Month: July 2007

Finally a new post

If anyone out there still checks our blog with any regularity I apologize for the long delay between posts. Life Happens. This whole parenting, working, student thing is much harder than it looks. Of course Li Li makes it all worthwhile. Picture taking has slowed but not because she’s any less cute. I’ve been traveling for work a lot lately and school has gotten very busy, so while Li Li is going to the beach with Catherine, I’m sitting in an airport in LA – no not the city with the movie stars but the state with the gambling riverboats. Shreveport, LA is trying to leverage riverboat gambling into a prosperous future, I’ll let someone else be the judge of its success – but it makes for a strange downtown with all the life at the fringes of the city center leaving a hollow center of parking lots and for rent signs.

Bar Harbor
Li Li wearing a Boston Red Sox hat in Bar Harbor.

It has been one tough summer for travel. Every single flight I’ve been one for the last three months has been full and I’ve yet to arrive on time. Not a single flight, nada, zip, zilch. Between weather, mechanical delays, crew expirations (sounds ominous doesn’t it) and my favorite ATC holds – I’ve spent time in some of the finest airports east of the Rockies. DFW, BWI, BOS, DCA, PIT, PHL, HOU and good old PVD

Li Li Beach
Li Li at the beach during with her weekly play group.

Back to Li Li. I know she’s the real reason you come here. She’s doing great. We’ve been home a little over 5 months now and it’s amazing how far she has come in that time. When we first arrived home she couldn’t sit up without falling over in one direction or another. Now she starts her morning by doing face plants in the crib – on purpose. Recently I come into her home in the morning and she gets up on her knees, and jumps/falls straight forward with her arms spread wide giggling the whole time. After she lands she rolls over, goes back to a corner and does it all over again. In fact this morning she did it for about 5-10 minutes. I just stared at her and laughed right along with her.

Of course she may have been doing this for a while now but I wouldn’t have known it. Between being gone 3-4 days a weeks and late nights working on school Catherine’s been getting her in the mornings and letting my sleep in. Some of that’s because I can’t hear Li Li over the fans when I’m sleeping and some its because Catherine was being nice and letting me sleep in. Which brings us back to why I was able to witness my daughter tryouts for WWE Raw. Catherine is on her annual sailing trip in the North Channel north of Lake Huron. So I’ve had a very small taste of single parenthood and it’s hard work.

Catherine gets that taste pretty much every single week and I’ve had a lot of help and it’s only been few days. Between grandparents driving over, or flying in from North Carolina, neighbors babysitting and even coming over to the house to watch Li Li while I dash to the store for milk, I’ve had a lot of support. Of course my first taste of solo parenting happened to coincide with two weeks of exams for school so I’ve been trying to cram 10 weeks worth of Data Analysis and statistics into my little bitty brain with little success. I finally took one exam on Sunday we’ll see how I did and the other exam is group exam and I’ll spend Saturday on Campus in conference room turning that one in. Last weekend Jim and Ann (Catherine’s parents) took Li Li for the day on Sunday, this weekend Susan (my mom) will have Li Li for the day.

Unfortunately long after Catherine agreed to go on the trip, a big meeting was scheduled at work so Li Li is spending a few days at Jim and Ann’s while I get to visit SFO and SJC for a few days and sit in meetings. I’ll be taking the redeye home Thursday night just to get home a little sooner.

Catherine gets home on Sunday and we leave for a week’s vacation in Montana. No promises but we really will try to post something at least once every week or two.