Zach has become a champion roller. He can get across the room lickety-split. This is great developmentally. We've had lots of comments about how close he is to crawling.

However.

It has become a challenge to change his diaper or dress him because he immediately starts rolling on the changing table. He won't stay still long enough for you to fasten the diaper tabs or snap the snaps on his outfit. He used to be a wonderful helper, pushing hands and feet through the clothes, but now dressing him is like wrestling a greased pig. (I do not speak from experience, just in case you're wondering.) It takes about five times as long as it used to.

Just wait until he can crawl.

We found our house on Saturday and gave our wonderful new landlords a deposit and the rent for May.

I think we'll really like living up there. It's beautiful. Saturday afternoon, to celebrate our accomplishment, we went over to Sonoma, in the heart of wine country. Sonoma is a cute little city surrounded by vineyards. We had lunch at Mary's Pizza Shack which makes excellent pizza and pasta. Phenomenal dessert, too! We also hit up the Three Dog Bakery there to bring some treats back for Bailey. While we were there, we met Bailey (the dog) who works there and sits very nicely by the bulk cookies bin, waiting for a handout. Little does he know, there's a sign there warning customers not to feed the employees (Bailey)! Bailey's human, Lisa, is a Coastie wife whose husband is stationed nearby in Petaluma. We thought it was pretty cool to run into another Coastie at the Three Dog!

Zach was a wonderful flyer, sleeping on the plane after a bottle at takeoff. Traveling with a baby is hard, and if you see families struggling with all their junk and/or taking forever to do stuff, please be patient with them. It really is harder than it looks. There were a couple of very snotty women on the car rental shuttle who made comments about us, and it wasn't appreciated. Wouldn't it be better to put positive energy out into the universe?

We're exhausted and we were both back to work bright and early this morning. It'll take the week to get things back to normal, get all the laundry done, etc. My work (the old clinic location that I was at before the new one opened) is throwing me a going away lunch on Friday. I suspect it's really because they want Zach to come and play with them. Last time I ducked in there with him, he went off and entertained the various staff (and doctors!) so thoroughly that I was starting to wonder if I'd get him back!

Anyway, I'm beat and need to go get Zach's stuff ready for daycare tomorrow. It's been in the 90s here the past couple of days, and the heat has me running slower than usual.

We're thrilled we found a house, the landlords seem great and I think we're really going to like living up north. Woohoo!

We had Zach on the bed yesterday while we were getting him dressed. Bryan was checking on a listing on Craigslist and I got a pair of pants out of the drawer. When I turned around, this is the sight that greeted me:


I started laughing, and Zach clearly thought he was the funniest, cleverest thing ever. Unfortunately for him, after he was done, he had a wet sock that we made him wear anyway!

Yesterday we went down to Sausalito to check out Station Golden Gate.


This is the view from the parking lot. It seems like it'll be a real hardship to have to look at that each day Bryan's at work.

Well, we've been here a little over a day. The Hilton Sonoma Wine Country is fab. Back in 2003 when we went to San Diego to house hunt, we stayed in the world's smallest hotel room at the Super 8. You could barely walk around the bed in that room. Thanks to Priceline, we're in much swankier accommodations this time. The room is huge, with plenty of room for the pack and play (portable play yard/crib), car seat, all our luggage, us, a king sized bed, chair, desk, etc. My only gripe is that the people above us seem to stomp. A lot.

Today was a great day in terms of job interviewing. Not quite as ideal for house hunting. We went to a bunch of houses we'd found and crossed most of them off the "to consider" list, based on seeing the neighborhood, outside of the house, etc. We have a few more to do drive-bys on tomorrow and a few to see the inside. Keep your fingers crossed for us - it'd be huge if we could get the house thing squared away before we leave on Sunday!

Zach is not adapting well to sleeping in the pack and play and as you can imagine, his schedule has been shot to pieces. He's a man of routine (like his Mommy) and doesn't do so well with the willy-nilly lifestyle that goes with traveling. Hopefully he'll settle down soon and get some sleep!

Don't think we'll actually make it into San Francisco this trip - not unless the house thing gets taken care of much more quickly than I think it will. We may try to make it down to Station Golden Gate in Sausalito, but we plan to stay on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We'll have plenty of time for sightseeing after we've moved here.

Okay, I'm beat and we have another busy day ahead of us tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Let's see...

Bryan set up the movers for mid-May. We'll take a few days up in Disneyland after the movers take our stuff, and then head up to the Bay Area. Hopefully we'll be able to find a house on our upcoming trip and everything will be good to go. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

My stupid cough has been hanging on for about four weeks now. I finally gave in and went to Urgent Care on Monday after practically coughing up a lung over the weekend. They told me I have pneumonia and gave me some antibiotics, but I have my doubts since they didn't do a chest x-ray. Whatever. In the meantime, I'm still stuck swigging Robitussin every 6-8 hours and I loathe cough medicine. There's something about the taste of it that I just can't stand. I have to take it and then drink some juice or something ASAP in order to get rid of the taste. So I'm not a happy camper.

Hand, Foot and Mouth disease has struck at Zach's daycare. He doesn't seem to have picked it up, thank goodness, but it may be too soon to tell for sure. I did notice that daycare seemed awfully empty last week...

The excessive heat finally broke and things are back to a more manageable temperature.

Bailey is in the yard barking at...I don't know what.

The Wild are not exactly making me happy with their performance in the playoffs. They're now at two games to Colorado's three, which means the next game on Saturday is pivotal. And it's in Denver. Will hockey season be over for us this weekend? Man, I hope not.

Zach is using his arms to turn himself in circles on his tummy. I have a feeling it's not long before crawling occurs. I hope he can hold off until we're in the new house so that we can just babyproof there from the get-go. He's such a boy - he beelines straight for the electronics in the entertainment center when he's playing on the floor. He turned on the stereo this afternoon and Bryan's old XBox this evening. Pretty soon he'll be popping DVDs in...

Okay, I'm tired, and getting way too stream-of-consciousness, and I need to go cough. And go to bed.

As you might remember, our air conditioner took a crap in mid August. Despite our getting several estimates, our landlord never got around to fixing it, saying she wanted to find someone "cheaper."

I sweltered through 100+ degree days while nine months pregnant.

We suffered through 90 something degree days when Zach was less than six weeks old.

We weren't able to filter our air through the system after the fires, when there was all that junk in the air.

Yesterday was 95 at our house. Right now, at noon, it's 97.

Bailey, who is normally a sun dog, has taken refuge on the tiled area near the front door because even she can't stand to be in the sun anymore.

I REALLY wish the central air worked.

My friend Jenny wrote me that her sister in law's car has been hit by lightning three times. So maybe my karma's not as bad as I thought.

She also reminded me of Pay N Pak, another home improvement store that's no longer around. We went to the Pay N Pak often, back in the days before Home Depot and Lowes.

Zach's napping, Bailey's in the sun on her mat in the backyard and I'm avoiding laundry. It's supposed to be in the 80s this weekend, thanks to the Santa Anas.

We've booked a trip up to the Bay Area to do some house hunting and for me to do some job interviews. We booked our hotel through Priceline's name your own price thingie and got a really good deal at the Hilton for less than half of their listed rates. I'm quite pleased. I've never tried that before. Basically, you tell them what city you want to stay in, pick your hotel level (star rating) and tell them what you're willing to pay before taxes and fees. If a hotel accepts your offer, you're committed, and your credit card is charged immediately. They don't tell you the name of the hotel until after the transaction is complete, but you'll get a hotel that is as many stars as you've chosen or more, for the rate you've given them per night. Given that the options in our preferred price range were things like the Good Nite Inn (with a whopping one and a half stars), getting a three star hotel for about the same price was a great deal. Anyone have any tips on traveling with an infant?

I don't remember how I started thinking about this, but something got me thinking about companies that are no longer in business. Most of them probably won't mean much if you didn't grow up in the Northwest, but for those of you who did, remember...

Sea Galley (we've got crab legs!), the seafood restaurant? I guess they still have them in Alaska and Yakima, but I'm not likely to be in either anytime soon.

Payless Drugstores (not the shoe stores)?

Pay 'N Save (also drugstores, and Payless's big competitor)?

Ernst, the hardware store? I remember they had one in U Village before it got remodeled and trendy. We made many trips to Ernst for various hardware type items for my dorm room.

Stock Market, the grocery store?

There are plenty more, those are just the ones that have been on my mind lately. My brain keeps singing the "We've got crab legs" jingle from Sea Galley. My mouth sings it to Zach occasionally, but he prefers the "Silly Billy Goat" song most of the time.

(Man I love You Tube and Wikipedia!)

(Note: Some words, like "Ironic" and "Karma" are often used incorrectly. If you're one of those people who can't stand that, skip this post because I fully intend to use "karma" in an incorrect way.)

Okay, so Zach and I took Bailey to daycare this morning, as we usually do on Thursday mornings. I noticed the car didn't feel quite right shortly before we got off our exit downtown, and told myself I'd have to check the tire pressure.

I'm a tire pressure checking freak. Ever since I had a tire blow out (and catch fire, no less) on I-5, just north of downtown Seattle a little over five years ago, I check my tire pressure about every two weeks. It's because when the AAA guy showed up to put my spare on, he traumatized me by informing me that I had obviously had extremely low pressure in the tire for months (which to this day I don't think was true, I would have noticed. I'm not that blonde.) and shame on me, blah, blah, blah. If anyone would have had the right to lecture me, it would have been my dad, but he was just concerned that I was safe and offered to help with the cost of replacing my tires if I needed help.

Once, about seven or eight years ago, I had a flat in front of my house in Ravenna (north Seattle), but that was apparent right away, so I (again) called AAA and a super-nice guy came and put on my spare, my flat tire and I went off to Les Schwab and they fixed it for free. Which is why I went there to get new tires when I had my infamous blow out a couple of years later.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm a freak and I check my tire pressure at least every two weeks now. Sometimes more often. And it's always fine. Maybe a pound or two low here and there, I pump it up and we're good.

So I was less than thrilled to discover a flat when we pulled into dog daycare. Not how I planned to spend my Thursday morning.

So I called AAA and a very nice guy came out. He checked it, and told me there was a tire place two blocks down and he'd put air in my tire and follow me down there and they could fix it.

Dog daycare isn't exactly in the best neighborhood, so the guy was nice enough to stay with Zach and I while they fixed my tire. Apparently I had a nail or a little chunk of metal in there that caused the problem. They checked for any other stuff/holes/etc., pronounced me good and sent me on my way.

I don't know, is it bad tire karma that I've had three issues now? The blow out and the most recent flat were passenger side rear tires. The first flat was passenger side front. Was I an anti-rubber activist in a previous life? Did I do too much off-roading? Refuse to help someone who had a flat and needed a hand?

I'll have to think of something to help up my tire karma. I only want good car karma (carma, ha, ha)!

Zach has always been a baby that likes his pacifier. The books say not to give babies pacifiers until breastfeeding is well established to avoid confusion. They recommend giving the breast to soothe the baby.

Uh yeah. Okay.

It became clear by his third day of life that he needed more than that, and he's been a big fan of his pacifier since then. We usually keep three in the crib - one in each corner, and one in his mouth. The ones in the corners are handy in the middle of the night when it's dark and he's misplaced the one that should be in his mouth. You can plug in one of the ones from the corner, root around for the loose one, and put it back in the corner you just borrowed one from.

Zach's a pretty smart and observant baby and now he likes to grab whichever of the spares he can see. When we put him in his crib for quiet time/nap time, he plays musical pacifiers, swapping them out until he falls asleep.

As you can see, one pacifier simply isn't enough for this boy!