From Wit’s End

Rachel and Jack gave me a Father’s Day present today. Jack supplied the homemade wrapping paper, and Rachel supplied what was inside: an iPod Nano!

Apparently while I was napping at midday, Jack took eight steps all by himself. His Uncle roused me with this news and told me that lunch would be ready soon. Rachel has officially deemed this as walking (since four steps wasn’t enough). I was a little annoyed that I missed it, until he broke that record right away by doubling it! He walked sixteen steps by coming to me in the kitchen. Watch out world, Daniel Jackson Wisdom is on the move!

I’m at the Apple store in Chicago! I’m in the Windy City on a business trip, and I took a pilgrimage into downtown riding a bus, and then the “L” (for the first time!). I came here intending to buy a copy of TurboCAD Pro, but got waylaid by another box with the name ViaCAD 2D/3D. It is half the price, and it looks just as capable and possibly even just more fun. So I have been waffling back and forth wondering which one to buy. I came down to the first floor to see if I could find anything on the internet about the two products. Once I found the internet on one of the laptops, I realized that I had to blog about this, too.

I was going to stop by the Apple store in Charlotte for all this, but now I can just come straight home in time for dinner at Sister-Jennifer-in-law’s house with Rachel’s folks. I hear their going to order stromboli’s.

Well, I’m going to buy ViaCAD, because then I’ll have more money to buy something else some other time.

Wow. This place is amazing. I am basking in the yummy geekiness of all this. Speaking of yummy, its time to go have dinner.

[Uncle Nik is visiting for the week for Vacation Bible School at our church. He's staying at Aunt Jennifer's house.]

Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Nik and Future-Uncle Tim all came over for dinner this evening, and a good time was had by all.

Jack had a lot of firsts today. I think his Uncle Nik and company played a part in some of it, because Jack had more of an audience to perform for (and he just thinks that his Uncle Nik is the coolest guy around!):

• He took four steps on his own.
• Uncle Nik taught him how to jump! I wasn’t in the room at the time, but he watched Nik and then apparently his feet actually left the floor once or twice before he fell on his bum. The rest of the evening he spent being pretty proud of himself and “jumping” while on his knees and saying “Bah! Bah!” in time with his bouncing.
• Jack is off the bottle! For the past few weeks, we starting increasing his sippy cup usage so that the only bottle he had was the last one right before bed. TOnight, on a whim, I decided to give him his last milk in his sippy cup and he took it! And when he drank it all, he threw it across the room!

So all’s well with us, and Jack is coming right along. Especially when he has a big audience.

Jack took three steps without any aid this afternoon! He saw my cellphone against my ear and was sufficiently motivated to try and come over to talk to Grandma. So my mom heard my exclamation when he did the old one-two-three step. Hooray!

Meaning that he stood up on his own, barely shifted his weight onto one foot, shuffled his other foot a centimeter or two, and then promptly fell down. Rachel says that this doesn’t count, but I am the king of this castle, and I deem it worthy of a first step.

At least on the personal side, the theme transformation is complete. Thanks for your patience. A new theme has renewed my interest in blogging, both personally and impersonally.

I was picking Jack up from Ellie’s today, and when I literally picked him up off of the floor, he put his hands around my shoulders and held them there. “He’s hugging me!” I exclaimed to Ellie.