Sleep time

Seriously, did you fall asleep again? zzzzz....

ZZZZZ...zzzzzzz

Weekend Play Time!

It was another busy weekend for us. Actually, it wasn't that busy by our standards, but these days even doing nothing seems tiring. The thunder storm hit us pretty hard Friday night, knocking out our electricity for six hours. So we went to bed early and got lots of sleep that night. Saturday the grandparents took care of Brady so we could continue working on our basement (which reminds me, I haven't posted any pictures of that, but it's not super interesting anyway right now). And Sunday, as you will see we woke up, watched golf, and played most of the day.

Play time? Did someone say play time??

Sunday morning we watched Tiger dominate the British Open. Notice that Sergio Garcia is also looking at whatever Brady is looking at.

Hey, are you my twin? You look just like me.

Back from daycare

Hi, I'm Brady. What can I do for you?
I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Oh, that is disappointing news.

Sleep time!

Hey, who are you looking at? I SAID, WHO ARE YOU LOOKING AT!

Chin TV - Brady's first day in daycare

Do you ever have one of those days where at the end you say, "darn, I wish I had a reality TV crew here filming this?" Well, today was one of those days. You see, today was Brady's first day in daycare. Yup, enough with all this baby stuff, time to get out of the house and get into the real world. Okay, okay. So maybe it's not the real world, unless the real world includes sitting in bouncy seats, being fed whenever you are hungry and two naps a day. However, as it turned out, this was not so much about Brady learning about the real world, as that parents.

They say that this type of stuff is more traumatizing to the adults than the babies, kind of like when the kid gets shots (which Brady is scheduled for in a week - stay tuned for that blog. After today, I may actually hire a film crew to follow us around on that day). Irene and I both knew that this would be somewhat of an emotional day, but just like the day of birth, nothing really can prepare you properly for this. Fortunately, I was completely mentally obliterated from the weekend activities of framing our basement to install insulation and drywall, so I don't think I registered every emotion that I normally would have. But Irene made up for it by taking in enough emotion for both of us. :)

The night before, Irene had a whole list of things she was going to do on her first 'day off' - go shopping, do laundry, get a facial, stuff like that. Well, today started out fine and looked like she was going to have a great, relaxing day. After my dentist appointment, we packed up Brady and brought him and all his gear to the daycare in my building (a nice NICE convenience). After hanging out a bit, I headed upstairs to work. Irene stayed behind to complete the paperwork. Around two hours later I get a voicemail from Irene and call her back. I'm wondering 'wonder what she is doing right now?' Well, she was up the road at the South Shore mall and she says "I'm so scared. I had all these things I wanted to do but now I can't because I'm so worried about Brady being in daycare." What a great Mom. What Mom would not have this emotion on the first day of daycare, especially after just nine weeks. So basically, the stressball never really left the area and visited Brady three times in 5 hours just to check on him. Once, I went with her so she wouldn't look like she was completely obsessive, just mildly obsessive.

In the end, Brady seemed to enjoy it there (or didn't notice the difference) and all is well. I even remembered to pick him up before I went home.

Here are some pictures comemorating Brady's first day at daycare.

Irene packing up the little guy for his first day on his own

Irene was all smiles when we first dropped off Brady



The daycare provides daily reports on each kid. Irene was extremely excited to read it when I got home.
"Brady had a wonderful first day. He ate three times, took two naps, and pooped once. All the other kids really think he's funny. Especially when he raises his hands and yells "Touchdown!"

"He's home! He's home! My baby is home!"

Based on this reaction, you would think he just came back from Iraq.
As I said, I wish we had a film crew with us today. Since we didn't though, I've decided to give you some of the poses Irene had today when I saw her. Irene would've posed for them herself, but she's talking on the phone right now....

Breaking news from NBC Nightly News

7:03am ET, July 11, 2006

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News is seen speeding into the Google parking lot and running into the facility housing the Blogger service.

In a frenzy, Brian burst into a network management room being manned still by the third shift support person. Surprised by the sudden arrival and disturbed that his game of solitaire was interrupted, the Network Guy confronted Mr. Williams.

Network Guy: What the heck are you doing?
Brian Williams: Queue the music
NG: Huh?
BW: The music! Play the intro music!
NG: Intro music? What are you talking about man? Are you flakin'?
BW: Do you know who I am?
NG: Yeah yeah yeah. You’re Brian Williams, host of NBC’s Nightly News, blah blah blah
BW: That’s RIGHT. And I have something HUGE to report, so please play the INTRO MUSIC
NG: Dude, this is not TV. It’s not even radio. This is a BLOG! Ever heard of a blog?
BW: Look, just play some music as an introduction for me. Something for breaking news.
NG: Whatever. I only have what’s on my ipod dude…… okay, ready?
BW: Yes

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART AND YOU’RE TO BLAME, DARLIN’ YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME…… [music fades to silence]

BW: Are you kidding me?
NG: Hey, take it or leave it. I don't have much.
BW: Forget it. Here I go……

Good afternoon everyone, I am Brian Williams, and this is an NBC Nightly News special morning report. For the past 40 days, the Chin household has been anything but the picture of serenity. Young Brady Chin has turned his parents into walking zombies over the past seven weeks, demanding food every three hours. The crafty parents though turned this predictibility to their advantage. Many times onlookers have observed the mother feeding Brady while the father loaded golf clubs into the trunk of their car. Minutes later they would speed off down the street, only to be found shortly thereafter at the local golf range.

However, in the past 10 days Brady Chin again threw them a curve ball, waking every hour throughout the day to eat just a single ounce . The disgruntled parents have recently been seen moping around the block on short walks with Brady. Often, rushing up the street while Brady, ahem, communicates to them his desire to eat.

Well, last night little Brady rewarded them for tolerating his change of behavior. After 40 days and 40 nights, young Brady Chin slept through the entire night all by himself. Going to sleep at 10:30pm, he did not wake until after 6am. Upon waking and realizing that it was 6am and not 2am, the celebration from the household could be heard miles away. While Jason shot fireworks from the attic windows, Irene was seen doing an Irish jig on the front lawn in her bath robe. We're not sure why it was an Irish jig, but we're pretty sure it's because there is no such thing as a Chinese jig....despite what Jason says.

Everyone here at NBC congratulates Brady on his breakthrough and wishes the Chin household many sleep filled nights.

For the NBC Nightly News, I am Brian Williams. Thank you for joining us for this morning special report.
.
.
.
.
Play some closing music


JUNGLE LOVE, IT'S DRIVIN' ME MAD, IT'S MAKIN' ME CRAZY CRAZY.

JUNGLE LOVE, IT'S DRIVIN' ME MAD, IT'S MAKIN' ME CRAZY [music fades to silence]

BW: Oh brother, get me out of here....

The Faces of Brady

Put up your dukes

Are you looking at me?

You, my friend, are not impressive

How YOU doin'?

A lazy weekend

Brady's weekends start with a brisk walk to Dunkin' Donuts for a muffin to go with his milk.

After breakfast he takes a quick bath and get dressed like Hugh Heffner

Where are the women with the bunny ears on? I was told if I wore ears then they would come.

Construction resumes

On Thursday we got a surprise visit from a local paving company. We had talked with this company when Brady was about to arrive, but we told them that we had too much going on to deal with that work at the time. So, they went away. However, our contractor is doing a job just two houses down the street and that house was scheduled to have their driveway paved yesterday. So, logically it made sense to him to have the company do both houses since all the equipment was there. So, at 9:40am on Thursday I got a call from Irene that 'some guy' from the paving company knocked on the door and asked if they could rip up the driveway to prepare it for paving. Classic. No notice at all. So I bolted out of work to help deal with them since Irene had an appointment to make. All in all, everything worked out. But if anyone thinks dealing with local contractors on big jobs is easy, they come talk to us an we'll set you straight. :)

Right now we have a big dirt driveway that smells somewhat like manure, so hopefully it will get paved soon. Then we can set up the basketball hoop!

First they crack up the existing pavement and scoop it up with the bobcat

Then they dump it in a big truck

They hand chiseled out the pavement leading in to the garage concrete floor slab

We had a sink hole issue in our last driveway. Rumor was because there used to be a tree there and the stump was not removed properly, so as it rotted, the sink hole got deeper. So I had the Bobcat guy dig to see what he could find. Sure enough, up came a stump!

Then the drop a ton of smelly dirt and spread it out
Then the get some teenager to walk the stamping machine around the ground to pack down the dirt. Pretty interesting overall. Too bad Brady is so small. Little boys would love watching this.

Seven weeks

As you know, we have a scale at home to track Brady's weight gain. Since coming home from the hospital, he's picked up 5 lbs and 5 oz to weigh in at 11 lbs 9 oz on his seven week birthday. He is growing quickly and often. We may need to find a third source of income to support his feeding habits. In the spirit of getting bigger, here are some more pictures of the little big guy.

"why are you standing on your head?"

When we brought Brady home, he was only half the length of the pack 'n play. Now, we're going to start having to turn him 90 degrees to fit him in.

Eating at JP Licks doesn't exactly hurt his weight gain

Brady is so big now that he's decided he will control what we watch on TV. His favorites so far are re-runs of Bay Watch and Saved By the Bell.

HAPPY FOURTH OF zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Happy fourth of July everyone! In past years, the fourth was just another day off from work to do whatever we wanted. For us, that may have been going to the cape for a beach bonfire get-together, playing a round of golf on a nice course, catching a fireworks show, or having our own little clambake dinner at home. Well, with an infant in tow, all of these things are just hard enough to deter us from even trying them. Instead, we decided to do what every other family in Needham seemed to be doing and enjoy the town events. Unfortunately, we couldn't go to the Needham fireworks show this year (at the highschool, about a 5 minute walk from our house) because we thought the noise would freak Brady out. So we stayed at home....and the fireworks still shook the house and we saw some from our livingroom, which was neat. Of course we were fully ready to handle a crying baby - but it never came. As Stuart Scott says, Brady was as cool as the other side of the pillow. Never phased, never moved, and basically snored his way through the whole event.

We did manage to go to the Friday evening fair events at the highschool before the fireworks on Monday and that was quite enjoyable. Lots of kids and families around and we got to meet Pudge and Ro's newest addition, Ava. That was a nice way to spend a few hours going into a holiday.

And since Brady did so well with the noise last night, and we're doing the family thing this holiday, we went to the Needham parade this morning. It was preceded by a 5k road race, which we saw briefly on our walk to Dunkin Donuts and then we met up with my brother and his family to sit and watch the parade (which passed right in front of the highschool too). Lots of fire engines, old cars, floats, performers, etc. With all of that though comes lots of noise, but again Brady didn't flinch through the entire parade. We fed him once when we got there and then he snoozed his way through everything. Since he missed it, we took a bunch of pictures for him to look at tonight.

Now that we are coming to the end of the holiday, we can honestly say that Needham is a great place to spend the fourth of July for families. Next year, everyone is invited to join us!

We arrived and fed Brady his morning bottle. From there it was all zzzzzz...

Where there are kids, there are balloon vendors

Irene kicking back and enjoying the marching bands

Irene, Brady, Judy, Brendan, Larry (left to right) enjoying the high priced front seats they acquired for the parade. I have no idea who the woman on the left is though. Sorry.

In the spirit of political correctness, I will just say that it was very nice of this African-American man to march with this band and spray water mist on them since it was a hot morning.

Irene teaching Brady how to hold a Q-tip in the nose. Okay, okay, it's lollipop stick in her mouth, but it looks like a Q-tip

"The Red Coats are coming! The Red Coats are coming!"

And what would any town parade be without every little kid with a bike being able to ride in the parade. Next year maybe we'll pull Brady in a wagon.