Baby time

It has been awhile since we have done a real update on the babies, so I figured with all my free time I will sit down and do one.

Ella:
Ella is such a funny little girl. She comes up this these little expressions that just melt your heart. She also does this little giggle when we wash her face and hands after she eats that is just hilarious. I think I start laughing every time she does it. She is one of those babies that just lights up the room.

This last week was a pretty big deal in the life of Ella. First, I was playing with her and she does this thing where she grabs my finger and starts chewing on it. Well this time when she was chewing I thought she picked up something hard off the ground and had it in her mouth. I was wrong. It was two little teeth. Yup, that's right, Ella is teething. At almost 5 1/2 months, she has two bottom teeth pocking through and they HURT! She has been doing pretty well with it. If she didn't bite me, I would never have known they were there. The next day, Ella rolled onto her stomach. She got stuck, but at least she made it. She is very good about going from her stomach to her back so now with a little practice she will be rolling around in no time.

Ella is growing FAST. I can't believe how big she is getting. I mean wasn't she just 7 pounds not too long ago? With this whole growing thing, comes movement. She is the squirmiest little thing. When I have her on the floor she will do this little crab walk and scootch all over the living room. Just today she was laying next to Jack on the blanket and the next thing I knew, she was half way across the living room. I guess we will be child proofing soon.

She doesn't like sitting at all. I take that back, she just can't do it. She has this need to be moving all the time, so when we practice sitting, she is sooo wiggly. Now the thing she loves to do is stand. Of course she needs us to support her, but she wants to do it every chance she gets. Maybe we will just skip the whole sitting step and go strait to standing!

Overall, Ella is the sweetest squirmiest little girl ever. Oh, and cute!


Jack:
What can I say about Jack? He is one cool little boy. He also has started doing a hilarious giggle when the wash cloth gets near him. He is so sweet.

Jack wants nothing to do with rolling over. I think he watches his sister get stuck and doesn't want to go through that. I keep telling him he's gonna have to get over it. He did make it to his side the other day so I guess that is progress. Today he went from his tummy to his back for the first time. YAY! He still hates to be on his tummy and really has no desire to scootch around on the floor. He is pretty content just laying or sitting there. It is kind of nice because I only have to really keep my eye on one baby for now. When they both start moving, YIKES!

When we went home for my dad's retirement party Jack actually sat up on his own for awhile. When I say awhile, I mean he didn't immediately fall over.

No teeth yet for Jack. Part of me wishes he would get his first teeth right now too, so they can both do it together and we only have to deal with the first teeth thing once, but on the other hand, He is just too sweet to teeth already.

Jack is strong. He has an awesome grip and can pull hair like a pro. His legs are also strong. He doesn't like to stand up, but he can sure kick. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and he is kicking Ella in the head. Ahhh, it starts already. I think he will be the future kicker for the Chargers!

I think Jack is such a cool little boy!

I have added a few new albums to our photos. Go check them out!

For the Love of Peas

Jack and Ella recently turned five months old. Do you know what five months means in the world of babies? Time for food! I cheated a little and started the cereal a few days early. They don't really like it unless it is mixed with juice. As for the other foods, they have been doing pretty good. They love bananas and applesauce. Ella is a pretty good eater. For the most part, she will open her mouth for us to stick the spoon in and she only spits out a little bit. Jack is an awesome eater. He doesn't spit any of it out... Until today. We are supposed to introduce one new food each day so we can check for allergies. Today was the day we introduced peas.

I LOVE peas! I get this trait from my dad. My mom does not share this same love. When you grow up in a house where the main cook hates peas there were not very many meals that included them. Pat also hates peas. Now, if I had known about this before we got married... Just kidding. I am still able to sneak them into meals from time to time. Today was the test to see who the twins take after, me or Pat.

The twins definitely take after Pat! As soon as I started feeding Jack, he got this horrible look on his face. It was such a pleading look. You could almost see him begging me not to feed him any more. It was so funny I had to start laughing. As soon as I laughed, he started laughing. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak some more peas in his mouth. We did this for a few minutes and then he started spitting. No, it was more like spraying. I swear it was like a scene out of The Exorcist. So, Jack does not like peas.

Ella was a little better with the peas, but she still spit everything out. Between the two of them, I really don't know how much they actually got down. So, now I have a bunch of canned peas and mashed peas in the pantry and no one who will eat them. It is a sad day in the Lorigan pantry.

Traveling Fool

Well, Shae and I made it back from our trip up to King City/Lockwood. Overall it was a pretty good trip. Shae's dad's retirement party was lots of fun. Good food, a few beers, and lots of funny game warden stories. My dad and Dorothy made a trip down for the party so Jack and Ella had lots of grandparents to play with. As a bonus, it was my mom's birthday on Sunday so it was nice to be able to spend some time with her on her b-day. Like I said, it was a good trip and a fun weekend.

I could probably recap the party and grandparent visits more, but I'd rather bitch about my travels. Since Shae drove up with the little ones a week before I headed North, I caught a flight up to Monterey to meet up with them. There aren't a lot of flights from San Diego to Monterey so I had little choice but to hitch a ride on a tiny plane from SD to LAX and then another puddle jumper up to Monterey. I've had the pleasure of flying in the tiny American Eagle planes in the past so I wasn't exactly expecting first class accomidations or anything. In fact, my first flight was cramped but nothing too bad. The SkyMall magazine was in rare form this trip. From a replica Capt. Kirk seat to $70 dog nail trimmers there was tons of great stuff. It was once I got to LAX that my trip soured.

When we landed at LAX, our flight attendant read off the gates of connecting American Eagle flights and I was happy to learn that my flight to Monterey was only three gates down from the gate I was arriving at. I would soon learn that was because the crappy terminal we landed at consisted of about six gates. There must have been a whole thirty people waiting at the terminal. Talk about life in the big city. Anyway, after hanging out at the hub of LAX for a bit (and typing up a blog on my phone), I realized I should probably make a quick stop at the restroom before boarding my next flight. After about 30 seconds of exploring the entire terminal, I finally found the one men's bathroom in the terminal and of course it was closed. Seriously, if you only have one freakin' restroom in a terminal maybe you should clean it sometime other than the middle of the day. Perhaps try cleaning one of the 50 other terminals that have been graced with multiple crappers during the day and hit up the solo terminal when the place is empty (well...emptier...at full capacity the puddle jumper terminal is pretty close to empty). Just an idea.

About an hour or so after my arrival at LAX it was time to board my next flight. Once again, I folded myself into my tiny seat and got ready to get airborne. Here's the part about my entire airplane experience that really got to me. My flight was pretty full, but it wasn't packed (I saw about 10 empty seats when I glanced around). However, as we were waiting to leave the gate a representative from the airline got on board and told us that the plane was too heavy and one passenger would have to get off ("This plane will not leave this gate until someone gets of."). I understand that the airlines are hurting and need to sell every ticket possible, but if the plane can't fly with a full load of passengers then why the hell don't they take out a row or two and give everyone more leg room?!? How does it make sense to make seats smaller to get more on the plane if you can't even fly if the plane is full? If it was one or two empty seats I would think maybe the luggage was heavier than normal but there were at least 10 open seats, and I've heard from several other people that this has happened on their flights too. It cost American a $200 travel voucher to get a passenger to wait an hour for another flight, which is more than double what the full-fare LAX-Monterey ticket costs. That's some good business there.

Anyway, once the plane got airborne the flight was actually pretty nice (even if I could really have used the extra leg room that removing a row or two would have provided...go read the rant in the previous paragraph again while I calm down...OK, I'm good now). The flight from LAX to Monterey goes right up the coast for a while and then over some coastal hills that were beautiful. We landed right on time (although I would like to know how a "50 minute" flight can take off 20 minutes late and land on time...shouldn't they just schedule it as a 30 minute flight and list the real departure time?), and was met at the airport by Shae, her dad, and the twins. After a week apart, it was actually pretty great to see Jack and Ella again.

A few other random notes on my travel experience:

• As usual, I checked in online and printed out my boarding passes. The difference this time, however, was that American placed ads for hotels and tourist attractions on the boarding pass screen. I was able to find a "Print without attractions" link so the ads weren't on my actual boarding passes, but still...wow. The airlines have resorted to selling advertisements on boarding passes now. I wonder what's next.
  
  
• This is not the first time I've been on a plane since they started selling peanuts and almonds, but it's the first time I actually caught the price. $3.00 for almonds? What the hell?!? Beer/liquor bottles are $6.00, but a little bag of nuts cost 3 bucks. Out in the "real" world a can of Heineken or whatever costs what, a buck-fifty? That would put the markup at around 400% which is a lot, but nothing near charging $3 for a $0.25 bag of nuts (1200%). Does anyone actually pay three dollars for the almonds? I'd like to meet that person and ask them how long they had to starve themselves before they were willing to pay that much money for half of a snack.
  
  
• I got to the San Diego airport around 10:30 (for an 11:30 flight), and got off the plane in Monterey at 2:50. So it took me almost 4.5 hours to get from SD to Monterey, of which all of about 60 minutes was spent in the air. Factor in the hour to drive back down to King City and it actually took the same amount of time to fly as it would have to just drive (pre-baby). Of course, if I'd driven I wouldn't have gotten to learn about the replica Capt. Kirk chair and the $70 dog nail clippers. Thanks SkyMall.

Well, that's about it for my travelling rant. The drive home was much better than our last trip. Shae was able to squeeze in between the car seats so we didn't have to stop for 30 minutes every time Jack and Ella had to eat, and we actually made pretty decent time. The trip still took longer than it used to before Shae and babies, but it wasn't the 10 hour ordeal of our last drive from King City to SD. Overall it was a pretty nice weekend and it's good to have Shae and the babies home, even if I do miss being able to sleep. Shae took something like 350 photos (seriously, for once I'm not exagerating) so hopefully we'll have some new pics over in our gallery sometime soon.

One last thing: if you haven't checked out Shae's "Daily Photo" blog (not really daily, but I'm giving up on that battle), she's actually been updating it lately and has some cool photos (and edits).

The Bachelor

Shae and the babies headed up to Lockwood last Thursday, so I've had a full week of "vacation" where all I had to worry about was work and Lunchbox. I did miss Shae and the kiddos, but it was definitely nice to be able to relax and get some rest. I'm sitting in LAX waiting for my flight to Monterey so I figure it's time to recap my week as a bachelor.

Thursday:
After helping Shae get the car and the babies all loaded up and on the road, I just kind of sat on the couch and soaked in the silence. It was great to relax and watch some tv. After watching some of my non-Shae shows (24, Lost, etc.), it was off to bed.

Friday:
Wow. I had forgotten what eight hours of sleep was like. Except for a quick interruption to feed the Box I got to sleep until 10. Awesome. I love having every-other-Friday off, especially if I don't have to get up and take care of the munchkins

Anyway, after finally getting out of bed I put all my rest to work watching some more TV. Of course, Lunchbox decided he should be getting some attention so I got off my ass and we went on a little stroll around the neighborhood. Once we finished exploring the streets, I finally figured it was time to put some of my free time to use and clean the kitchen. It's kind of nice to clean up and know that it's going to stay clean for a while. That's one of the benefits to not using the kitchen much.

Other than a call from Chris to set up a man-date for Saturday that was about it for Friday. It was great to do almost nothing all day. Awesome.

Saturday:
Another baby-free day, another eight hours of sleep. Still super. I think Lunchbox enjoyed the baby-break too because he let me sleep in way later than be used to. Good boy Mr. Box.

Around noon, Chris came over to get some help setting up a home-theater PC. I'll spare everyone the details, but pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did. 14 hours, two cheeseburgers, and three movies later things were finally working well enough to call it a night. A task I thought would take us about three hours took until 2am. Fun.

Sunday:
Since I didn't have babies keeping me at home I was able to get out and play a round of golf. There are a lot of great things about living in San Diego, but playing golf in 80 degree weather on March 1st is towards the top of the list. Nate and I met up at the course and about ten minutes later we were on the first tee. Awesome.

I'd like to say the golf was as good as the weather, but that would be a huge lie. I played pretty much the worst round of gold I've played in about 10 years. Of as terrible. Oh well, it was still a great day and I had a great time even with the golf "performance".

After golf, I decided to head over to Nate's apartment for some dinner. Since LB hadn't been getting as much attention as he would like I loaded him up on the backseat of my car and took him with me. Nate has a five-month-old puppy so she and Lunchbox spent the evening running all over the apartment. When we finally got home the Box was exhausted. He was a happy boy.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday:
Not a ton happened during the week. Basically, I got up, went to work, came home, watched TV, folded laundry, and went to bed. Not exciting, but I got plenty of rest and Lunchbox got lots of attention. Hopefully neither one of us got too used to it.

Thursday:
Well, it's finally time to head up North and get back together with the family. I went into work for a few hours this morning and then hitched a ride to the airport. Shae, her dad and the babies are picking me up in Monterey and then it's down to King City for the weekend.

I've definitely enjoyed my week off, but I'm looking forward to seeing Jack and Ella again. I haven't gone more than 10 hours without seeing them since they were born so it's been kind of weird. I'm sure they've changed a lot in the week they've been gone. Hopefully they remember me.