Average Grod's Average Blog

Too bad it has come to this. I think I am only posting about once a week. I am now one podcast behind too but I will get that finished in the next couple days. Thanks for downloading the last couple. I can tell how many are being downloaded per month. This week's (last week's actually) may not interest everyone since I am pretty much just planning on talking about movies or albums I have recently been into. Download away but don't be disappointed if there isn't much there to interest you. I don't know about putting Emma on there either. Those couple seconds actually take about as long to record as the rest of the post.
Emma laughed for the first time this week. An actual human laugh. Not just a coo, grunt, growl, howl, or one of the many other animalistic forms of communication she is famous for either. An honest to goodness human laugh. I was so surprised I almost peed myself. She did.
As you can see I am having more and more fun with her. She is just over 3 months old now and I have been spending a lot of time with her. Most of it is during the day when she is wide awake and able to be as wild as she wants. This is cool for me but I think at this point in the game it is becoming frustrating for Shanna. I get playtime and Shanna is stuck with bedtime. If she can't get Emma to sleep before midnight then she can't sleep either. It also means that Emma thinks Daddy means playtime. If Shanna is trying to put her to sleep and Emma sees me she wakes up with a big smile ready to party. Kinda cool for me to see but it upsets Shanna. Quite understandable if not the tiniest bit funny as well(Ill probably be in trouble for that line). The other bummer is that Emma doesn't want to go to sleep for me at home very often. She likes to cuddle up and sleep on my chest when we are out or at other people's houses. There just isn't a shelter from crazy eyed, loud mouthed, "Ooooooing," relatives like a Daddy's strong arms and warm chest. At home it is another story. Daddy still means playtime. Mommy is the one that puts her to sleep so that means Shanna often has to take her to bed with her. Emma will kick and scream if I try to feed or hold her when the lights are out. She knows what I am trying to do and she won't have it. Shanna gets out of bed, takes Emma from me, and she will literally be asleep before her head hits the bed. That doesn't mean she doesn't kick Shanna in her sleep though. It can get tough for both of us but I gotta admit, I think Shanna has it a bit rougher than I do so I guess I owe her some thanks for doing what she does so well.
I am hoping that as Emma grows we can turn this into more of a team deal. It would be more fun to always be the good guy and let my wife be the disciplinarian but that wouldn't really be fair and we would probably end up with a teenage daughter who "hates" her mother. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Sorry little girl. Life is tough. You are just gonna have to go to bed when either Mommy OR Daddy tells you too. Just the same... God, help me if Shanna ever works later than I do!

I haven’t posted for a while so I figured I should do something sometime. Work has been slow this week. I have been training someone who is pretty smart so my job has been easy and hasn’t required much after day two. Emma is starting to get pretty entertaining. She has been discovering her feet this week and she is still seeing how loud she can yell. Makes me wonder if she is gonna be a singer. If nothing else she will probably just be a loud. What do you expect though, she is my daughter. I applied at Nordstrom for a Help Desk position just to see what happens. I haven’t heard back so I guess it is time to call. I am not sure if I want the job because I think it will pay less. Not to mention the commute to Seattle. On the upside it would be a nice change and it would have more opportunity. Next week will be the first week since March that Shanna and I will both getting our normal paychecks. That will be nice too. It has been tough just floating along for the past couple weeks. At least the bills are starting to get smaller. It is pretty disappointing to see how much Emma’s insurance costs. She is way more expensive than Henry. She eats and poops more than him too so I am not sure we made the right choice when we kept her and got rid of him. Only time will tell but here’s hoping!

Today was my first Father's Day. It was pretty cool I guess. I used to just want her to grow up quick so I could play with her. I guess she has grown on me. She is developing pretty quick though and I think that helps. She makes a lot of wild animal sounds which keep us entertained. She recognizes my voice and she will even notice me enter a room and she is smart enough to know it is dad. She will watch me walk around and talk to people until I come over to her. It is probably because of all the time I have been spending with her lately but it still feels pretty good to have someone get so excited everytime she sees you. This is a link to the pictures we had taken. I shared it on the podcast first so be sure you tune in next week.

I just finished up all of the podcast except for the Emma noise. If she cooperates it will be ready sometime tomorrow so check your iPodder in the evening to see if there is an update. The mic I am using is one that doesn't fit onto your head so I just have to hold it up to my mouth. This makes it difficult to get the volume even all the time. Please bear with me as I will get a better mic sooner or later. If you know of any good software that will help me clean up or level out the volume let me know as that would probably solve the problem too. If you haven't started listening to the podcast you should. I will probably be putting up extra info or additional links to stuff like Emma pics. I did this week. :~P

We have hit our stride this week. I am working the late shift and Shanna is on the morning shift. She still gets a couple evenings shifts so we do get to see each other. She also gets her days off during the week so I have the morning with her then. Since we are both back at work we are finally seeing two paychecks again. NICE! It is a good thing too because one more month and would have been getting some mean phone calls from everyone we owe. Emma is getting louder and more active everyday. She loves to lay on her back, kicking and seeing how loud she can grunt and growl. I know these are sounds usually associated with animals but that is what she sounds like. She does coo like a little girl should but when she wants to play she sounds like a little cougar. Work isn't too bad. I think the shift I have is probably the easiest and least boring of all the shifts offered. I need to get a couple things finished before I head to work. Laters.

It isn't much. Just a couple minutes about the past week and 30-40 seconds of Emma making noise. Check and see if you can download it. If not email me and let me know. Feel free to send any suggestions as well. I am open to anything. Sooner or later I would like to add some music to the feed and try to work on equalizing the volume on it. If you haven't set up your downloader then read my earlier post below. You better get on top of it or you will be missing out on any extra content I can post in an audio file.

This was the first week Shanna and I were both at work simultaneously. Because of vacations at my work I have worked a different shift everyday of this week. We had to find a babysitter for 4 out of the 5 days. Thanks to my mother and sister in law and my dad for watching her while we worked. The next two weeks should be fine. Shanna works until 3 and I start at 3:30 so we will just leave her with someone for 30-60 mins each day. I should be able to get more sleep on that schedule as well. I almost fell asleep sitting up at my desk today. I went out to my car and overslept my alarm. I had a nice 45m nap during my 30m break oops. Sorry I haven't had time to post this week. Each time I sat down to do it something more important spoke up. I did get to add another band to my top 10 page. I need to finish that up soon. I have given everyone fair time to compile lists so let me have some ideas if you haven't already or just post em yourself and email me so I can provide links.

I set up my first podcast and it is available for download. This is a link to the instructions for setting up the feed. Please try and set this up as it will make future downloads easy. In fact they can be set up for automatic download so all you need to do is listen. I may or may not post direct links to all of the files in the future. If all this doesn't work you can download the actual file here. This is really nothing interesting but I wanted to make sure that it would work. As you can see I can post anything I can record for you guys to hear.