Turkey is Done (thinly veiled nipple reference)

Phew, very busy week last week. The week started off with a bang, or should I say puff when early monday morning we were awoken by the sound of the smoke detector wailing away. We came out of the bedroom to find that the entire house was engulfed in smoke. Floor to ceiling. I had started a fire in the fireplace insert earlier that night so I assumed that was the problem. We opened up all of the windows in the house and got the smoke out pretty quickly. The smell on the other hand, thats a differnt matter. We had a cleaning crew come in on Wednesday to clean the two worst rooms and to shampoo the furniture and carpets. They also left us with two ozone machines. For those of you not in the know, ozone is supposed to be the best method for eliminating odors in a house. If you ask me, the cure is almost as bad as the disease. We started the machines as we were leaving the house on T-Day around 10 am assuming that the machines would run for 12 hours (set on timers) and the house would have close to 20 hrs after that to air out a bit when we returned on Friday afternoon. Upon returning on Friday to have such an overpowering ozone smell that we were forced to sit in the pimp room in the basement for 5 hours while every window upstairs was wide open and all three ceiling fans were running. Did I mention that it was about 25 degrees that night??? The damn furnace never stopped running. Eventually we did get the house aired out but now that the ozone smell is almost gone, we are still left with a faint smoke smell. We're not sure what to do now. We could call in the cleaners again and have more done but to be quite honest dealing with the cleaners and the ozone machines and what not seems worse that the odor that we are left with. I think that we're going to wait a few days and see if the remaining smell dissipates.


Other than that we had a pretty nice T-Day weekend. Thursday was spent between Marcy's mother's place and my parents place. Brynna was her usual attention hog self. Wowing everyone with her devilish cuteness.






Saturday was spent in Mass at Rusty and Cara's new house for a belated t-day meal. Brynna was a bit crabby for this one but its understandable. She hadn't been in normal surroundings for almost a whole week and had spent a lot of time traveling. She was nice enough to show everyone how well she can stand. I don't know if its early for a baby to be able to hold herself up or not but it is freaking marcy out to see it so quickly. Basically Brynna can stand if you hold her arms to assist in balance. She'll be on a bike before we know it.

What's that smell?

Marcy made a delish tuna casserole last night for supper. I brought the leftovers in for lunch at work today. At lunch, I popped it into the microwave and went back to my desk to work for a few more minutes. After the casserole was finished heating but before I was able to get back to it, Sue came down from the kitchen and asked if it was mine. I said yes and immediately started to worry that I had stunk up the joint and apologized. “Oh, no” Sue said. “It doesn’t smell bad really, it just smells like someone forgot to take out the garbage over the weekend.” That would make one hell of a slogan for an ad campaign.

I can’t wait for Marcy to read this.

Chucky

Chucky lives in my house, I swear!  Brynna has really been creeping me out sometimes.  When she’s sleeping in my arms, she has a habit that is quite alarming.  She can be in the deepest sleep possible, I’ll look away for a couple of seconds and when I look back she’ll be staring at me, unblinking, completely wide awake.  It gives me the creeps every time that it happens.  Its sort of like in the movies when you’re sure that the villain is dead and BAM! he opens his eyes.  I can’t wait for when she’s a bit older and able to walk cause then she’ll be able to stand next to the bed her nose 2” from mine and stare me down until I wake up just long enough to have a coronary.  Babies are evil, cute, but evil.

Update

So many funny things and so little time. I'll follow the Browne's cue and give you the low down on some of Brynna's progress over the last few weeks. As we speak, we're still looking for that elusive full nights sleep. Um, er, I guess that I should say that "Marcy is looking for her first full nights sleep" since I got one last night (more on that to come). If you ask me (which I know you didn't but by visiting this blog you've given me carte blanche to do and say anything I damn well please. Unless of course Marcy gets mad at me and then I'll take it back. Whoops, off track, back to task at hand.) Brynna's still only sleeping in 2-3 hours stints but at least her schedule roughly coincides with ours.

One thing that she has started doing is sucking her thumb. We're not talking about a nice quiet, innocent child sucking her thumb while holding her blankie here. What she does is more akin to a fourteen year old fat kid attacking the all-you-can-eat buffet at the local Ye Olde BBQ House. There is so much slurping going on that I sort of feel that I should give her a bit of privacy if ya know what I mean. She is so loud that the other night she was in the bedroom and I was two rooms away and I could still hear the slurping. No joke.














She has also started to try to roll over on occasion. She occasionally gets up onto her side but her arm always gets in the way. We'll see how long it takes her to master that.

All for now.

Photo Dump

no time, here are some pics to give you your fix.

Dearborn News

I've added Dearborn News to my list of links. Dena and Jay are a couple of Norwich alums that I can't seem to shake no matter how annoying and immature I am. Very resilient people I say. They also have a beautiful little girl named Skylar who is only one day older than Brynna. Check them out. While you're there, be sure to post a comment telling her to get off of her rear and post more stuff. She's had some pretty funny posts in the past and we want more.

MOLEBUSTERS

We have a dynamic duo in our household. Chance and Grace are some serious mole hunters. In the past few weeks we’ve had close to a dozen eyeless wonders show up dead in and around the house. We’ve seen these two work together before but it is usually with chipmunks. In the summer they regularly team up on the unsuspecting rodents and trap them in downspouts and in the screen porch. Grace can’t normally stand Chance but outside I guess that she makes an exception since they make such a fabulous team.

Here is their theme song:

MOLEBUSTERS!
I ain't afraid of no moles (3X)
MOLEBUSTERS!
[Run] Something strange goin on
Something's wrong
[DMC] Gloom in the room
Outside in the yard
All alone in the crib
Watchin the tube
[Run] Yo-o-o-o is that what I think?
Did I see somethin move?
[DMC] Chill down your spine
Your heart fills with dread
Not filled by the things
that HAVE NO EYES IN THEIR HEADS
They borough through the ground
With no time to frown
[Run] You call the MOLEBUSTERS
Well that's who you call!
MOLEBUSTERS!
We ain't-we ain't-we
We ain't afraid of no moles
MOLEBUSTERS!
We ain't-we ain't-we
We ain't afraid of no moles
MOLEBUSTERS!
We ain't-we ain't-we
We ain't afraid of no moles
MOLEBUSTERS!
[Run] Stop! UHH!
[DMC] Bridge
[Run] Hit it!
I-I ain't, I-I ain't
I ain't afraid of no moles
I, I-I ain't afraid
I-I ain't, I-I ain'tI-I-I,
I-I-I ain't afraid of no moles
MOLEBUSTERS!
MOLEBUSTERS!

I AIN’T AFRAID OF NO MOLES

(and on and on and on. This frikkin song goes on forever and I’m just not that committed to the joke. Sorry)

GI-mungo baby

Well, here we go again. Brynna was in for her 2 month shots the other day and apparently her growth hasn't slowed down one bit. She is now up to 13.2 lbs (95th percentile) is 24 1/4" long (97th percentile) and her head circumference is 16" (90th percentile). Big girl. She can now crack walnut shells between her butt cheeks. I must admit though that I really do owe her an apology. Based on the above stated numbers, her head is actually a bit small compared to the rest of her body.

Dam Nelsons saves the Earth!

Holy crap, what was everybody doing on Monday and Wednesday anyway?  Obviously nobody was working because there were over 80 page views and 30 visits on Monday and 60 page views and 35 visits on Wednesday.  Come on people, do some work will you???  Just kidding, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I’ve touched the lives of so many people.  Who knows how many failed marriages have been resurrected, orphan children who have been adopted, drowning puppies that have been saved all because of me and my selfless dedication to making this site as pointless and arbitrary as possible.

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Dooce

Here is a link to an amazingly funny post on the Dooce website. LINK. I find it funny mostly because it talked about poop. The woman is amazingly funny but lost her job because of the stuff that she posted to her website. Enjoy.

Happy Baby

B-Girl (thanks Jason) enjoying some bath time. We think that she's starting to understand that splashing and getting mommy and daddy wet is fun.













Hmmm, who can I manipulate today? This is an all too familiar look from her. This morning before coming into work she was having a good time in her swing listening to the music and watching her mobile. When I was leaving, I leaned in to give her a kiss and she started screaming. Apparently my noggin was blocking her view. I quickly retreated and apologized and a few seconds later she was smiling as if to say "I control you, you are my pawn. Now go fetch me a boob". Her powers of manipulation are progressing at an alarming rate.













This was Brynna watching Baby Einstein the other day. She now laughs and coos the whole way through the video. She seems to especially like seeing the little children. You've got to hand it to whoever came up with these videos. Production costs must be about $30 for these suckers (sock puppets, toy trucks etc) but they sell tons of copies and so far they seem well worth it. These videos are great for children and stoners alike with the shapes and colors. If you're tripping I'd probably steer clear though.

Practicing her "come hither" look. I'm gonna be in trouble when she's a teenager.

Sushi

What in the world does it take to get sushi around here??? Marcy and I had our first free evening since Brynna's arrival this past weekend and had planned on stuffing our faces with sushi to celebrate. We arrive at the sushi/thai place in Boothbay Harbor only to find that they are not serving nemo tonight. Frig. Our hearts were set on some wasabi action so we decided to try Brunswick instead. We know of two places there right on the commercial strip so it might be a bit more driving but if you're determined, you do whatcha gotta do. 45 mins later we roll into Brunswick only to find that one of the places has closed down and the other is under renovation. Double frig! Ok, we thought, maybe there is a place downtown near the college. I've heard that coeds like fish...as a matter of fact I think that I've seen a couple of movies about just that... Think I'm gonna get in trouble for that one but once its typed, its out of my hands hombre. So we shoot downtown and guess what we find. Absolutely nothing! Triple frig. We ended up deciding on mexican instead. Pretty good food but the service sucked. Guess we need more practice at this going out alone thing. Oh well, better luck next time.

Quick update

Sorry all, I've been so busy with my new job that I haven't had time to blog recently. Unfortunately, that means that you were forced to look at pictures of Brynna for the last week. My apologies. So here is a quick update of some of our recent activities. Last weekend the Nelson clan got together with the Braun's in Brunswick to walk on the multi-use path. It was a beautiful sunny day and everybody had a great time. About an hour into the walk, Tim and I were walking ahead of the girls, I was walking Chance and Tim was pushing our stroller (because Marcy had started to carry Brynna). Anyway, long story short, after walking together ALONE for a few minutes it dawned on us how much we looked like a gay couple. Don't get me wrong, I think that Tim is a good looking guy and all but my stump just don't swing that way ya know? So we practically sprinted back to the ladies. Disaster narrowly averted. More nonsense to come...

Job change

It occured to me after seeing Dena's comment from my last post that not everybody knows what has been going on as far as my job situation goes. As of this past Tuesday I started working for Knickerbocker Design in Boothbay after 7 1/2 years full time at JMA and 3 years part time during school vacas and such. The decision to leave was a hard one but one that I think is for the best. So now if you didn't know, you do now.

Just a quick note that I've changed Joe's name (and his link info at right) from Cubicle Joe to JMA Joe since he is no longer at the next cubicle over. New exciting packaging, same great taste. Ewwwe

Photo dump 2

Hi, Marcy here. Rick is quite busy with his new job and I have been getting lots of requests to see new photos of Miss Brynna. Having a writing style that is more scientific (read boring), I will leave the comedy to Rick. So, below is a photo dump of pictures taken within the last week. You might notice how the munchkin's cheeks are filling out.


















So huggable.















Daddy's girl.


















Sometimes he listens to me.



















Post walk bliss.
















"Hey! Over here. Look at me!"