riley turns 1 today! yay!

my coworkers held a surprise baby shower for me and coworker santrice (who is also expecting) this morning. it was nice. they blindfolded me with a scarf and had me taste baby food.

it was awful.

the oatmeal and pears was ok. the vegetable one was not very good. the squash was sort of edible. the prunes were pretty bad. the ham with ham gravy was disgusting. it tasted like bathroom grout (and it kind of looked like it, too).

we’d noticed that a few items from our registry had already been purchased, which we were surprised about. now i know why.

i received a little bath tub thingy, some receiving blankets, a couple of sleep gowns, and a bib that says ‘future rock star’.

thanks to them for a wonderful gesture. i’m sure a few pictures will accompany the e-mail that is generated for today’s post, but you can also view them by clicking this link.

tomorrow we continue the hunt for nursery furniture. yay!

well then!

after a long period of time when everything seemed to be on hold, things are beginning to happen in our little corner of this planet.

first of all, we’re basically doing well. nicki doesn’t sleep all that well, and suffers from the odd headache and near-constant backache, and wishes desperately for the baby to come out already, but she’s generally doing well. of course, robert’s fine. now that he’s been diagnosed with diabetes, he’s managed to get his sugar down to manageable levels, all with a minimal adjustment in his diet. chloe and charlet are doing great–they both had birthdays in the last two months. chloe is now ten years old, if you can believe it, and charlet just turned two years old a couple weeks ago. she’s still excitable, but she isn’t having nearly as many accidents around the house as she used to. she isn’t even crated during the day anymore! oh yeah, and the baby seems fine, too. he’s certainly engaging in a regular exercise program within her belly–he’s a busy little guy, kicking and punching away!

oh, by the way, he’s been named. we no longer have to call him “it”. his name will be:

Rush Carlin Fitzpatrick

no, he’s not named after the pill-popping loudmouth oafish voice of the republican party. sorry, uncle dan. nicki liked the name after seeing it on a baby name web site. she was the strongest advocate for naming the boy rush. robert considers the boy to be named after the band Rush. his middle name, without a doubt, is named after the late comedian George Carlin. carlin is another good irish name to augment the boy’s last name. the name has a sense of power to it. it suits us as parents. we hope it’ll suit the boy.

in other news, we’re moving! our current home is simply too expensive. we’d looked for quite some time in the local neighborhood, but didn’t like most of what we’d found. the first place we looked at was actually further north than we live, up in lincoln square. it’s a new-build condo on lincoln ave, 3 br, 2 ba, a big patio, a fireplace, dishwasher, microwave, washer/dryer, parking. it’s everything we wanted, other than it being another 30 blocks north. we were told it had been rented, so we continued our search. we found a loft we liked after seeing a ton of places that didn’t fit the bill, but that too was rented before we could get to it. in the meantime, we found out that the lincoln square place was still available. we’re still not quite out of our lease with our current place, but we ultimately decided we had to make a decision before we lost the lincoln square condo again. we signed the lease and gave up the deposit on the place just last night–whew! it’s ours!

now we just have to make sure our current house is rented within the next month. we struck a deal with our current landlord that effectively lowers the asking rent in order to attract new renters, so we hope we’ll get some decent traffic. in fact, we do have someone scheduled to see the place tonight, so that’s good.

we’re actually mostly packed already, so we have quite a head start. we’re waiting to confirm the date, but we’re planning to move the weekend before april 1st. lincoln square is a great area. i used to live just north of that about ten years ago, and i liked it. there were a ton of cool places to eat then, and there are even more now. it is farther from downtown, but we’ll learn to deal. once rush arrives, it’s not like we’re going to be going out all that much anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where we live. as long as we’re in a place where we’re comfortable, that’s really all that matters for the time being. if things work out, perhaps we’ll end up staying at the new place until we’re ready to settle down and actually buy some property. whatever, we’ll see how it goes. let’s get our butts in the new place and someone else in our current place for now, we’ll worry about the future afterward.

anyway, soon enough, i’ll be making a few updates the various pages of the site, for what it’s worth. for example, on the family page, perhaps i should mention, you know, the boy.

that’s all for now. until next time, enjoy your day!