***This is a repost from my blog at http://www.paleroller.com where similar (and dissimilar) stories reside.***

 

This weekend, my wife and I took our son to the local zoo. He likes the “water park” at the children's zoo, and we like that he likes it. However, before we could visit the children's zoo on this visit, we felt we had to make a quick trip by the penguin enclosure since Catchr had so much fun there last time we visited. Now, I am not sure what is so great about penguins, but I must admit that I, too, have a fascination with these little gentlemen. They are always so proper, dressed in their little tuxedos and waddling to and fro. I think Catchr likes it because he can get right up to the glass and and exchange obscene gestures with these little guys as they swim past, flipping him the bird. And other than an incident that I cover more thoroughly here, we had a great time screaming at the penguins on the other side of the glass, before moving to the children's zoo.

At the children's zoo, my wife usually takes the lead and walks with Catchr through the little “water park”, where he screams with delight at the water rushing past his feet. My wife does a great job keeping her composure while other children (you know, the one's that came straight from the bowels of Hell) kick and splash she and Catchr both. Although the water is only 4-5 inches deep, I am always amazed that she hasn't discretely “dispatched” any of these unruly children (or their caretakers) during our visits. After about 10-20 minutes, Catchr had about as much fun as WE could handle at the “water park” and we went searching for some vittles for our clan.

We found the zoo's main feeding hole and began to order some finger foods to snack on before making our journey home, and this is where the story takes a turn for the annoying.

I have never had a very easy time with idle chit-chat. Unfortunately, when you push around the most gorgeous baby in America, you are bound to have the occasional looky-loo start making googly eyes at your accomplishment. Then the googly eyes start becoming baby talk (which we never use with Catchr), and before you know it, some mental defective is all up in your baby's grill. “And what is your name,” tends to be the favorite question asked. However, Catchr, being only 13 months old, does not have the ability to answer this question, and I, for one, am not so arrogant as to feel this question was directed at me. And so we wait (and I try to figure out where the hell my wife went).

“And what is your name?” Apparently, Ms. Baby-blabber feels that maybe she did not make herself clear enough during round one.

We wait (I know my wife came with me to the zoo).

Eventually after 3-4 minutes of awkward silence, the question is rolled, patted and marked with a “B” before being thrown in my direction. “So how old is he?”

“I'm sorry, what was that?” I like to take control of the situation and make it just as uncomfortable for them as they've made it for me.

“I was asking, How old is he?” This is where the fun begins. Now it is pretty obvious that Catchr is a boy, but sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly annoyed, I pretend to be wholly offended and say, “SHE is 13 months old, thank you.” On this day, though, I opted to confuse the enemy. I just smiled and nodded, “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Mm hmm, thank you, he IS beautiful,” I stated proudly.

“No...I was asking, How old is he?”

“Woodrow, after his great-great grandfather, on my mother's side,” I replied, making it apparent that I was having a very pleasant conversation with no one in particular.

“Oh my, well...you have a nice day,” she offered as she looked for her escape route.

Noting that I had won this battle, I decided to seal the deal, “Ok, I'll see you tomorrow.” This is about the creepiest thing that you can say to a person that you have just met, and have no intention of ever seeing again. It worked marvelously, she evaporated into the crowd and I began to look for my wife, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted another looky-loo. Not again.

All PaleRoller content can be found at http://www.paleroller.com.

 

All Same ol' Everywhere content can now be found at http://www.sameoleverywhere.com

 

See you there,

Jason

Of course, I'm talking about a Bob jogging stroller; the Bob Revolution jogging stroller in navy blue and white to be as specific as possible.

 

My wife seems to feel that she would like to keep up with our little triathlete, as well, and has also decided to take up jogging/running. She is 5' 2” and has had no problems getting back into jogging, while pushing the Bob Revolution. I have run with the stroller on one occasion and had no problems with it at all, and I'm 6' 1”. It seems inconceivable that a couple that is incapable of performing a non-comical slow dance could share the same stroller, without handle-height adjustments, but it works.

 

The price tag for the Bob strollers is a little steep, but while in REI, my wife and I had two separate Budinskies tell us what a great stroller the Bob was. Now, I tend NOT to take unsolicited advice, but we were already in the market for the stroller (I had done significant amounts of research on the stroller beforehand), so I shook my head and dispensed with the pleasantries. However, some people don't get a clue and when one these self-proclaimed Bob-vangelists began to touch the stroller I was looking to purchase, I let her have it.

 

“Who do you think you are? Don't try and show me the safety lanyard that attaches to the axle to prevent tipping, incase the runner falls down. And I don't really care that the front tire can be locked in position to make the stroller more stable when I run,” I said to her in a stern voice.

 

“So you don't care that there is ample storage below the stroller to carry a small diaper bag for your child? Or that the stroller will easily fit into the trunk of your Honda Accord?” she retorted.

 

“The only thing I care about is that you have got your disgusting grape jelly fingers all over my blue and white stroller. I don't think that is covered under the 5 year warranty. And how the heck do YOU know what kind of car I drive?”

 

She hurried out the door without uttering another word. And I quickly moved to the checkout line to pay for my new stroller and get home. Catchr and I have not yet found any complaints about the stroller, but I still have nightmares about that strange lady. I still have nightmares.

I was trying different blog sites to determine which one would work best for me.  And is what I've come up with so far:

Posterous has painless email integration.  Any post I've sent via e-mail is formatted beautifully.  Perfect.  However, I cant add photos and change around the page themes...which may sound trivial, but I like adding that little personal touch.

Wordpress is CONFUSING!  In all capital letters, CONFUSING!  There are way too many options for someone who enjoys posting rambling thoughts and absurd observations.  Yet, the formatting from email has been handled pretty well.

Blogger.  What can I say, other than it represents the happy medium between the previously mentioned sites.  The formatting from e-mailed posts sucks.  It add incorrect page breaks and fails to format pictures correctly.  But when copying and pasting from OpenOffice, into their online text editor, it seems to work pretty well.

I will continue to post to all three and fill you in as I go along.  I may add one or two additional posts to the Blogger sites that I have running, or not.

Here is a list of the Blogger blogs that I have running currently:

http://paleroller.blogspot.com

This is the same as the PaleRoller here.

http://sameoleverywhere.blogspot.com

This is the same as the Same ol' Everywhere blog.

http://thefinancialinsider.blogspot.com

Enough said.

In the coming days/weeks, I'll make my final decision as to where I'll stay...maybe I'll just get my own website???

Many people have cute nicknames that they give to their children, or that their children have brought home with them from school or gramma's house. Unfortunately, most of these nicknames are borne of some traumatic incident that the child would just as soon forget. It is never a good thing to be branded, "Stumpy" after one's first trip to the locker room in middle school. But those nicknames eventually lose their sting and ultimately become just another term of endearment used by close friends and family...hopefully. Well, Catchr's nickname is Boogars, or Boogs for short.
 
It's not that Catchr was caught by my wife or I with his finger three knuckles deep in his nugget factory. Or that we caught him sitting quietly in the corner, feasting on handful of nose taffy. His nickname comes from his inability to deal with boogars, in general. He cries. And not just a whimper. He cries like someone stole his bike, kicked his dog and gave him a one-way ticket back to Pennsylvania. He will wake up in the middle of the night simply screaming because of these little nose trolls.
 
It took my wife and I some trial and error to figure out just what was bothering him. We changed his diaper, fed him, burped him and tried to put him back down for the night. Zip, zero, zilch, he wasn't having any of it. Then an idea came to us.
 
I am not sure how many of you recall the items you took home from the hospital after your child was born. I am quite sure that everyone had a little knit cap or beanie, maybe a blanket of some sort and about 5 tons of paperwork that made you scared as hell to take your little one home. What if he stops breathing? Do I remember the two hour class I took on infant CPR? Don't ever put him in a crib with a blanket...but what about the swaddle blankie? What if it comes off at night and... Oh the joys of parenthood.
 
Of all the items my wife and I brought home on that glorious day, none has been more useful than the bulb syringe used during Catchr's first hospital scrub down. The nurses, however, are so proficient at using this device that I had to go back to the video I had recorded of the event to get a good look at the proper operation of the device. It was a mouth-sucker and an ear area sucker. I think they might have even suckered near his armpits and giggle region...again, it was so fast, it is hard to be certain. But most importantly, it was a nose-sucker. It was the boogar-getter.

To this day, my wife and I still use it on almost a daily basis to keep Catchr happy and breathing free. He has not yet figured out how to blow his nose, so until that time, that trusty nose-sucker is always close by.
 
If you have an infant, than you need a boogar-getter.

My wife and I recently moved across country (north to south, not east to west) and I thought I'd share with you a little mishap we had at the very beginning of the trip. We had just sold our house, and closed on the day we were to embark on our journey, but felt that we needed an afternoon nap prior to departure. So, with our car packed full of our traveling essentials (clothes for all of us and toys for one of us), we headed over to the local Holiday Inn Express to get some shut-eye. Our plan was to leave late that evening and drive through the night so as to make the sojourn a little more bearable for Catchr.

 After checking into our room and investigating all the wonderful nooks and crannies (I love looking through all the closets and drawers in a new hotel room...I know, I need help), we decided to break out a couple of toys we had packed to keep Catchr occupied during just such an occasion. We had the typical blocks and stuffed animals, but we also fit into our car a toy that we thought would be the cat's pajamas for the hotel room. The Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Fun with Friends Musical Table.

Now this is no slouch of a toy. It runs around $40-45 and we had owned it for about 2 months (basically as soon as Catchr began pulling himself up to a standing position). And it did give him some incentive to pull himself up and play with all the buttons and lids. I say, "lids" because the little laptop computer's top opens and closes just like any hinged-lid laptop. And just like any hinged-lid contraption offered to an infant, Catchr smashed his hand/finger in the lid on one instance right after we bought it. He did not slam it hard, so we figured it was a fluke. Nope.
 
After playing with his musical table for about 10 minutes in the hotel room (by now Catchr was very adept at standing on his own) he smashes his finger, not in the laptop, but under the turning page of the plastic book opposite the laptop. We kissed his boo-boo, assured him that the toy was full and would no longer be looking to devour his fingers and set to play with table once more. I proceed to bring in our luggage from the car, only to return seconds before Catchr let out a gawd-awful, blood-curdling shriek. That darn table was still hungry.
 
This time Catchr fell victim to the laptop lid and his own body weight. Catchr is a pretty rough-and-tumble little boy and is ALWAYS doing product testing with his toys. As such, he was testing the strength/speed of the laptop lid, when he caught his finger in the laptop, up near the hinge. As most unsuccessful product testers do, Catchr had one hand on top of the lid and one hand on the surface of the table/computer. It was the thumb on the latter hand that got pinned, while the weight of his other hand (and now quivering torso) kept him locked in a death-grip with this awful contraption.
 
"That's it. I'm done!" Those were the only words out of my wife's mouth as she disassemble the the toy and put a very warm and well thought out note on it, offering it to the hotel cleaning crew.
 
I'm not sure if it's still in the room or not. But what I do know is that jettisoning that parental nightmare gave us a little more space in our packed Honda. As for Catchr, he had a nice purple thumb for the trip, but he got past it very quickly...again, he is a very rough-and-tumble boy.

It's difficult to figure out where to start on this one. Catchr likes bluberries. That should do it.

 Now when I say that Catchr likes blueberries, I'm not trying to give you the impression that he merely enjoys them, when available. I mean to say that this little boogar is a blueberry monster. He will eat as many blueberries as he can in one sitting, and at one time, for that matter. I know what you're thinking. Blueberries are a superfood. They are filled with vitamins and nutrients that growing children need. Moreover, they are filled with vital anti-oxidants that research suggests may help in the fight against certain types of cancer. Blah, blah, blah.

 Sure, a pint of blueberries is less than $2.00 at the local market. I'll give it to you that blueberries are a fun snack to eat and require very little table oversight. The issue at hand is not the health benefits of this little power fruit, nor is it the aforementioned joys of blueberries, in general. The issue I have with blueberries is the "stainability" of these little paintballs. They stain finger tips and tongues and lips. But the worst part of all...they can stain a little caboose.

 Two nights ago, Catchr decided he was going to go on a blueberry bender and eat as many blueberries as mommy and daddy would let him have...right before bedtime. Well, little fat-bellied Catchr slept well through the evening and even woke his parents up in the morning soft, pleasant babbling. As I approached my little smiling monkey, I could tell by the twinkle in his eye that he had a special stinkle in his diaper. Doing what every responsible father does in a time of crisis, I offered to get all the breakfast fixin's ready if my wife would do the honors of changing Catchr. She agreed. I fled...but not for long.

 I was summoned back into the room by my beautiful wife who instructed me to inspect the contents of one special delivery, signed, sealed and delivered by one Catchr Jarvis. Blackish blue...everywhere...that's all I saw, that's all I remember. Blueberry boy was returning what he had so greedily devoured the night before...and it was easily identifiable.

 Now no one wants to hear a plain old dirty diaper story...every parent has one, and they all stink. The interesting thing about this story is the end. The rear end. You see, my guess is that little Catchr sent his parcel some time in the early evening and delivery pick-up was not made until the morning. This allowed the finger-staining blue to stain another area of the boy's anatomy.

 Ah Catchr. My beautiful blue-bottomed boy.

 The following is link to some more helpful info on blueberries and other wholesome foods:

 http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/blueberrybabyfoodrecipes.htm

Given my previous career as a financial consultant/advisor, and one's inability to go into detail about the industry when employed by it. I have started a new blog to help individuals understand a little more about investing and the industry, as a whole. I am not planning on returning to the industry any time soon and feel this is a great opportunity to speak/write candidly about the role of a financial consultant and how to go about choosing one. Furthermore, since I am no longer bound by any overarching administrative body, I can help educate the masses as objectively as possible.

 http://financialinsider.posterous.com/

 Have a great day!

In a previous post, I had noted that over 3000 photos were taken during the past year to document the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Well, as I was sifting through the plethora of photos, I came across a few photos of Catchr at about 6 months of age and his first run-in with hives.

 Common knowledge has it that hives are caused by some sort of allergic reaction to foods, medicine, pet dander and, in certain curcumstances, extreme heat or cold. You can imagine my chagrin when my pediatrician told us that they may actually be viral!? I had never heard of such a thing, and all of the internet sites I had surveyed focused on the allergic response aspect of hives. This, coupled with the fact that my wife and I had just, within a week or two, started Catchr on rice cereal, led me to believe that my doctor was a crackpot. We were informed that the hives would diminish and disappear on their own in a couple of weeks and if they appeared to "really" bother him, that a small dose of Benadryl was authorized.

 MAKE A NOTE OF THIS: KEEP CHILDREN'S BENADRYL IN THE HOUSE. This was also what the on-call nurse on the pediatrician's emergency line had told us.

 Catchr is pretty even-keeled and took the hives in stride, however they took 4-5 weeks to fully clear up. We gave him Benadryl a few times and discontinued the solid foods until they had completely disappeared. They have never returned, but I did spend quite a bit of time fact-checking that crackpot doctor...he was right. Viruses can also cause hives...and generally this is the cause attributed to an outbreak that was not prompted by any known allergen. The cereal that we had given Catchr was obviously pretty benign, we had no new pets in the house and Catchr hadn't been on any recent nature walks...this led our pediatrician to the conclusion that this was probably the viral type of outbreak. We were also told that they may be back, but that this was simply something that happens to babies and little kids.

 Another "nothing" for new parents to worry about.

 I have attached some photos of Catchr's outbreak for reference...I thought hives would be individual, round bumps...they're not. One other thing, we did put over-the-counter cortisone on some of the more severe hives...this was also recommended.

 A couple of useful links:
http://www.askdrsears.com/html/8/t082400.asp
About midway down the page on this site:
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1117.html

 Catchr's Hives:

And even some on his beautiful face...now those are the ones that will anger you the most. Who do these hives think they are, messin' with my deadly handsome man?

As I mentioned earlier, I have been looking for an inexpensive photo editor program to do some more interesting photo editing than what is allowed with iPhoto for Mac. Well, free is a heck of a lot less expensive than anything else I could find, and the result was Gimp 2.6 for Mac (it is also available for PC). So I have spent very little time, so far, figuring out the intricacies of this program and I am already a big fan. I have attached two modified versions of a photo that I like to call "Catchr Angst" that I took in January. The first photo is the original (untouched). In the second photo, I have isolated Catchr's body and made the background black and white (I didn't spend much time adjusting the lighting and contrast). And in the last photo, I isolated Catchr's face and applied an artist setting called "Oilify" to the background.

This entire process took about 10 minutes and I isolated Catchr from the rest of the photo by using a "Selection" tool called "Intelligent Scissors". I learned how to use the "Intelligent Scissors" tool by doing a YouTube search and watching some tutorials. And yes, there are TONS of tutorials on how to use Gimp on YouTube.
 
Give it a try, let me know what you think.