As usual, it’s been a long time between updates but hopefully the three hours I just spent organizing and uploading photos will make up for it. First, there is the trip to beautiful Bok Tower Gardens with Kelly’s parents.

Second, there’s Sophie’s eleventh month photos.

And finally, the main event: Sophie’s first birthday party photos!

Kelly, Sophie and I would like to say a big thanks to everyone who called with well-wishes or attended Sophie’s first birthday party. It was a blast and Sophie had a wonderful time. (She slept like a rock that night.) Thank you for making the day special.

The only hard part was not having enough time to spend with everyone. It’s amazing how easy it is to take quality time with friends and family for granted. When you are young, you can’t seem to get away from your family and vacations to relatives are frequent and mandatory. Eventually, you go to college, get a job, have children, and you realize that you can’t find enough time to spend with the people who matter most. It’s an odd society we’ve created for ourselves.

I think that is one of the reasons things like social networking sites like Facebook have attracted so many people beyond the young and trendy. With Facebook, I communicate with friends and family around the world in small spurts throughout the day. Just like I did throughout childhood and school; before a job demanded my social times to be segmented into breaks, weekends, and vacations. We’re social creatures by design and we do more than enjoy regular human interaction, we require it.
I recently saw a new scientific study that discovered getting together with friends to chat about your problems actually causes your body to release a chemical that strengthens and repairs your DNA structure. Think about that the next time you “waste time” chatting around the water cooler or take a long lunch.

As usual, Sophie has been keeping us busy with all the things a not-quite-one-year-old goes through. Our schedule has changed so many times that I can’t even remember all of the iterations. The most difficult change happened last weekend at 1 am:

Sophie was nestled all snug in her bed,
While visions of Cheerios danced in her head;
With Kelly in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long night’s nap.

When out of Sophie’s room there arose such a clatter,
We sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Were her diapers all soiled; did a rash need some gel?
Nope, nothing was wrong, she’d just learned how to yell.

We also installed a new storm door last Saturday giving our front door the equivalent sealing power of a zip-loc double zipper bag. (Designed with you in mind.) Honestly, attempting to close the two doors with any force feels as if you will shatter the glass. Personally, I like to think of it as an airlock like you see in sci-fi movies. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to relive any dramatic decontamination scenes due to my body greatly exceeding the two inch space between the doors. But adding that to our door and window improvements helps to keep out the road noise.

DIRECTIONS
If you do not have a Flickr/Yahoo account:

• Click here to create a free Flickr/Yahoo Account.
• At this point, I still have to mark you as a friend or family. You can either do a “People Search” for me (Tarobot) or you can send me an email with your Flickr screen name and I will find and add you.
• If you found me (Tarobot), send me a friend request and I will mark you as friend or family.

If you do have a Flickr/Yahoo account:

• After logging in to Flickr, either do a “People Search” for me (Tarobot) or send me an email with your Flickr screen name and I will find and add you.
• When you find me (Tarobot), send me a friend request and I will mark you as friend or family.

For now, we are leaving the blog and Youtube videos open as they have been. We’re sorry for making you jump through hoops just to look at her photos but there are some creepy people out there who don’t need any help.

In other thoughts, I have been working to become more creative. Having a job doing creative work is very taxing and easily sucks away all of my creative juices. Taking the time to recharge is a must and I’m taking my time management a lot more seriously because of it. As many of you know, I have started a webcomic called “Bots” that I update weekly. www.tarobot.com/botsThis takes up a tremendous amount of energy but I don’t think I’ve enjoyed something this much since college. In order to keep myself going, I’ve had to make some resolutions about how I spend my time. So far, I only have 2 big time-sucks but I’m sure many more are lurking. Just thought I’d share:

I will no longer join Facebook apps that are not real games.
I don’t care how you spend your time online but I have wasted far too much of my own clicking boxes surrounded by advertising in order to make a number change. “Congratulations! You are now a level 2.”
I believe slot machines to be the lowest form of “entertainment” mankind has ever created. They require no skill, discourage interaction with other humans and turn people into greedy zombies pulling levers to see more sparkly things. I am finding the vast majority of Facebook apps are pretty much empty slot machines with ads all over them. I’m sure your favorite app isn’t like this but the ones I’m deleting are.

Once the Olympics are concluded, I will not make time to watch TV.
Having to repeatedly watch the same 20 ads during the Olympics made me realize how little I’ve been missing on TV. I also realized that I want to see Alltel’s wizard use a +5 Magic Fire spell on that “Chad” guy so I never have to see him again.
I love good TV and I wish I had more time to enjoy the shows my friends tell me about but there just isn’t time. I’m not boycotting TV, just refusing to spend time on it when I can be creating things or spending time with actual people who care about me.

We decided to go to breakfast just the two of us to enjoy some freedom, however all we did was lament about not having Sophie with us. We sat and thought about what she was doing, if the daycare worker was putting her down for a nap, if she was still crying and if we should just go back and get her. I really don’t remember if breakfast tasted good or not.

After breakfast Greg and I came home and both of us passed out in bed for two hours. We both woke up at noon and felt a lot better. When 12:45 hit, Greg and I jumped in the Scion and drove over to the daycare to get Sophie. We really couldn’t wait until 1:00. She was asleep in the arms of the daycare worker when she arrived. They said she cried pretty much the whole time, wouldn’t sleep or eat. She finally passed out at 12:25 in the daycare worker’s arms and wouldn’t let her get up to put her in the crib. She was VERY happy to see Greg and I. When she saw me she started squeal and reached out for me. I took her and gave her a big hug and kiss. This is going to be a difficult week for all of us. **sigh**

She also loves books. We bought the small board books from the Dr. Seuss collection. You can actually put all of her toys next to the pile of books and she will commando crawl to the books every time. She squeals with delight when we pull them out. Sometimes it gets so bad we have to hide them because she will not be satisfied until we read them to her 5 or 6 times. I know this sounds like a great thing to have, a child who loves books, however reading Hop on Pop six times each and every day can get monotonous. So far, her favorites are, Hop on Pop, Put Me in the Zoo, Are You my Mother?, Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb and the ever popular, Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? She has others, but these are her top five. Hopefully, we can get a video of dad reading her books to her, it is fun to watch.

However, the time is coming, August 4, that she goes to day care. Four hours every morning from 9-1. Greg will drop her off and Kelly will pick her up. We pray that she enjoys it and learns a lot. Day care will give me a chance to go back to work more hours and for Greg to get home at 5:30 instead of 7:30. Yay!!! We can eat at a normal dinner time. We will let you know how the whole day care thing goes. We are praying for the best.

• As you can see by the picture on the front page, she has learned how to drink from a sippy cup. It actually took one try and she figured it out. Although, instead of stopping when she was full, she kept on drinking and spitting the water out of her mouth into her lap.
• She loves to feed herself white bread. I just break off several pieces and she chases them around her tray until she gets one to stick to her fingers and up into the mouth it goes.
• She took her first few tentative steps while holding on to the coffee table edge. Although she has yet to figure out that her feet need to move before her hands do.
• Crawling is just a few weeks away. The instant you put her on the floor she wiggles, ungulates, squirms and pulls herself across the floor to her favorite toy. This doesn’t last for long, but she is definitely excited to be moving.
• Her favorite toys by the way are the three books that we purchased. She loves, “Are You My Mother?” (written by the guy who did, “Sam and the Firefly”), “Put Me in the Zoo” and Dr. Seuss’, “Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?” The best part of these books is the chance to make sound effects which make her laugh and smile.

These are pretty much so far. We love to watch her grow and figure out her world one day at a time.

So, for those of you who didn’t see us for about a month (there are a lot of you) here’s a few antic-dotes of some of the new things Sophie’s been doing:
As you can see from the lead image to this post, Sophie has decided it is fun to stick out her tongue for long periods of time. It’s really cute and we enjoy it a lot but even more so that she came up with the idea on her own.

Eating solid foods isn’t new but the fact that she now can eat up to 2 ½ jars in one day surprised us. In true baby fashion she jumped from a few spoon-fulls to multiple jars without working her way up. We started to feed her one day and the next thing we knew there were more items for the recycling bin.

Sophie still hasn’t learned to crawl or walk but she pulls herself up more or less on her own strength. The entertainment center in our living room is at just the right height for her little hands and arms to find purchase and bring her up from a kneeling position. We are going to try and get it on video but she tires so quickly that it only occurs a few times a week. I’m sure that will change very soon. * ominous music plays *

One of my favorite developments is that Sophie has begun to understand the concept of reading. To help with memorization she has only a few books that we read to her over and over and over. On the flight back to Florida, I was reading her one of these and she stopped looking at the book and intently studied my mouth as I read the words. Even more fun, she tried mouthing some things herself

Finally, a note on Sophie’s photos. I have taken the time to better organize all of our photos on Flickr and I’ve changed a few things to make it easier for you to find what you want.
First, none of the photos or sets have changed but I consolidated all of our sets into four collections. This way, if you are looking for something, there are only four places to go.
Second, I have separated Sophie’s photo sets into two collections, Sophie by Month and Sophie by Events.
I hope this makes things a lot easier for you all but I welcome your suggestions. Kelly and I do our best to keep this stuff as simple as possible.

Speaking of recording, Kelly caught Sophie having a good giggle and caught it on camera. Take a look:

Sorry about the squished video picture, our camera shoots in widescreen and YouTube only supports standard TV size.

About a month ago, two and one-little piggies were running about Florida on a series of conferences for work. When those were all over, the two and one-little piggies happily cried “wee-wee-wee” all the way home only to find that their AC was broken. It would huff, and it would puff, but like the big bad wolf, it was only full of hot air.
The home warranty company was called and a local repair service was speedily dispatched to discover the problem was a bad compressor which required must be unspeedily ordered. Five to seven days later, the repair service arrived with a compressor made of straw.
It didn’t fit and the big-bad wolf blew no AC down.
Five to seven days later, they brought one made of sticks.
It didn’t fit and the big-bad wolf blew no AC down.

This sad tale continued for about a month with the two and one-little piggies arguing, the companies passing blame, and the Florida temperature rising. To avoid being fried like so much bacon, the two and one-little piggies became transient, staying with family and friends until a solution could be reached.

Finally, the companies realized they were trying to save a wolf that had long gone extinct and so hired a hunter to put the old thing out of its misery and replace him with a wonderfully new creature. The man arrived bearing a gift of shiny metal, copper and a digital thermostat that didn’t have a 10° margin of error.
The unit was installed, cold air flowed through the ducts, and the two and one-little piggies slept soundly with dreams of life returning to normal.

The End

A big thank you to the friends and family who provided cool places for us to escape to. Apologies to those of you who we’ve neglected during this ordeal.