MichaelandChrissy.com

We did send out a Christmas letter this year, but I wanted to post it to the web site anyway. Actually, Te-Amo wrote it this year.  Maybe somebody who isn’t on our holiday mailing list would like to know what we were up to this year? Click “Continue Reading” to read the 2006 Christmas Letter.

Chrissy had planned to wait until Aiden’s four-month pediatrician visit until she started feeding him solid food. However, the wait was too much for her. Tonight, Chrissy gave Aiden his first taste of baby food: bananas. It was more like a banana sauce, and it smelled awful, but he really seemed to like it.

The problem with eating solid food for the first time is that your mouth and tongue don’t quite know what to do with it. I’m wondering if the first thought wouldn’t be to spit it out rather than swallow it. That would explain the mess all over Aiden’s face by the time Chrissy was done feeding him.

I think that this might become part of his daily routine from now on, which is scary for me since it seems like I just got used to bottle feeding…

Part of the responsibility of owning a web site is keeping the domain name active. This means that you have to renew your ownership of the name every year, which is a problem when you procrastinate like I do. If you don’t do the upkeep, the domain expires. It’s kind of like cleaning a cat box in that regard (not that any of our cats have died from failure to clean the cat box, but I have had a domain name die from lack of renewal).

I got an email from web.com back in October telling me that our domain name would expire within 90 days. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it…” I finally remembered to renew our domain name today. It doesn’t actually expire until 1/29/07, but I figured that I had better do it before I forget again. I had the option to renew automatically for five years, so I jumped on it. So now our domain is safe for another five years, and it only cost us $40.

I was thinking about getting ‘mikeandchrissy.com’ too, but someone is sitting on it. It doesn’t actually go anywhere (just some idiot ad-link site), so it kind of aggravates me that I can’t get that domain name. Oh well, we’ll have to live with the site that we have. Maybe I’ll get around to updating it eventually…

Chrissy has been wanting new drapes in the upstairs bedrooms for a long time. Currently, we only have the horizontal wood blinds up on the windows. These are quality blinds and look good with the oak window trim, but they still let in light during the daytime. This light will inevitable find Aiden while he is trying to sleep.

So we went shopping for blinds last weekend. There was a half-off sale at JC Penny Home on 40″x84″ drapes, so we got a really good deal. We selected different colors for each room, and also bought new curtainrods and pull-backs to go with each set. However, this means more homework for me since I have to install the hardware. Guess I’ll be busy for the next night or two.

Last night, I hung the drapes in Aiden’s nursery (the priority). It only took about twenty minutes, and all I needed was my trusty power drill, the laser level and a tape measure. It turned out nice and blocks pretty much all the light coming in. Now I need to do the four other windows in the master and spare bedrooms…

Chrissy worked out an agreement with her sister, Julie, so that she would sell Julie her Jetta if Julie could manage to get a used car loan. The good news is that Julie came through with the loan. The bad news is that we now had to buy a new vehicle to replace the Jetta. So, we took a trip to the local Honda dealer to see what we could do for a 2007 CR-V.

I finally got to drive one, and while the acceleration isn’t as powerful as my Acura RSX, it is much smoother than the Jetta. On my cousin Dave’s advice, we also brought along the car seat to see if it fit in the back seat. It fit nicely, with enough room for my to sit in the passenger seat comfortably and even recline a little. The brakes were a little touchy, but I quickly grew accustomed to it. It even has heated seats, which my RSX doesn’t have. I joked that maybe we should buy two.

The saleman was a nice guy, but he did warn me that the CR-Vs were selling like hot cakes so there would be little room for negotiating price. We’ll see about that. I knew that I wouldn’t get anywhere near list price, but I wanted to get as close to it as possible. Chrissy wanted a lot of accessories installed, so that drove the price up, but I managed to get them installed for free (about $500 off). I then started pushing down the price until the salesmen wouldn’t budge anymore (another $500 off).

I kept trying though, until he finally relented and called in the manager. The manager’s job is to be the hardass and say, “take what you got or go home” in not-so-many-words. I got $1000 off of what I was originally quoted, so I was happy. Considering the fact that the salesman told me that I had to pay the first quoted price, I think that I did pretty good.

Aiden has finally started sleeping through the night at 15 weeks. Monday night was the first time he slept through the entire night (9:30pm-7:00am). He did it again today, not waking up until about 6am. This is great news for Chrissy, who has selflessly woken up every night to feed the boy so that I don’t have to. She’ll have to adjust her schedule now, since she can’t help but wake up at night now.

Chrissy has been working on getting Aiden on a daily schedule with a morning and afternoon nap, rather than just random wake/sleep intervals. We have been documenting his daytime sleeping and eating habits, just to see what patterns are being formed. Chrissy is all about the spreadsheets, and her records are organized and complete. It’s interesting to see how the Aiden’s sleeping and eating times are conforming to the new schedule on a daily basis.

Sleeping through the night was just a pleasant side effect of the newly-formed schedule. Chrissy found out the best time to feed him and put him to bed, and the sleep schedule just worked out. I think that the secret is bathtime. Chrissy changes him, feeds him, and then gives him a bath just before bedtime. This way, he knows the routine and is ready to go to sleep (if not exactly willing). Chrissy might be the best mom ever.

Chrissy has been upset with her 2002 Volkswagen Jetta ever since Aiden was born. The problem is that the Jetta leaves absolutely no leg room for the front passenger when the car seat is installed in the back seat. The car seat just takes up too much room, so the front passenger seat has to be pushed all the way forward to acommodate it. Whoever is in the passenger seat ends up scrunched against the dashboard, and this is usually Chrissy since she’s shorter than I am.

The solution would be to get a new car. Chrissy seems to think that an SUV would be better, since there would be enough room for the car seat, the stroller, groceries, and (eventually) another kid. I started looking into hybrid SUVs, but they didn’t have much to offer aside from better gas mileage. We found that the Honda CR-V has many of the options that Chrissy’s Jetta has, so she wouldn’t be “downgrading” in features, and it also has the same engine as my Acura, so it wouldn’t have the same acceleration issues as the Jetta.

We’re going to try to get to a dealership and take a look at one in the near future. Chrissy already test-drove one without me! Last night, she went to the Honda dealership with Felice to pick up her new Civic. They mentioned that Chrissy was looking for a CR-V, and the salesmen piled them both into one for a test drive. No fair! Next time, I get to drive.

The Christmas cards have been sent out. It took a few tries to perfect the Christmas letter, since we ended up doing all sorts of stuff this year. Chrissy wanted to include everything, so I had to shrink the text down to 8pt font to keep it all on one page. I’ll post that later. We also decided to include a holiday photo this year.

Chrissy’s mom came over and took a series of photos of the three of us. We just got Aiden some IU-branded clothes, so we wanted to go with an Indiana University theme. We all wore our IU clothes and tried to make sure to have the logo showing. We tried to get the cats in there too, but that didn’t work out very well…

Chrissy’s birthday is tomorrow (December 4th), but we usually celebrate it on the weekend before or afterwards with her family. Her parents bought her a water-tight, fire-proof portable safe. It was big enough to put hanging files in and that makes it very heavy (too heavy to have on your lap!).

Her sisters got her some gift cards and some Christmas ornaments. Chrissy got a really nice cake, but I messed up trying to record the candle-blowing on the new camera. I settled for some good still shots.

Afterwards, I gave Chrissy a few things for her birthday: the walkthrough for Neverwinter Nights 2, the “Temporarily Unbounced” Tigger figurine by Enesco, and the “Pooh and Piglet with Cut-out Hearts” figurine by Enesco. She liked them, and I actually remembered to buy a birthday card this year. She says that I’m the best husband ever.

There have been quite a bit of repaints for the G1 Combaticon molds. I pulled six of them off of my shelves for a group photoshoot: G1 Bruticus, G2 Bruticus, Transformers 2000 Valdigus (Japanese), RID Ruination, RID Arctic Camo Ruination and Universe Desert Camo Ruination. They look pretty good next to each other, so I took lots of comparison photos.

There was a very old Japanese repaint called Battle Gaia, but I’ve never seen that one before. I’m not even sure what colors it has. But I think that I have every other version, except for the over-sized Chinese knockoffs. Not that I wouldn’t want those…