The Day After

Richie learned how to blow kisses! Actually, he just makes a clicking noise with his mouth but he does it in response to you blowing him a kiss. He's SO cute and clever!

Although, when we went to the park there was another little boy walking in the park next to his dad. ML asked how old he is and his daddy said, "Oh, he'll be one next week."

Awe SNAP!

I'm in the midst of rebuilding my computer, so nothing more to post just yet.

365 days

Happy Birthday Baby-Boy!
We Love You!

One year ago, today, I started blogging about Richie's (extra-uterine) life. Yes! Master Richie turned one year of age today! And, just like the first day of his life, it snowed. Well, really, just flurried. Which is all it did the day he was born.

The original plan was to have a little party today with his play-group friends. However, earlier in the week they were predicting up to a half foot of snow today. Moreover, I was in the hospital overnight last night which meant there was a chance that I would not be allowed to go home if my relief was not able to make it in to work. So we decided to postpone the birthday party until next Friday. We'll have pap-Nat and Honey in town too, so they can babysit while we get the house ready. (This will be the first they've heard of that plan!) Besides of rescheduling due to the potential weather, of note, the city actually pretreated the roads THIS time. And, as Murphy's law would dictate, it did not snow to any significant amount.

In any case, we had a nice little birthday as a little family unit. We had homemade cupcakes, opened presents, and then went to play at the Baltimore Science Museum for a few hours. I took a TON of movies today. (About 4 gig worth of movies and pictures.) I'm put some pictures up now, but movies will have to wait...Daddy is sleepy! (Only had 3 hours of sleep last night and a couple hours worth of napping.)

Here are his birthday presents and cards! We tried to get him to open the presents (which we thought he'd do right away since he love to rip paper) but he just didn't get it. Well, until the last present! He opened that one almost completely by himself!


We were getting ready for Cupcakes. He really did not like the hat too much. I seem to recall feeling the same about them when I was young.


Check out how long his hair is! I keep begging ML not to cut it....I LOVE IT!


One of the presents we got him was a giant Woot monkey! And, really, we got it because I wanted to put the cape on Richie! He is, unfortunately, terrified of the actual monkey especially when it makes its monkey noises....he crys and crys and runs behind the nearest parent. But, he looks GREAT in the cape! (If you don't know what woot is, go to www.woot.com)


That's the cape-less monkey in the background. I think it is Super-Richie Kryptonite.


Richie because SO hungry today that he resorted to trying to SUCK the dry formula from the sleeve.


Moment later, all was right with the World.


Here we are at the science museum in our favorite playroom. Richie's got his favorite orange ball!






Just so show that he's not smiling ALL of the time.


These were actually take a few days ago. Just too cute to pass up.




Okay, I had time for one movie! Richie LOVE to play with the computer they have set up in the infant's room. (No big surprise there.) Mommy was playing hide-and-seek behind the monitor. Richie was absolutely cracking up! Just so you know, that's him jumping up and down. I'm not bouncing him.


That last one went up so quickly, here's another.
This is his actual homemade birthday cup-cake! Later, I'll show you where he spits it out. ;-)

Aftermath

The aftermath of Blizz Part Deux and the loss of all of my files since October. My Windows XP decided to eat my Windows 7, which I've been running since October. Don't ask me how or why. I have some ideas, but I've never experienced anything like this in my computing life. I had planned to do a DVD back-up this weekend, but apparently I was a week too late. I know you're sick of snow pictures, but I have some more that are just too impressive to pass up. Don't worry, I have a ton of new Richie pics and a movie of him WALKING!

Here's the second blizzard after liberating the car from the alley. Oh! Did I mention that we're supposed to have more snow tomorrow?



Here are images of the Inner Harbor from the Baltimore Science Museum.





Ice cycles (Yes, that's Richie in the background.)


Okay, I couldn't wait. Here's Richie WALKING!!

Totals....so far

We've had three snow falls in February:
Feb 2-3: 4.9" (but who remembers this snow fall?)
Feb 5-6: 24.8"
Feb 9-10: 19.5"

Normally, the average Feb total is 6.4" for the month~

Guess what the forecast is for Monday?

Record Winter

Richie's first full winter has broken all records except for single snowfall amount. The storm that ended yesterday gave us an additional 19.5 inches. Fun! Don't know what the official count is from the first snow.

Blizz

Yeah, Blizzard Warning! Extended until 10pm! There are drifts that are as tall as I am! Here is what it looks like out of our front door.


I know it looks like the road is plowed. Well, it is plowed, but the snow is still so deep in the center that I'm sure my car would get stuck due to the lack of clearance.


Another shot of our sidewalk.


This drift is almost as tall as this car.


All of my hard work in the alley is gone. The snow is back up to my knees. Here is a picture of our parking pad. Remember, it was clear where the car was yesterday.


Another shot of the parking pad, but the flash hitting the snow flake looks like the moon in our alley.


Interestingly, if you followed the weather maps, you would have seen a line of storms going Northeast and another track going due West. Now the storms are tracking due South. We're currently in a break and it may be done falling for the night. They just plowed the road so if the "Phase III" is lifted, I may have to go into work tomorrow. Phase III, by the way, means that only emergency vehicles, snow removal equipment and BG&E are allowed to be on the road. Our new Mayor is trying to get this declared a "Snow Hurricane" so we can get funds from FEMA. Interesting move, however, I'm not sure how a Mayor gets to designate a new weather entity like a Snow Hurricane. At least the weekend storm actually had an eye.

Couple of Cute Movies

Here, Richie has a little more enthusiasm for the Hog and the Frog. (It was the first time we read it that night.)


Goofing around...Huh, I wonder if I've posted this already...

With Shovel In Hand

When I woke this morning, I was saddened to see that the snow had not magically melted overnight. :( I suited up and stepped out to see exactly how bad it was. I looked down the end of the street to see a couple of neighbors who were also trying to dig out. However, they piled all of their snow towards me in the alley blocking me in even more!

Resigned to the notion that we would not have our car for many many days, I went back inside to play with Richie after trying to clean the car off a bit.

Before:


After! I also dug a little trench just in case we have to put the garbage out. I still don't know what they're going to do about that.


Around 4p, I went back out just to see what was going on and I found my neighbors trying to negotiate their minivan in the alley. I thought they were trying to leave, but they were backing up. After asking, they were actually parking. I decided to see if I could connect the dots before the sun set, which it was really already doing.

Over the next hour, I dug a trench in 3+ feet of show with a bottom layer of slush about 100 feet long (about 5 houses). I had made the connection and had to reshape/move the huge pile the neighbors had left for me.

The problem was, the way I park I'm angled to go out in the other direction. So I had to dig in the opposite direction so I could turn the car around. By this point, my neighbor joined to help clear and help me drive safely down the alley. Yeah Tim!


And props to ML for chipping in and helping Tim and I take care of the corner at Tim's house. The space I would need for the back-and-forth while I turned the car around.


And, here's the final product of our hard work!



Here's the proof that the car is out!


Oh, and yes, I did clean the car of better before I drove it down the alley!

Near Record Snow.

As we got ready for bed last night (Friday night) we already had some snow on the ground. It was not coming down so fast and if you saw it you'd ask why all of the fuss?



Okay, so there is some good snow. But still, it was still pretty light.


Then, the next morning! Ouch.


As Daddy gets ready to shovel the front of the house, this is what he was met with.


There was once steps here!


After some good labor, here is Daddy's fine work!


It was clean when Daddy start, but not when he finished...


Daddy started to realize that the cars were quite locked-in.



Truly sleek body design!
\

When I measured, drifts were between 3 feet and 2 feet.



Here are some pictures from our alley. Daddy suddenly realized that his car was going to be locked-in for some time to come.


The garbage can across the way is up against a wall, so it was not affected by the wind and we take it to be a pretty good measure of the actual snowfall total.



A little later in the day...as the snow fall continued.



Finally, as the snow fall came to a close...


Here is our alley from one end...


Our house from the back...


Here's the alley from the other end. Nope, Daddy doesn't think we're going to have the car for maybe several weeks. We are guessing they do not plow the alley.


Here's the Subaru at the beginning of the storm...



And, the next morning...



Towards the end of the day...


Here's the deck!



Some pictures on our way to the park! Too bad Mommy and Daddy left their sleds in Ann Arbor.





I really had fun on the swing...for about 10 minutes...




The sun is setting...


Here are some random lumps that are probably cars...






Signs around the neighborhood. Note the blue sky!





The street lights are usually pretty flat up-top.