Ann vs. Jason

By Jason

Ann, Athena and I spent last weekend in Las Vegas.  Why take a 4-month-old to Vegas?  Mainly to see Dan and Heather, with the side benefit that it’s a short, cheap flight and a good dry run for our upcoming trip to Chicago and Cleveland.

We stayed at Terrible’s Hotel and Casino, which is a few blocks off the strip and had better reviews than a lot of the cheaper hotels on the strip.  The hotel room was nice, but you had to walk through the cramped, smokey casino to get to it.  This seemed to be a common tactic at other hotels too, along with the standard psychological tricks with lighting and layout.

Athena loved rolling around on the big hotel bed:

Ann will probably write a bit more about our adventures in Las Vegas proper, but I wanted to post some photos of our drive out to the Valley of Fire State Park.

The Valley of Fire is less than an hour’s drive into the Mohave Desert.  The sandy tans and green scrub are suddenly broken with red, wind-carved rocks.

In the picture above, note how green the desert looks.  It’s a bit of an optical illusion with the low viewing angle – when you’re higher up, you can see how sparse the vegetation really is.

It’s an amazing place to visit, and a photographer’s paradise.  You can see Dan getting exactly the right angle:

The weather was perfect, too, sunny but only about 65 degrees or so.  There was a fairly strong breeze, which Athena just loved.

Here we are in between shots for a family photo.  You can see the more posed photos in Flickr, but I really love this one because it’s a little more candid.  Note Athena preparing the shove the cloth in her mouth and/or pull it off of Ann’s shoulder, a favorite passtime.

Here are Dan and Heather with more sandstone in the background:

The rocks have ancient native petroglyphs.  Sadly, some of them have been defaced fairly recently.  It takes a special kind of jerk to carve their name over millennia-old artwork.

Here we are on the viewing platform, with the landscape stretched out behind us.  Athena is apparently not afraid of heights.

I really like how this photo of the two of use turned out:

Rainbow Vista is another great stop in the park.  Here you can see bands of different color in the rocks and chasms.   Athena gives the place a thousand-yard stare:

Heather, Ann, Athena and Dan wait for me to get back from my usual wandering:

Okay, now this one is just too cute.  It’s practically cheating:

Dan is not exactly the biggest softie but I think Athena won him over:

I have to end with this shot of a series of fractures that really struck me – are we looking at rock, or the grain of some enormous tree?

I have a lot more artsy photos of the rocks and the desert landscape at Flickr, far too many to post here, so feel free to check them out.

I’ve been away from work for almost two weeks now, taking care of Athena full-time. Everyone wants to know how I’m doing, so I thought I would file an official status report.

1. Going for walks

Ann took Athena out in the stroller many, many times while she was on leave but she didn’t have the nerdy desire to record GPS tracks of her trips, like me. Below you’ll see a map of some of my walks with Athena. You can check back later to see the red tracks slowly covering the rest of Mountain View.

View Larger Map

2. Sleeping

Ann’s going back to work has altered Athena’s sleep schedule – she’s sleeping long through the night, which is great, but the longer she sleeps the less likely she is to nap during the day. That’s not good, because she gets periods where she’s obviously tired and crabby, but she just won’t nap for any appreciable amount of time. Last night she did almost 11 hours in a row, but then only got in two 20-minute naps during the day.

My mom says that’s how I was when I was a baby, but this is new for Athena and not her regular schedule. We’ll see what happens when she goes to daycare – my guess is she might go right back to wanting to stay up until midnight playing with us like she used to.

3. Eating

Since she kept getting hungry every 3 hours, right on the dot, we though we’d up her intake a bit to see if she’d go longer between meals. We are now up to 5 ounces and she’s still hungry at 3 hours. I think this is related to the sleep thing, too, since she has to make up meals for the large block of time spent sleeping.

She also seems to be in the middle of a growth spurt, she seems longer and heavier every day.

4. Taking photos

It’s actually a lot easier to take photos with Ann around for baby support – Athena is too young to really sit up on her own, so I end up holding her, propping her up, and holding the camera at arm’s length pointed vaguely in the right direction.

Luckily Athena is unbelievably cute and only getting cuter, making it very easy to take cute photos.

You may have seen some of these before, if you follow me on Flickr or Ann on Facebook.

I just grabbed another set of photos off my camera, I’ll upload them tonight or tomorrow.

5. Doing anything else

I’m not really getting anything else done at this point. I’ve checked my work email a few times and feel like I’m falling behind, but Athena deserves (and often demands) my full attention, so don’t expect too much else out of me for another week or so.

We’re not looking forward to starting daycare, Ann and I would both rather have her all to ourselves. But we’re thankful for the time we’ve had – many people don’t have employers that are so understanding.

By Jason

First off, I’d like to apologize for all the typos in the last update.  To answer the questions I’ve gotten:

• Yes, I was very tired.
• No, my lack of proofreading isn’t a sign of complete mental breakdown.

Taking care of Athena and Ann has meant missing sleep, but I’ve missed sleep in the past and recovered so I’m sure I’ll be alright.

Now that that’s covered, I just wanted to let everyone know that Ann is feeling better, though she’s still ill.  She ate some crackers, applesause, and even a little of her mom’s delicious green bean casserole today.  I have been stuffing myself on leftover chili, chicken and lasagna.  Athena still refuses to eat anything but milk.

I wrote a post today on my blog that you might find interesting, about how having an internet connection at the hospital let us keep everyone up to date on the birth.

Here are some more photos.  These are still from last week, during Thanksgiving.  There are more at Flickr.  I’ll try to get caught up soon.

By Jason -

We haven’t been very good about updating the blog lately, we never finished writing about Ryan and Jessi’s trip to see us let alone all the things we did when my parents came to town. We were back in the Cleveland area for a little while because my Grandma passed away.

I borrowed some old pictures and thought I’d post them here for family to see. They are available in Flickr right now, but I’m thinking about moving them over to Picasa Web because it might be easier for everyone to make comments and corrections there. If you can’t see the photos or don’t have a Flickr account, let me know and I’ll send you an invite.

Click on the photos to see larger versions.  Click here to see even more photos in the set on Flickr.

I’ve got lots of other family photos in my Flickr photosets, feel free to look around.  I’ll share some more and write about everything else that happened in May soon.