12/14/06 Technology

Our Internet connection has stunk for a few weeks now! It hangs up for a few seconds to a few minutes, and ping tests show dropped packets during those hangups. Comcast has been here and verified that there's no inside wiring problem, and referred our complaint to "network". Meaning, black hole.

So, we ordered DSL yesterday. Ironic!

Now that we have a new phone/answering system, I ordered Caller ID and Call Waiting Caller ID. I love this! Why have we lived this long without it?! I'll be call-screening a whole lot less now. Turns out, my cordless headset phone that I've had for years supports Caller ID.

Gabriel: Great today. He asked me tonight if he gets a gold star, and I said yes. He doesn't need to actually see a gold star, he's happy with just being told that he earned one.

Gabriel spent much of the afternoon working on a fairly difficult puzzle, taking his characteristic order to a new level. First, he started with the upper left corner and then put all the edge pieces in place clockwise until he had the outline. Then, he filled in the inner pieces in the same order, solving the puzzle in a spiral pattern. I swear, that kid....

Julian: Decent today. Darling in music class, and very agreeable about a living-room nap this afternoon. A real pest later when it was time for him to leave the office, and he got in big trouble for grabbing some papers off Dave's desk and "tossing" them.

Katrina: Perfect. Her long stretch of sleep was from 11pm to 5am last night, yay! I took her and Julian to the Y's Childwatch, and left her there awake. She didn't fuss much, and went to sleep in a swing. She was fascinated and completely adorable at music class, then napped much of the afternoon. When awake, she was all beams and smiles. She's stopped crying in the bath, and loves it when I float her around the bathtub ("floaties," holding up her head). She sure is a wiggly baby though, rarely relaxing and snuggling on my shoulder, full of vim and vigor. (What is vim, anyway? I could use some!)

I absolutely HATE having to rouse Katrina when she's just settled in for a comfy long nap, for the 5 minutes it takes to pick up Gabriel from pre-K. I just need someone here for a few minutes, but instead I have to disrupt both Katrina and Julian. The days I pick Julian up at 5:30pm, I often have the same problem twice. This poor baby gets run around like crazy, and that's with me pretty much staying home after 2pm or so.

Julian too -- he was happily working on a puzzle, for nearly an hour, when I had to drag him away today to get Gabriel. Without Gabriel around to distract him, Julian's concentration on a single task is remarkable for an-almost-3-year-old. It's easy to forget that when you live with an attention span and focus like Gabriel's though.

No photos today, again. How did that happen?!

12/14/06