It’s been just about 3 months since Tristan has joined our world, and everyone in our household is finally getting settled down with the new addition. My wife and I made it through the transition fairly well, and I can state with much pride that I’m able to successfully work on a computer with an infant AND a dog in my lap. Speaking of our dog, Loki, he seems to be the one taking it the hardest making the adjustment. Continue reading →
Assuming that the doctors little computer was accurate, we should be seeing our little boy come into the world in 2 months time. Things are definitely starting to sink in and get ‘real’. I think my wife has officially entered the nesting period, she has begun planning out how the nursery is going to be laid out and doing lots of measuring. Which means I get to hold the tapemeasure and nod to whatever suggestions she makes. Continue reading →
A month ago I sent out a tweet asking for topics to write about here, and my good friend Nathan Verrill (twitter) suggested the following.
So here we go:
One of the biggest challenges I have had getting started with blogging is coming up with topics that haven’t rehashed over and over again. I have tons of ideas that pop up in my head, and thanks to Google Tasks I have been able to keep up a decent number of posts in the hopper. Every now and then, I still struggle to come up with meaningful content to post out there for the world.
A solution I have been trying, and have had some success with, is see what my twitter network wants to hear about. Here are the tweets I got last week when I opened myself up to all my twitter friends:
Continue reading →
At Christmas my in-laws gave me the following book to help my wife and I search for the name for our unborn child.
The first challenge was where the hell to do I start? The best course of action was straight brute force in the end. My wife and I each picked a colored highlighter and in our free time we are going through the book front to back highlighting anything that sticks out. I took the approach that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book ‘Blink‘ of going with my gut reaction. As I skimmed over the thousands of names, I trusted my ‘gut’ reaction. During my search two things happened which I wasn’t expecting.
The names I picked for a boy in general had ancient roots, and deep meaning. I have a hard time convincing my wife and family with some of the possibilities due to certain ethnic groups having a ‘claim’ to it. On the other hand, many of the names I chose for a girl were historic, but generally common.
Many of the names I chose, both for a boy or a girl, could make the child an easy target once they start to socialize with other children. My philosophy is that no matter what, kids will find a way to turn a name into a put down. I don’t want the possibility of simple name calling to restrict the options we have when it comes to naming our child.
As it stands now, I have made it all the way through the book and picked out all the names that just ‘felt’ right. My wife is almost through the boys section, and should have the girls done sometime next week. Once we have picked out our choices, I plan on pulling out all of the highlighted names and saving it in a digital manner. Coming to a final choice will be the true challenge though. I have been thinking that the best way would be to whittle the listing down to a meaningful set, and just wait until that beautiful day our child’s comes into the world. It is my hope that on that day, upon looking at my child’s face a name will naturally be chosen.