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A few photos of the farewell lunch from my team when I left Dallas Airmotive.

It goes so wrong, right from the start….

A few of you have read my short story ” Litany of an Atrocity “, and the response has been pretty positive. Although I had removed it from the website for a couple of years, I have again decided to post it on here for anyone to read it that would like to do so. It is dark, written in the second person, and can be disturbing. I was in a dark place when I wrote this, but still enjoy reading it nevertheless. I hope you enjoy…or not.

That’s ‘ight….boyeeeeeeeee. I will so busta cap in yo a$$ if ya take muh bottle…..

WHAT!? You’re telling me it does make my butt look big?

My baby barely fits newborn clothes. Where in the world has the time gone? Mainly the issue is length. When we bought a couple of new footie sleepers at Target the other day, the woman told us to cut the feet off. Needless to say I’ve already chopped a couple of outfits. We keep meaning to measure her. The tape measure has been sitting on the counter for a few days now.

The Simpsons aired a very appropriate show for us this past weekend. “Feeling that Maggie is too clingy, Marge hires a counselor to teach her a child care method ‘C.R.I.E.’ that will help Maggie become more independent. But the method works a little too well, leaving Maggie with no need for Marge at all, not even for hugs.”

lllianna will be 4 weeks old tomorrow.  To this point, she’s received anything and everything exactly when she’s wanted it. Our thought being, that we only have a few weeks to spoil her while she is too young to know what’s going on. Well, we’ve noticed that she’s quite the smart lil cupcake ‘proud parent bragging- she holds her head, can roll from tummy to back, and can stand with some assistance for balance’, so we started to question our ways. Nana gave us a book My First 300 Babies ‘yes, it’s a bit dated but its basic ideas your looking for’ that I did skim thru, but it is heavily schedule oriented and we’ve been against that, but as we started to analyze the situation and with Ryan getting closer to returning to work, I decided to actually read it. While I in no way agree with the entire book, I think it’s given us some helpful ideas. Mainly we like the feeding schedule. You feed every 4 hours. We’d already been progressing in that way, but this helped us get over the hump. It only took Illianna one day to adjust to this routine and has made the house more harmonious. Wake time, sleep time and what to do during them we still play by ear.

It’s hard to know what is the best way and best approach to things, but I’m comforted in knowing that everything I do is out of love for my beautiful baby, and when you act in love you have only positive results.

I’m officially a mom. I now have the car to prove it.

eat your heart out…..

Now Ryan will for sure get a good job. We always make a big purchase when there is a job change.

Granted this is from a husband/fathers point of view, but my first child, a daughter, is three weeks old today and the entire experience was a ride.

For a while my wife was concerned that I wasn’t real involved when she was still preggers. I took care of her, but did pretty much ignore my unborn daughter, feeling that at that point I should take care of mommy instead.

But the moment Illianna ‘my daughter’ joined us, my world was thrown off since now it has to revolve around two brunettes instead of just one. I couldn’t hold Illi for several days without breaking down and crying softly, just over come by the sheer intensity of seeing my daughter, the sudden and overwhelming love i have for her and her mother and life in general.

It has only been three weeks, but I do not know how I ever lived without being a dad, and completely understand to yet another previously thought impossible level, unconditional love for another human being. Just as Jessica changed my world and gave me an appreciation for life and just being there with her, Illi did it to me again, and I have no idea how I lived without either one of them, even for a day.

Yesterday was a busy day. We got to see how wonderful Illianna is with going out.
First, we ran to Staples to return a chair because Ryan initially bought one at Office Depot, which was supposed to deliver to the house on Wednesday, but of course it didn’t and when he called to find out where it was they didn’t know, so he went to Staples and bought a different one because he’s been programming again and our old chair is way old and kills his hip. Well, the Staples chair had a screw hole that was messed up so he had to take it back anyway and meanwhile the Office Depot chair showed up.
Then we went to Lava Grill because we’d been watching Bleach and it made me think… Sushi! It was our first experience dining out with the little one. We went at an off time to be on the safe side, but she was great, so we decided to keep on running around and headed to Walmart to check out the Halloween gear.
We love Halloween. Halloween starts off a great few months of decorating, entertaining, and family. For the past few years now we’ve really gone all out at Halloween ‘party 2006′. Last year we got a comment from one of the trick-or-treaters, “I knew your house would be creepy!” That of course has only encouraged us to top ourselves this year. We have our theme ‘sorry I cannot reveal’. We just need to find our props/costumes. Of course Illianna is going to partake. We’ll get lots of photos so we can show her all the fun torturous things we did to her when she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Walmart was a a total bust, but on a side note they have some elegant black Christmas decorations. I’m not sure what theme/style I’m going to do for Christmas yet, so I was very good and didn’t buy anything.
Next, we ran to BabysRUs because we always need *something* from there. This time it was a hunt for ready-to-feed organic formula. They didn’t have it, but I did get a cute little outfit.
She started to kind of fuss while at BabysRUs, but we managed to sneak into Party City to search for props for Halloween. Again, total bust.
Something happened to Ryan while working in Pampa, TX because he actually wanted Chick-fil-a for dinner. I haven’t eaten there in years, but their charboiled chicken wrap wasn’t too bad, and instead of fries you can get fruit! Thank goodness fast food places finally have a “healthy” option, so those of us who are forced to eat there against our will, don’t die.
We made it home just in time to feed her and get her in bed without a wailing session. She’s such a good girl.