worth reading...

Decade-long friend, fellow bear and barrister-wordsmith Lyn Robbins is now blogging.

Steve's Naturalization Ceremony

Our friend Steve became a real, live U.S. American on Friday! Lydia and Adam came and picked me up at lunchtime to go to the Estes Kefauver federal building in Nashville where Steve took the oath of citizenship. He was born in Hong Kong a few years back, so he's had a United Kingdom passport.

It was the first time Lydia or I or Adam (of course) had gotten the opportunity to be a part of one of these ceremonies, and I highly recommend it. There were sixty new U.S. citizens that day, from the middle east, central and south America, Europe, Africa, the far east... I think the only continents we missed were Australia and Antarctica. It's great to see the melting pot in person.

Non-baby book firsts for Adam:

• First walk in a crosswalk
• First time in a courtroom
• First naturalization ceremony
• First time through security (but around the metal detector in the stroller)

Sunday lunch

Nathan and Tauna came to visit from Houston this weekend. We met up with them after church and ate at Lydia's new favorite restaurant. Saw Aaron and Ashley.

Adam was an angel, basically sleeping through all of lunch.

a new typical tuesday

New things that happen on a typical Tuesday (in no particular order):

• Dad (me) takes a 30 minute nap from 7:00-7:30 p.m.
• Adam gets a real bath (first one post-drop-off-of-the-stump)
• Lots of snacking.
• Mom does laundry

I'm sure there'll be more... that's just kind of a play-by-play of the evening so far. I don't know if it'll be like this every Tuesday, but I'm thinking that the similarities will be stronger than the differences.

Special thanks to Lydia's parents for coming over today and loading the dishwasher and taking out the trash. Also thanks to the Roselles for bringing food last night (the Coca Cola cake is gone... as of... now.)

news from the nest

Friday was a good, somewhat busy day. Lydia's parents came over and brought lunch and helped us get the house in order. We still had hospital bags that weren't unpacked, and had some things that never made it to the hospital that needed to be put up. They were a big help!

Then, the Owens famly came over to bring us a great dinner. When you're a bit bleary from the eat-change-sleep infant cycle, adult conversation, wonderful comfort food, and smiling faces of a five and two year-old can really renew your spirit!

Later that night, we had our first "inconsolable" stretch with Adam. He was just confused about whether he was hungry, gassy or sleepy. After about an hour of off-and-on whining, he went down. All seems to be well in the overnight stretch.

I hear noises... gotta go...

i am officially old

I don't know exactly the day, but sometime in the past few months, I had a very significant event happen that signaled my transition from "young guy" to "not so young guy." I discovered Twitter, and I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Katherine reminded me of this - well, sort of reminded me. It's more like she indirectly made me aware of the fact when she posted about Twitter, and later how she better understands it and is now Twittering.

By now, you're probably wondering what the heck it is. Their tagline "What are you doing?" is essentially it. Twitter-ers "check in" to Twitter with what they're doing right now. If you're blogging, you Twitter that you're blogging. If you're headed to Starbucks, you're pumping gas, you're asleep, whatever. The idea is that if you that your friend is headed to see Superman 17 at the Regal 98, you might be able to hook up with them and go to the same movie.

Maybe it's because (like Katherine) my Twitter would be something pretty exciting like:
- At my desk
- in a meeting
- in a meeting
- in a meeting
- eating lunch at my desk
- in a meeting
- in a meeting
- in a meeting
- at my desk

Or maybe it's because I can go five minutes and not wonder where all my friends are. Or maybe it's because I don't have any friends? :D

Really, this is kind of the first "big Internet thing" that I haven't been able to get my mind/time/workflow around... so that must make me old. I could do Digg, and I could also do MySpace (although I pretty much elected not to do so) but this is beyond my mind map. Now I have a bit of a perception of why some parents don't get rock music...

happy birthday, tim!

Give him props on his wife's blog...