Christmas Eve

Well... I've been asleep at the switch for the last couple of weeks, so I'm hoping to get a few posts in tonight highlighting the events of Jackie's first Christmas.

We sure had a great time, very, very, busy, and not very relaxing, but we had a real nice time seeing friends and family, and spending time with both the Trynosky's and Walsh's.

Christmas Eve, got off to a bang, we were headed out the door to drop Jackie off at the Walsh household, and to Join the Trynosky family for Christmas mass, and as is so often the case these days, Jackie had a diaper emergency. Lucky for us, she was not wearing her nice Christmas dress this time, so we got everything all cleaned up, Jackie was put in a new outfit and we ended up leaving only 45 minutes late.

We finally made it to Waldwick to drop off Jackie, and over to St. Annes in Fair Lawn for Mass. We picked up a lot of time on the road, so we made it to Church only a few minutes late. 

After Mass we had a nice dinner with my Family at Davia's in Fair Lawn, and then we picked Jackie up. 

When we got there Jackie was hanging out with Cousin Mary 

Jackie also got her very first reading of "Twas the Night before Christmas" with Grandpa and all Walsh cousins that were there... a Walsh Family tradition!

After the reading we headed back to Fair Lawn... Santa paid Jackie a visit. 

She got to spend some nice time with Aunt Jill

And Uncle Joe had a big surprise for her, he gave her his very own teddy bear from when he was a little boy. Freddy Teddy is a collectors item, and if Mom and Dad ever need help paying the mortgage...well, he may be asked to contribute...

Jackie had lots of fun helping to open all her gifts including this great blanket and dog from Grandpa. 

delinquent posts

I seem to be falling behind here... I have tons of pictures from the holidays, and in general since the holidays to post. So I'll try to fix that.

Seems like I make a ton of updates, and then none for a while. I'll have to work on that, perhaps also coax Mom into helping with some posts.

Jackie is 5 months old as of yesterday, amazing where the time has gone. We can barely remember life without her, she brings such joy to our lives.

Fun time with my buddies

Here is Jackie telling Charlotte Rose and Timothy Patrick how delicious rice cereal can be.

Giant Baby Spotted Near Bridgewater

Jackie had her four month appointment yesterday for another round of vaccines and the a weigh in. She weighed in at a very healthy 15 lbs 2 oz.

It looks like there are three teeth coming through now, and she's handling it pretty well. We've been able to tell when she's really uncomfortable and give her some teething gel to numb the gums a bit.

I'm going to try and put up a nice post on Christmas for the three or so readers of this thing. In short we had a great time, but very busy... not much relaxation, but I'm hoping for a bit more of that in the coming weekend. Due to my work schedule, I have 4 days off, and the snow made this a real short week, I stayed home on Monday to avoid the perils of post-blizzard mass transit. I wish I had taken the whole week off, as the trains are still not running on time. Yesterdays commute was a bit longer, as the PATH wasn't running between Newark and Journal Square, and we were on a weekend schedule for NJT.

Just an FYI, when NJT says Rail service is operating on a regular weekday schedule on all lines. A handful of trains (representing about one percent of the weekday schedule) will be cancelled. It is code for "your normal 6:41 train out of Bridgewater is canceled, and the 7:06 train that runs behind it will show up 4 minutes early, so you have to sprint through the icy parking, underpass, and un-shoveled platform. to get to work on time"

I found myself hoping that the car battery in the Explorer would be dead yesterday (and this morning) to give me an excuse to take the day off and get an early start on the New Years weekend.

Teething

We really can't believe how fast these teeth are coming in. We had suspected that Jackie was starting to teeth about two months ago, when the normal amount of drool we had become acustomed too turned into buckets of drool, and she was soaking through two bibs and her onesies at the same time.

For the last few weeks, it looked like there may be a tooth coming though, but now it looks like it's broken through the surface, and there may be second one popping out too.

She's actually been pretty good with all this, I've noticed that she's sleeping lighter during her naps, and having a tough time settling down, but in general aside from a few outbursts, she hasn't been much fussier, we're just so shocked and amazed at how quickly all this is happening.

We've really been scrambling to get ready for the Holidays, we had a busy month so the tree and lights didn't go up until this past weekend, and I think we've gotten most of the ornaments up. I've been baking a few batches of cookies, and Alison has been wrapping all the gifts. We made stockings, and are still putting up decorations around the house...we may actually finish before we head up to North Jersey for Christmas Eve. Between all this decorating and wrapping, Alison has been getting the Christmas cards in the mail. We've been meaning to send them out for a few years now, and finally this year, they are going out.

It's been a hectic week... but we are almost ready to celebrate our first Christmas with the baby.

New Links

I added a few more links to the sidebar from some friends for anyone who is interested.

One is from our friends Dwight and Peggy Renshaw, who just welcomed their second child to the world, little Rebecca.

Another is from a friend in the Coast Guard, Nate Menefee writes about happenings in the Maritime world.

The last is from another KP classmate and his wife, they have also just welcomed their second child Audrey recently, they also have a very special and brave little boy named Keegan who had a heart transplant just a week after he was born. He's been going through a rough patch since Thanksgiving and could use some prayers. It's a very courageous family.

Work Related Post

Just as a point of interest, I wanted to take a step away from baby related posts for a moment. The Project Manager for the big transit redevelopment project at Denver Union Station that I have been working on for the last 2 1/2 years sent this nice aerial view of the job site. The photo I guess was taken by the contractor.

What we are seeing in this picture is about 1/3 of the new underground bus terminal that has been excavated, the slab and wall poured and the roof structure being erected. The holes in the middle of the facility will be skylights in the passenger concourse below. The rooms at the hammerhead shape of the facility near the top of the picture are all the mechanical and electrical equipment rooms. The larger one to the left, is where the giant exhaust system to remove the bus emissions and the smoke from a fire will be located. Above that in the picture is the new Light Rail Station which will replace the current one near the bottom, where you can see the train cars. That's scheduled to open in the spring.

The contractors are really moving along, it's been a great project for me to work on.