Six Months Old!

Abby turned six months on Monday, and wow! What a week we’ve had. This kid is growing and changing faster than I would have thought possible. In the past ten days, she’s started crawling, sitting up, pulling up, eating solids, and she cut her first two teeth! It is unbelievable watching all of this happen.

The downside, of course, is that we had just figured her out before all this happened! We had finally  gotten into a bit of a routine, but now that’s all blown to bits. We’re now back to scratching our heads and wondering what the heck we’re supposed to be doing. Fortunately for me, I’m apparently married to an incredible mommy, who seems to have everything well in hand.

Quick note about pictures: My main computer is in the shop this week, and that’s the one I use to upload all the photos to our online gallery. So, the past months’ worth of pics will be late this month. However, Maryalice has been putting a lot of recent pictures on Facebook, so find her there if you’re not connected with her already.

Play Time

Abby is growing and changing more every day now. It’s unbelievable. I don’t want to take my eyes off her, because I know she’s likely to do something brand new at any moment. She’s not quite crawling yet, but she is certainly mobile. She’s developed a bit of a steamroller technique in which she covers a good bit of ground quickly by rolling over and over on her side. She can inch along forward and back like a little worm, too. Plus, every now and then while trying to crawl, she’ll tuck one leg up under her bottom and start pushing up trying to sit herself up. All of this plus her first tooth this week is pretty amazing.

The coolest thing, though, is that tonight, for the first time ever, Abby played with us. Now, we play with her all the time, but tonight, we were all laying on the bed after we made it with our freshly cleaned sheets. Maryalice was on one side, I was on the other, and Abby was in between. She was as happy as I’ve ever seen her. She was rolling and laughing and playing like crazy. She would roll up to one of us, flirt and smile, start to jabber on, and then take off for the other one. All of this was punctuated, of course, by her trying to snag the cat, who kept jumping in the middle of our little circle.

I love my family. I really, really love my girls.

OH, and Abby got a new high chair today. Here’s a pic of us testing it out with some carrots!

Warning: Baby Crawling Is Imminent!

Well, we’ve been watching Abby get up on her hands and knees the past week or so. It looks like she’s getting dangerously close to becoming mobile. Oh dear. So far, though, there’s been no forward motion. I give it two weeks tops.

Abby’s New Stand-Up Thingy

For those of you who just want to see anything and everything about Abby that I’ll throw out there, this one’s for you. Yes, I know that’s pretty much just the grandparents.

For those of you wanting a geeky angle, I can say that this is the first video I’ve filmed, edited, and uploaded to YouTube using only my new iPhone 3GS. It’s pretty cool to be able to do all of this without ever offloading the video to my computer.

This is Abby playing in her new stand-up exercise thingy. I honestly can’t believe she’s this big already.

Abby Loves Her Feet!

UPDATE: The video was accidentally marked “private” in YouTube. I’ve fixed it now. If you tried unsuccessfully to view the view, try again. It’s working now. Sorry!

Not only has Abby recently (almost) mastered the art of sitting up unassisted, she’s also accomplished a long-time goal: putting her feet in her mouth. Bored with inserting ALL FIVE FINGERS in her mouth at the same time, she’s now moved on to sticking her entire foot in there.

Maryalice caught her on video perfecting her form. It looks like she’s been studying how the cats clean their toes. It’s pretty disgusting, actually…

Abby Month 4 Pictures

I know, I know… these pictures are late. But they’re really not. Here’s the deal. We’ve decided to just put the pics up in one-month batches instead of stringing them along. So, the pics for all of month 4, including grandparents and other stuff, are all in the month 4 gallery. That’s what we’ll do each month now.

So go check out all the great month 4 goings on, including our kiddo sitting up, by clicking the bouncy girl below!

Abby Laughs It Up

Maryalice’s friend, Lisa, visited with us last weekend. She and Abby hit it off big-time. Here’s a quick video of the two of them yucking it up. It’s some awesome baby laughter.

The Incredible Abby!

So, as a comic geek, this makes me laugh. My wife and I have been amazed at our daughter’s growth. As of her month four doc appointment, Abby is in the 90th percentile in height and weight. Now at five months, she’s already been wearing six month clothes for a while.

This morning when Maryalice went in to get her out of bed, she noticed something peculiar. Overnight, Abby had stolen a dramatic move from the Incredible Hulk’s playbook. Her giant baby feet broke through the booties of her footie pajamas!

If there was ever a time when I wished I had a high speed camera pointed at Abby at all times, this is it! The thought of the seams popping and fabric ripping as her toes and heel forced their way out of their confinement cracks me up.

And somewhere, Bill Bixby is smiling.

Apple’s Customer Service

The few times I’ve had to go into an Apple store for support on an iPhone or laptop, I’ve been blown away by the level of care I received and with the professionalism with which I was treated. Sure, customer service is an iffy situation, and your mileage may vary. However, Apple has topped customer service and satisfaction lists time and again, so I know I’m not the only one who’s been treated well.

This weekend, Apple had a new opportunity for customer service success or failure. Apparently, many new iPhone 3GS owners were unable to activate their phones. Some have been waiting in iPhone limbo for three days now, including a friend of mine. (My own 3GS activation was smooth as silk on Saturday, only taking 2 minutes.) Yesterday, Apple proactively reached out to those affected customers with the email below:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent Apple Store order. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay in your iPhone activation.

We are still resolving the issue that was encountered while activating your iPhone with AT&T. Unfortunately, due to system issues and continued high activation volumes, this could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.

On Monday, you’ll receive an email from Apple with an iTunes Store credit in the amount of $30. We hope you will enjoy this gift and accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.

Thank you for choosing Apple.

Sincerely,
Apple Online Store Team

The outage only impacted a small number of users, but Apple didn’t wait for this “outrage” to hit the Monday headlines. They stepped up, owned their failure for these customers, and honestly apologized for letting them down. That attitude is relatively new to the company who’s known among haters as being “snobby, arrogant, and smug.”

Good for you, Apple. As consumers, we don’t really mind failure. We just don’t like lies and coverups when failure happens.

More at CNET.

New G.I. Joe Movie Trailer

Okay, clearly, this movie is not going to win any Oscars this year. However, I am really looking forward to seeing G.I. Joe this summer. It is an awesome summer to be a geek in his mid-thirties. Why? Because the two best toons from 25 years ago, G.I. Joe and Transformers, both have movies coming out. Good times.

The new Joe trailer is on YouTube, but they’ve disabled embedding. You can check it out on YouTubes’ site: GO JOE!