Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

This post is way overdue, but things have been pretty busy lately in the CA Morrison household with all of the traveling and doctor’s appointments and all.  I will start from the middle and then the beginning since many of you had some questions on facebook and such about Athena.  A day before we left for DC to go see my parents, Athena had an EGD (esophagogastroduodenoscopy).  The date was poorly planned, but it was the best date that was first available.  She had to have mild anesthesia (which she woke up from way earlier than the doctors and nurses expected, but not during the procedure).  The reason we had this done is because Athena is still having trouble swallowing foods with any kinds of chunks or bulk to it.  I have been fortifying her food with pureed avocado and butter with baby food since August. A few weeks ago, we started fortifying her whole milk with half and half, which she is not the biggest fan of, but we still have to truck on.   With this, we are not working so hard to keep her weight up, but she is still not gaining as fast as she should.  The preliminary results of the EGD showed that there was no narrowing of her esophagus; however they did do some biopsies of her esophagus to rule out eosinophilic esophagitis.  This is basically a form of food allergy that causes severe heartburn symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and weight loss.  So we are just waiting for those test results.  If the biopsy comes back negative, then we’re just going to have to work harder with the occupational therapist in order to get her to decrease the dysfunctional swallowing that she has.

Okay.  Now let’s talk about Thanksgiving.  We arrived very late the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, but that really didn’t stop Miss Athena from staying up until 2am discovering her new surroundings at her Great Grammy and Aunt Linda’s house.  She also did a little terrorizing of poor Taffy (their dog) throughout our stay.

Thanksgiving day was filled with lots of family, food, and good times. Athena got to play with her cousin Luke.  It was great seeing how they interacted with each other.

The next morning we woke up to snow on the ground.  So, naturally, Athena, Jason, and her Uncle Ryan decided to go play in the snow.  Athena loved it.  We’re really glad we got to use her snow boots at least once.

After warming up inside after playing in the snow, Athena had to make a quick phone call on Uncle Ryan’s phone.

Later that evening we visited JJ and The Glows at JJ’s wonderful baby-proofed house.  JJ is a new auntie and she has her house totally ready for babysitting and such.  Jason and I were thoroughly impressed.  She even has a high chair and crib.  Athena got to play with (beat on) little Asher.  I was told that he secretly liked having a playmate a little more his age, though.

Later that evening, the grandparents and Auntie Linda volunteered to babysit Asher and Athena while we all went out to Tommy’s.  This was excellent for Jason and I since this was our first night out since July.  It was much appreciated.

The next day was Athena’s small birthday party.  She just loved all of the attention.  When we got back to CA, she was a little uncharacteristically whiny and clingy for a short period of time.  She probably got used to all of the people around her at all times.

Although she did not like her birthday cake (she does not like sweet things), we did find out that she loves pizza.  She was gumming on that for quite some time.

If you’re wondering how we come up with such good pictures for Athena, this is our formula: one part taking a bunch of photos in a few seconds and two parts this:

The next day we flew back to CA.  But before we did, we hung out with the Delly’s and Jimmy before our flight home.  It was pretty cute seeing Athena and Jack play together.  Jack was kind of teaching her the ropes.

We’re sorry to everyone that we missed during Thanksgiving.  There’s never enough time to visit everyone.  There are definitely more pictures on Jason’s Flickr Page if you want to take a look.  We haven’t uploaded pictures from our DC trip, but when we do, we’ll do our Christmas post.  Athena had a blast playing with her cousins, though.  Now we’re just waiting for the newest Newman to make his/her debut any day now so Athena can show him/her the ropes.

We hope everyone had a very happy holiday and will have great things to come in the new year!

By Jason

We still owe everyone a post about our trip to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, but we’ve been busy. In my case, busy doing interviews with lots of reporters.

Google is a very interesting place to work because (among many other things) if some random engineer knows about a topic and is willing to do interviews, they’ll put the engineer out there rather than a PR guy or spokesperson. At most companies, the notion of putting a programmer in front of a TV camera would probably get the PR team fired. Heck, even Intel hired an actor to play one of their “rock star” engineers.

I’ve been working for months to fight the “work for Google” scams that have been promising people money in order to get at their credit cards. You might have seen me on Good Morning America a few months ago talking about it. Since Google is suing some companies, another post for the Official Google Blogjust went out and I’ve been doing a ton of interviews since.

And, if you’re not interested in hearing me talk about scams, I’ve included a cute Athena video at the bottom of the post.

Here’s a story from CBS News (I’m featured near the end):

Another story from a local NBC affiliate in Utah:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

And here’s a story from KQED radio news – this is pretty exciting for me, since I listen to NPR on my way to and from work every day:

I did a bunch of radio interviews, but they’re a bit harder to find on the web. Here’s one from WBZ Radio. I even did a few live interviews, which I think went really well – but so far I haven’t found a link to share.

Finally, here are a couple print and online stories where I was quoted:

CNET – Google sues over alleged work-at-home scams

The New York Times (from an AP story) – How Fake Sites Trick Search Engines to Hit the Top

And now, without further ado, that cute Athena video I promised: