictions, personal references, etc.---it must have been the same application they use for every job at the place, but it was stressful trying to think of people who would have anything good to say about me.

Emmett. Oh right, this is supposed to be about him. Emmett has been a bit on the crankypants half of the spectrum the last two days and it has been a little trying for Andrea who has been stuck dealing with it for most of the day. We are going camping this weekend (a first for Emmett) with 9 other people and it would be really nice if lil' E was on his best behavior. Hopefully he got it all out of him today. The thing is he has turned into this slobber machine and today was acting a little funny with his mouth (I don't know how else to describe it) which had us thinking that maybe he is starting teething, but it is still kind of early for that. I find it kind of funny that teething is the newest in the list of possible reasons for unexplained Emmett phenomena with the prior two being "maybe he is going through a growth spurt" and "maybe he has gas." The other possible thing is a fever, but at least you can measure that (well, if you have a battery for your thermometer---something we have needed for months (you are supposed to take a baby's temperature daily "they" say---oops) and Andrea took care of picking one up today only to find out Emmett is fever-free).

What else from the last week? It was hot as all get-out last weekend. The picture at left shows how Emmett spent most of the time---nearly naked. Rare stuff for San Francisco, indeed. On Saturday, A, E, and I went to Emmett's pal Augie's grandparents' place in Marin for some
swimming pool fun. We got a little wild and Emmett slept like crazy. We put him down for a nap at 5pm in someone else's house and moved him to the car seat at 11pm for the trip home. He woke momentarily for a nighttime feeding once at home and was out until 6am when he woke for a while then went back to bed until 10ish. It was crazy. I took off for a couple of hours for a mountain bike ride and he took two more naps in that time. Maybe that is why he is so cranky---he is all sleeped out.

That is where things stand. Here is one more picture that Andrea took today. As you can tell, it is no longer hot here.

owie weenie

Finally getting caught up on the blog a little bit. This past weekend was a celebration of our friends Bobby and Miyuki's wedding (they got married in Japan already, but this was a celebration with their friends from this side of the Pacific. It was a really beautiful day up in Tilden Park (above Berkeley) and Emmett was a pretty good sport for the whole thing---with the exception of the drive...he still doesn't seem to love the car. Emmett also got to play frisbee, sort of. I had to give it another shot as the only other frisbee experience he has had resulted in him getting hit in the head (an errant frisbee while he was getting his diaper changed...he wasn't ready for it). This time I wore him in the Ergo and only threw forehands which meant very little shaking for Emmett who napped the whole time (about 1.5 hours). Unfortunately, though, he has ended up with what looks to be a blister on the end of his penis and I am worried that all of that bouncing around in the Ergo chaffed the end of it. I am back into bad father territory (the day before Father's day I do this, no less). Andrea called the doctor and she said to just keep an eye on it and if gets worth to give her a call in the morning. We are at three months and a week or so and we have only made two calls to the doctor, at least we have that going for us.

Sunday we had big plans to go to garage sales. Andrea got a list of the ones we were going to hit and at about 8:30 she said "OK, let's get ready to go." We were all ready to go except our shoes and we decided to let Emmett take a little nap. Three hours later Emmett woke up with the interim being filled by us hoping he would wake, still waiting, shoes in hand. We ended up only going to our friends' garage sale where we scored a small cooler to transport breast milk to NYC (liquids bad, breast milk OK? Our dumb rules). A bunch of friends came over to hang out, too, so that was pretty good.

Today I finally got around to setting a date for my leaving the lab. I had mentioned that I was going to be calling it quits to take care of Emmett/explore other options, but was countered with an offer of a half-time position. I countered back with a half-time position where I am at the lab one day a week and home the rest, so the ball is in their court and we will see what happens. Anyway, it looks like there will be a change 8/14 where I will go to stay-at-home dad. We haven't really broken the news to Emmett--he is getting used to this mom/foodsource being around all of the time, so I am not sure how he is going to take it. At least he and I have frisbee.