It snowed!

Well, actually, it didn't snow on our side of town, but friends who live at the base of the mountain, on the other side of post, said it snowed at their houses. When we woke up this morning, the mountains were white.

I didn't take this pic. I ganked it from a friend who lives on that side of town.

Orren and his push toy

We got Orren a push toy! It says it's for ages 12 months and up, but we figure our boy is bigger than most people's 12 month olds, and he's also walking, so why NOT get him the push toy? The one we got him is SOOOO cute. It's the Melissa and Doug alligator one, so it's solid wood, and very beautifully constructed. Plus, the alligators mouths open and close and make all kinds of fun clacking noises when the little studmuffin runs down the hallway squealing with delight and pushing his new toy around. It's cute. You'd really have to be here to get the full effect. (I'll ask Thak if we can buy a video cam sometime within the next couple months! Then we'll set up a Youtube channel and you can see our crazy monkey children in their natural habitat.)

The pics I have today are not the best quality-wise, but you try photographing the boy who's trying to run you over with his new push toy, and see how well you do!!

Anyhow, without further ado, Orren and his push toy:

I approve this message, even if you don't!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8325579.stm

The above is a link to a BBC News story about a study that was done by a university in the UK. The study showed that couples in which the wife is at least five years younger than the husband had the greatest marital satisfaction. This was increased even more if said younger wife had a higher level of formal education than her husband. It was also shown that marriages in which the wife is older than the husband are the least happy of all.

I had to laugh, because it's Thak and me all over! Thak thought it was pretty great, too. We definitely give the researchers who drew these conclusions our stamp of approval!

The thing I've found funny is how many people are completely displeased with these results, saying they've got to be wrong, and other things of that nature. Sure, most people we know marry within a year of their age, so they wouldn't fall on the most optimal side of this study. Also, for some inane reason, the "older woman, younger man" thing is catching on like wildfire, and this study also showed that marriages in which the wife is older than the husband are the least happy of all, so that may be why a lot of people are taking offense to this. We think the study is right on in that case also. As you may recall, Thak's ex-wife was older than him, and she was pure hell to be married to. Sure, her age alone didn't make her that way, but it does put her neatly onto the bad side of this study, so I find it a little humorous if nothing else.

I don't know why people are taking offense to this thing. I don't take offense to things which go against what me and Thak are doing in some regard. Hell, I could name you three studies right now which we fall squarely on the bad side of. I guess I'm used to falling on the wrong side of public opinion, though. I am, after all, the younger, thinner, second wife who met her husband at work. I'm used to being Public Enemy #1. It's nice to have something that says we're doing it right for once!!

Cool new tickers!!

Seeee??? I put up cool new tickers on the sidebar!! They're really rather pointless, but they're fun. I have enjoyed these things throughout Thak's deployments, for anniversary countdowns, and stuff like that. Now there's a cool new website that has ticker designs which appeal far more to us. The typical flowers, butterflies, and fairies hardly fit our personality, yet these were the standard fare on most ticker sites until relatively recently.

Enter Alternatickers!! Alas, they have tickers for those of us who tread on the side of the line most would call odd. Yes, there are slider icons for extended harnessing and extended rear-facing! They have breastfeeding ones which are really cute even though we can't use them. They have bike (as in bicycle, not motorcycle) stuff, punk rock stuff, retro stuff, tattoo stuff, sushi stuff, and even cloth diapering stuff!! Did you see the cloth diapering ticker?? That slider is actually a Bum Genius diaper in Grasshopper! We actually have four in our collection just like that! They had a lot of kinds of dipes to choose from for sliders on the site. I was so impressed. Even the car seats in the kids' tickers are correct. That's a Nautilus in Erin's, and a Britax Marathon in Orren's. While ours are pink and Mossy Oak camo, respectively, the point is, we're not the only ones who think this stuff is cool enough to put on a ticker. One other thing we like about that site is that every one of those slider icons is available with the kid in various skin tones. A site that doesn't assume EVERYONE on the face of the earth is white?! This is far too good to be true!

Anyhow, I love cute little tickers, and now we have a lot of them. If you ever want to just real quick see how old the kids are, or how long till Thak's birthday, or how long we've REALLY got until he's out of the Army, it's just a click away. :)

Kiddos and general update

Things have been so busy lately! It's like we just lose weeks in there... like some customer will order something from me, and before I know it, it's been a month and I haven't even thought about their order yet. That's one reason I'm closing my business within the next two weeks, as soon as I get through the orders I have in house. It was too much for me to run this house 100% by myself since Thak is gone about 18 hours a day between work and school, plus homeschool Erin, plus represent him well within the unit, plus run a business. That's like three people's worth of jobs, and I'm one person. Something had to give. Since I never actually enjoyed my business, I'm more than happy to give it up. Thak FINALLY said it was ok for me to quit forever yesterday, and it was basically the best words I'd ever heard. I give it 3 months before he asks me to reopen. I'm not doing it, though. Sewing is monotonous, soul crushing, sweat shop work, and most of the customers treated me like crap, so I'm definitely never doing this again after I close my shop. I may make an occasional thing to put on ETSY, but I will NEVER take another custom order again, even from friends.

Anyhow, the kids are doing great. Orren cut four teeth this week, all at once, all across the top. That brings his total to six. For some reason, teeth is the one area in which he's actually behind a lot of other babies. He's 9 1/2 months old, and only had two teeth up until this week, and now he has six. I'm not worried about it or anything. He's doing everything in his own time.

He hasn't walked much more since the night he took his first steps. That's ok, though. He'll get to it when he feels like it. He's a big, strong, healthy boy, and we couldn't ask for better than him. He's the sweetest baby, and while he's not cuddly like his sister was at this age, he's still really nice. He's every bit a boy! I had no idea that even at this age, boys and girls were so different from each other, but they definitely are.

Erin is still the best big sissy. She loves helping to care for Orren, and playing with him. She sometimes gives him foods he shouldn't have, but she's no worse about that than daddy is, so I can't complain!! She has learned how to pick Orren up, and put him on her lap while she's sitting on their little bench. It's really cute, and he just loves it! She loves carrying him around, even though she can barely get his feet off the ground (when picking him up under his arms), and he weighs more than half what she weighs!

In school, she's doing great. We've started learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. She's understanding quite well, which is awesome since reading is not her strong area. She's doing well at reading in general also, and our goal is for her to read The Cat in the Hat all by herself by the end of the month. I don't know if we'll do it that soon, but we might. We're at least making progress in the right direction.

We also took a trip to the science museum (and bought ourselves an annual pass while we were at it!!) which was having an awesome exhibit about space. Erin has always been interested in space, so she really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, too, because much of the new research they were showing was done at GA Tech, or with GA Tech personnel, so I'd had my hands in it a little not all that long ago. (And by "had my hands in it" I mean I saw it in the lab next to mine, or helped the PhD candidate in charge of it tighten a bolt on his apparatus, or record numbers while he called them off to me!! Nothing terribly significant, but still, it's cool to see the research on display for the lay audience.) Thak also enjoyed it, and learned a lot. He wants to go back. I'm sure we will, maybe this weekend. I mean, we did buy an annual pass, so it's not like it would cost us anything!

In the remaining portion of the science museum, it was the normal science museum stuff, and all the kids there (and parents, too!) were enjoying it greatly. They even had a Tesla coil. I was impressed with Erin because she remembered that I built a small Tesla coil in my lab one day when I had her with me. She was impressed with the big one they had there, and even though she was a little scared of how much noise it made, and how big the sparks were, she still was just dying to volunteer to assist with the next demonstration. It almost brought a tear to my eye. Tesla is my homeboy, you see.

Beyond that, it occurred to me that just about all the exhibits there, all of the interactive ones at least, were physics-based. Everyone was enjoying them a lot, yet somehow I'd bet the majority of these parents shied away from studying physics in college, and the majority of these kids will also. The reason I say that is because it's the law of probability that they did/will. The majority of people think physics is either scary or boring. If it were so scary and boring, would an entire museum be geared toward it, and would that museum be a popular place to go? Highly doubtful. I even said to my friends, "Take that museum, sprinkle with some basic Calculus, add a pinch of Newton, and you've got your first semester of general college physics." The significance was lost on them, too. I wish more parents would use that museum, which all kids enjoy, as a way to encourage their kids to study physics. I know that's what I'm doing. Erin learns about physics every time I have the opportunity to teach her about it. Of course, she learns about the other areas of science as well. They all tie into one another. I find that other parents teach their kids a lot about the other areas of science, but avoid physics like the plague. That perplexes me. Because I majored in physics, I know the world around me on a level I would not had I shied away from it because I'd heard it was difficult or boring.

Anyhow, that's about it. My boy is growing like a weed, and my girl is learning well, and we're still not scared of physics in this family. Now I have to go and get ready for a unit function I didn't even hear about until last night. Luckily, it's just a picnic in a park on post, so it's casual. Thak has to work for most of the day even though everyone else is off, but hopefully he'll get out of there at a human hour even so.

New car seat for Orren!

UPS brought us Orren's car seat last night! I could not get the box open fast enough!! This thing is awesome. It's a Britax Marathon in Mossy Oak camo, EXTREMELY limited edition, and never being made again. We were so lucky to find one still in stock, and for suggested retail price, with free shipping (but on a car seat that costs almost $300 and weighs 20 something pounds, shipping BETTER be free!!)

We installed it in the truck this morning. It looks so cool! I asked Thak if he was going to be showing off his manly car seat to everyone at work, and he answered matter-of-factly, "hell yeah". Haha!!


OK, we now own four car seats:
-Peg Perego Primo Viaggio SIP, which is the infant carrier style one, long since outgrown.
-Britax Diplomat, which goes to 40 pounds, which Orren is currently using in the car.
-Graco Nautilus, which goes to 65 pounds and then converts into a booster. Erin uses it in both vehicles currently, but it will eventually be in the truck only since it's enormous.
-Britax Marathon, which goes to 65 pounds, and Orren uses in the truck (although Erin fits quite well in it, too.

All we lack is now a Radian for Erin to use in the car, and EVENTUALLY, within a year, we'll have to get a Radian for Orren to use in the car because he's going to outgrow his Diplomat at some point. In fact, once he reaches 30 pounds, we'll probably go ahead and replace the Diplomat with a Radian (save the Diplomat for the next baby) so that Orren can continue to rear-face for longer.

The Radian we want to get him rear-faces to 45 pounds, so with that, we might just make our goal of rear-facing him for at least 3 years. These other seats only rear-face to 35 pounds, and as big as Orren is for how young he is, and how fast he's growing, we would be one of those families who couldn't make even two years rear-facing. Even more crucial than weight is height, though. Orren's well into the 90's percentile-wise for height, and the Radian is the tallest rear-facing car seat on the market. That's a big reason we think we will need one in a year or so to replace the Diplomat, which is really short.

You may be wondering why we're so adamant on rear-facing for three years. Well, I read some research not long ago, stating that internal decapitation is SIGNIFICANTLY more likely in most types of car accidents if a child forward faces before the age of three. The reason is that sometime after the age of three, the spine becomes strong enough to not expand more than the spinal cord itself on impact. In kids under 3, the spine can stretch 2 inches, but the spinal cord can only stretch about 1/4 inch, so if they face forward, and get into most kinds of car accidents, they will die on impact, whereas a rear-facing child would not, because the seat back will not allow their head and neck to move much.

(Do you see now why I think people who forward face their kids at a year old despite there being tons of research available showing that it's a bad thing to do are complete morons?)

So anyhow, yeah, next project is Erin's Radian so we'll have a seat for each kid in both vehicles, then we'll be good for a while before we have to get Orren his Radian.

Right now, we're just thrilled with our Mossy Oak Britax Marathon!! I just love high quality baby gear. There is such a difference. It's easy to fit, easy to install, works awesome, and looks cool! Can't beat it!

First steps!!

Orren Kiet was born 9 pounds and 9 ounces. Today, he is 9 months and 9 days old.

AND..... HE JUST TOOK HIS FIRST STEPS!!!!!!

Thak was here to see it. He's totally overjoyed about that, and make no mistake about the fact that 9 is a VERY lucky number.

New pics

We had new family pics taken this past Saturday. They turned out well! Some were taken across the street from Memorial Park in downtown El Paso, and others were taken at the Ysleta Mission in the Lower Valley.

There were many more than this, and we love them all, but to avoid even more photo overload than we're already committing, I'll leave it at these. You get the idea. :)