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Wahoo!

We usually do our Christmas stuff late at night here, which works out good because where my parents are it usually means we all celebrate around the same time.

I’ll make no bones about it, we were broke as fuck this Christmas. Sabs and I really didn’t get each other anything substantial, which is sad – but this is our first Christmas with a kid and we’d both much rather have bought him more stuff before buying ourselves anything. And somehow, Duncan positively made out like a bandit.

I was going to buy Sabriena a printer, because there’s apparently something cupcake related that she needs one for. I almost pulled the trigger on one last night, using our last $30 or so, which would have been really dumb, because today she went to the ER for a skin irritation she just couldn’t put up with any longer, and her prescriptions wound up costing a few bucks that we simply would not have been able to afford had I come home with something as silly as a cheap-ass inkjet printer.

I thought about buying her something off the ProFlowers best sellers page, but again – lack of finances. She’s “getting” me something after Christmas – LittleBigPlanet 2. It was going to be my Christmas present, but I wound up winning it in a contest, which is just as well because there’s absolutely no way I could have justified $60 on it at the moment.

But anyway it worked out great – we got back from the ER visit just in time for a nice family dinner, then Duncan took a nap and woke up in a fantastic mood to open presents. I think we got some cute photos of him and me having a good time, but we haven’t put them up yet. The weather cooperated, the fire was working great so we were all warm and toasty gathered around the tree.

Overall it really couldn’t have gone much better considering the circumstances.

Halloween’s awesome.

It’s the one day of a year where you’re not creepy for dressing up your dogs in sexy costumes, and where it’s acceptable to put on a terrifying mask and jump out and scare little kids.

Candy is an acceptable diet for the evening, and everyone is running around at dusk having a good time. It’s the most magical time of the year, because it’s not balls-ass cold leaving everyone stuck inside wishing they lived in Florida.

So help me though, if there’s soap on my car windows again…

So Duncan is getting really good at sitting up now, so much so that for the most part he’ll keep himself articulated and vertically oriented for quite some time – he spent about 45 minutes yesterday playing, and even managed to keep his balance through a sneeze:

I think that’s pretty impressive for his age, and shows some pretty good muscles in the ol’ flabby belly – he also stands really well if you keep his balance, but I don’t expect much walking from him too quick because winter’s about to set in and I’m sure he’ll be bundled up for most of it.

I still can’t get over how lucky we were with him, he’s had basically no issues at all and he even takes things like inoculations in stride. No seizures, no skin conditions (no need for eczema treatments), and maybe it’s just me but for the most part it seems like he is always happy. Seriously, if you average out all the temper tantrums and stuff I would say on average he’s unhappy less than an hour a day, and much of the time it’s our fault (wanting to go out and do something when he should be getting ready for bed is usually the culprit).

My wife laid on the floor with him yesterday after the video above was taken, and snapped quite a few photos before picking out the best ones:

Between Duncan’s doctor appointment, copious amounts of spending without thinking about it, and two new phones… we’re so broke this month.

Thankfully it’s all working out, we’ll be squeaking by by the seat of our pants this month. We really needed the phones, they’re becoming invaluable for day-to-day operations of Sabrienix, and my WinMo phone just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Sabriena didn’t realize how much she had grown to dislike her BlackBerry Pearl until after she got her Droid2.

Sabrienix/MumbleDog has enough money to cover it’s day to day operations, which is making times like this easier – we don’t have to worry about finding money for server bills and such because they’re already paid for, and if there’s a lull in payments, she’s got the capital to chug through it.

But man if the other stuff – like winter clothes for Duncan – isn’t more stress than I really need right now. I was tempted to cruise on over to epinions and write some junk like vitamin c serum reviews or whatever might make me some fast cash.

I either need a new mouse, or an entirely new PC (I’m leaning towards the latter, and it’s not just wishful thinking) so I might even have to go sell some blood plasma or something.

I tweeted yesterday about how I thought I’d found the cause of the shimmying in the steering of our Oldsmobile… a lumpy tire. I was worried it was a bearing going out, because those aren’t cheap for our particular car (you buy the entire hub/bearing assembly as one unit and they’re between $60 and $80 a pop, not to mention any other bits I might need in the process) and that tire still needed replacing anyway.

It was the only old tire left on the car, the other three are all mostly brand new (considering with the exception of our weekly doctor visits leading up to the birth of Duncan, we basically only drive about 3,000 miles a year) and that tire was basically gone anyway. I checked around for prices on tires, and as usual our local Goodyear place beats out even Walmart for some weird reason. We made the appointment and today I crept out there to have them put the tire on, while Sabs and her mom walked around a grocery store waiting.

As the invoice was printing out, the guy remembered that he’d put the other tires on at the start of the year, and he said “that’s been a pretty good little car for you, huh?”

I started thinking: you know, it really has. In fact it’s kind of sad the Oldsmobile brand is discontinued, because I really get a warm-fuzzy feeling about them. Years ago while I worked at a company that made thermogenic stimulants and bodybuilding crap, we saved hard to buy a used 98 Regency from a friend of a friend, and it was the greatest car… until some piece of trash stole it and thrashed it.

We only gave about $300 for this car, and it had a busted harmonic balancer on it, which took me quite some time to fix but it was well worth the aggrevation. $20 for a used balancer, two days of my time (getting that bolt out was a bitch), $30 for an exhaust (old one rusted off), about $75 in tune-up stuff, four new tires and that car will hopefully last a good many a year to come yet. That’s a value-to-cost ratio that’s approaching infinity compared to newer vehicles these days.

Are these cars exciting? Not particularly – they’re something you’d expect your grandma to drive (indeed our 98 was a grandma’s grocery-getter) but they’re great little cars all things considered.

As you can see in the image to the left, Duncan can do pushups now. This is a monumentous achievement, and I have no idea whether he’s early, late, or on schedule with it, but it’s awesome that he’s doing it.

Problem is, it apparently messed with his ability to sleep on his own. It used to be he could lay on the bed for hours, waking up to eat, then going back to sleep before waking up a little bit later in a cheerful and chipper mood.

Lately, he’s been the most cranky kid ever, and apart from a few hours ago when he finally went down for some real sleep, he slept a grand total of about 90 minutes today in three separate naps. I even tried laying next to him with the laptop, which helped him sleep for a while but then he was up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

On the whole though, it still amazes me how much of a happy little kid he is, even when he’s tired as a dog.

Earlier tonight, I had my son on my lap because it was way past his sleep time and I wanted to get him asleep before the cranks set in. So there he was, on my lap, smiling at me through his dummy every time I told him “Go to sleep”… when I heard it.

The most horrific, gut wrenching butt-gurgle I’ve ever heard. The kind of thing they warn you about in prenatal vitamin reviews. I literally felt dirty after hearing this, certain in my fate that I was now covered in shit that had escaped a diaper.

When I opened it up to survey the damage? A mark about the size of a nickel. I was both disappointed and relieved, and I’m not entirely sure why.

P.S. I only wrote this because it’ll gross a couple certain people out. I always swore I’d never post a blog about kid shit, but hey at least I didn’t photograph it.

BRB camera.

Our kid is growing up so fast. It seems like only yesterday we were passing out cigars and celebrating in shock the new life we’d brought into the world, and now he’s discovered kicking legs, that one hand can grab the other, and he’s almost figured out how to roll over.

Oh yeah, he’s discovered some pretty crazy looks and the art of giggling as well:

Duncan 2.3 Months from fwaggle on Vimeo.

Seriously.

He’s happy as a pig in shit most times – Sabriena and I both just brighten this kid’s day, particularly when he’s awake… but man, when he’s asleep, the tiniest little things make him rage beyond belief.

The tiniest little disturbance while he’s sleeping will usually elicit a giant, prolonged groan, which could almost be called a growl. It’s like he’s stretching, but is pissed off that he has to do so.

Having him on my chest and then trying to get up without disturbing him is about the best ab workout I could possibly hope for, and then heaven help me if I want to actually put him down for 30 seconds or more. He’s sitting on my lap right now, and he looks like he’d be terribly uncomfortable (though I’m guessing babies have a warped definition of “comfort”), but I dare not move him in case it pisses him off.

Oh my dog, it’s a miracle.

I had this kid sitting on my lap for a couple hours today, and I was so uncomfortable it was terrible… so I decided to take the plunge and put him in his crib, figuring I could go use the bathroom and come back and he’d want to be held again.

His mom was sitting not two feet from the baby monitor I was using, so we’d know immediately if he started fussing… and he didn’t. We kept checking on him and listening, expecting him to wake up, and he finally did – hours later.

All anti wrinkle treatment jokes aside, I think we might actually stand a shot at making this work without losing our sanity. Sabriena’s catching some much needed sleep right now – I’m up with the baby monitor to make sure we don’t both sleep through him crying.

Once he falls into a rhythm everything should be much better.