tonyandkirsten.org

A little background would probably be helpful on this one. The room we stayed in at Abbott Northwestern was really warm, had no Internet access for patients, and cell phones were not allowed. In between visitors, these ideas were ones that crossed my mind.

It’s worth noting that some of these activities are illegal or unethical — you shouldn’t do illegal or unethical things. It’s also worth noting that I only went through with a fraction of the ideas below.

• Figure out whether or not cell phones really do interfere with the infant security system (as posted).
• Find a way to really interfere with said infant security system.
• Notice that there is a Wi-Fi signal broadcast to your room, with the ESSID: 2WIRE450.
• Upon noticing that the Wi-Fi is WEP protected, ask your nurse for the password.
• When told that the password is only for hospital staff, politely thank the nurse for the information and then ask another staff member until you find one that doesn’t realize that guests aren’t supposed to have the password.
• Impersonate a technician of the “Two Wire” wireless company and ask hospital staff for their site’s password.
• Knowing the WEP is pretty weak security, look up the how-to for running aircrack-ng to crack the WEP key.
• Go through the how-to on cracking WEP.
• After realizing that your Wi-Fi card’s driver needs to be patched to perform and injection attack, notice that there is already a PC in the room, plugged into ethernet.
• Attempt to login to the PC using common passwords.
• Try plugging into the other ethernet jack in the room.
• After finding the second jack dead, decide whether or not a rainbow tables-based attack on the PC will be detected or not.
• Wait until a nurse shuts down said PC for the night, and then plug into that jack with your laptop.
• Post pictures to your website with this ethernet connection.
• Find a way to remove your identification bracelet without breaking the band.
• Find another couple with a good sense of humor.
• Convince said couple to swap bands with you after each shift change, just to keep the staff on their toes.
• Play staff bingo! Just draw up a bingo board with random names in the squares. After meeting a staff member, cross of their name. Normal bingo rules apply. For an easy version, use only female names; to increase the difficulty of the game, add some male names to the mix as desired.
• Play security staff bingo. The rules are similar to staff bingo, but you are restricted to only using the names of security staff that visit your room.
• Play advanced security staff bingo. This game is similar to security staff bingo, but you can’t mark a square unless the security staff member in question escorts you to their office for a conversation about expectations for guests of the hospital.
• Blog.

We’ve posted lots of pictures of Erik in the photo gallery:

Erik’s first 24 hours

Erik on Days Two Through Five of Life

If you looked at the “First 24 hours” album prior to late Wednesday night, you might want to look at it again — there are about twice as many pictures in that one now!

We’ve spent the past three days or so getting adjusted to life at home with a baby and a toddler. Erik continues to be a pretty content little guy. Unlike Madeline, who spent a lot of time crying for no apparent reason when she was a newborn, Erik seems to mostly only cry when he is hungry, cold, or upset over having his diaper changed. Erik and I are getting into the rhythm of feedings, though we’re still working out the kinks of being able to feed efficiently. Overall though, nursing a baby the second time around is a lot easier.

Madeline appears to be adjusting fairly well. She is learning how now that she is a big sister, she needs to be more helpful and do things for herself that she can do. Sometimes it has been genuinely helpful to have her around. Like two nights ago during a diaper changing session where Erik pooped into about four clean diapers in a row and Tony was in the middle of something else, Madeline was very helpful in getting me more diapers and helping clean up.

Prior to today my mom has been here to help out, so that made things a lot easier during the day. With adults outnumbering kids by one, there was one person to tend to Erik, one person to play with Madeline, and one person to cook, clean or get other things done (or one person to tend to each of the kids so I could rest!). Now we get to try an equal ratio of kids to adults…then sometime next week I’ll get to see how I fare on my own with the two kids while Tony is working. Should be an interesting challenge! Tony’s parents will be visiting for a couple days next week, so that will give us another break of having more people here to help out.

We took our first “family outing” with Erik on Wednesday night. Feeling the need to get out the house and be like normal people again, we packed everyone up and went to a nearby coffee shop that has a kids play area. Madeline played with toys and other kids for most of the time, Erik slept, and Tony and I almost felt like we were out on a date for part of the time.

Today we’re going to give Erik his first “at home” bath and he also has his first pediatrician appointment…so those should be great adventures to keep us busy.

We’re happy to announce that our son Erik Andrew Hill was born yesterday (Sunday, March 25th) at 8am. He weighed in at 8lbs, 7oz. and is 21 inches long. He is a very healthy baby boy, and I feel like I am recovering pretty well so far too.

Internet access has been somewhat limited so we didn’t accomplish the goal of getting our blog updated within “hours” of his birth, but since Tony got out an email to pretty much everyone we know…I figured that it was less critical to get our website updated right away. We’ve been taking lots of pictures, and we’ll get those posted fairly soon too (hopefully tonight, since we are actually planning on going home in a few hours).

The labor and delivery was amazingly short — 2 hours from the first sign of anything happening to his birth. I know some of you want to know all the details and some of you would probably like to run in the opposite direction at the mention of labor pains. So, if you want to know how it all happened, you can read the rest of the story by clicking the link below if you are looking at this from the front page of our blog.

Continue reading »

I had my weekly OB appointment today. My due date was either yesterday or today, I guess depending on how you calculate it. The doctor measured me back at 3cm dilated (this is the same doctor I saw last week and measured me at 1.5cm — not the one that measured me at 3cm two weeks ago). We don’t know for sure if this means by body has been really making progress toward getting labor going (I’ve certainly been uncomfortable enough to believe this might be the case) or if maybe I’ve been going back and forth between 1.5cm and 3cm over the past couple of weeks. All we know for sure is that right now as I write this, I’m not in labor yet!

They had me make another appointment for next Wednesday (3/28) where if I haven’t gone into labor yet, they will do the usual checks, plus some additional checks to see how the baby is doing. There is greater concern over fluid levels and so on the further things get past the due date. Assuming they don’t find something that causes them to want to induce right then, we’ll schedule an appointment for induction at that point. The doctor said she would definitely want to induce me before the following Wednesday (4/4), but I think they would be willing to schedule it pretty much any time after the appointment on the 28th. We’ll see how things are going, but I think we are leaning toward not stringing things along too much past that point and making the appointment for late next week — especially if there are no signs that waiting a few more days will be worthwhile for any particular reason.

Of course, I’d ideally like to just go into labor naturally — the sooner the better! But, I was induced with Madeline and it wasn’t as horrible as some people make induction out to be so I could survive that again. And, I think it would go a little faster this time around since my body has obviously been doing some work to get ready for labor. When I was induced with Madeline nothing had really happened at all prior to arriving at the hospital, so it took quite a while to get my body going.  Being stuck in the hospital all day long hooked up to monitoring equipment with nothing really happening for 8+ hours was no fun at all.

Meanwhile Madeline and I have tried to have some fun to make the time go by faster.  It’s amazing how slowly each day can seem to go by when you are eagerly awaiting something to happen at an unknown time.  Monday we did a few errands and went to Panera to use the rest of a Christmas gift card to get ourselves a treat.  Tuesday we went to see the “Teddy Bear Band” at the Mall of America.  Yesterday we went to the library, and this morning another mom from church came over with her daughter so the girls could play and the two of us could talk.  At least the weather is improving again, and tomorrow should be nice enough to do something outside.  I think the dreary, damp, chilly-but-not-freezing-cold weather made the week prior to today go by even slower than it would have otherwise.

Here’s hoping for more exciting news soon!

That’s what the doctor reminded me of today, when she told me that she thought I was only dilated to 1.5 cm. (You might recall I was told 3cm last week).  I saw a different doctor this week than last week, and the measurement of dilation definitely involves something of a judgment call.  I also learned that progress toward delivery can, in fact, move backwards.  Apparently the position of the baby at any given time, whether or not any contractions are taking place, and even the angle the doctor does the exam at can affect the results. So, I might have really been about 3cm last week and half that much today.

Not that it really matters all that much…I could still go into labor tonight, or it could still be two weeks.  I did feel confident enough that labor is not impending any minute to make further plans for this weekend.   We’ll see if that was a smart idea or not.

Tonight we had the pleasure of participating in a service opportunity with people from Urban Refuge for the first time.  We helped cook and serve a meal as a part of the Loaves and Fishes program.  Loaves and Fishes provides meals for the needy/hungry with no questions asked in a variety of locations around the metro area.  The location we helped out at serves meals twice a week — some locations do it five nights a week.  People from various churches, community groups and even businesses take turns helping out on a regular basis.  They currently have so many groups volunteering that people from Urban Refuge only are assigned two nights a year! It was really satisfying to help out and serve, and we had a great time while we were doing it.

While our beautiful warm weather is not quite as beautiful and warm as the weather in Ames, Madeline and I have certainly been enjoying it.  Yesterday we did a few errands in the morning and then in the afternoon trekked over to our neighborhood park, about four blocks away.  We both wore our somewhat-waterproof boots, which was a good thing since the melting snow created huge puddles of slushy, icy water under many of the playground apparatuses.  A puddle under one swing was so deep in the middle that had I let Madeline step all the way into it, I think the water would have come over the top of her boots.  Despite having the rubbery boots on, somehow Madeline’s feet were still completely soaked by the time we got home. Of course, her clothes were also really wet from all the splashing, landing in the snow at the bottom of slides, and so on.

For today’s outing we went to the library for a little bit, and then later a short walk around the block.  “Walk” might be a generous term.  It was more like a very, very slow stroll.   We were gone from the house for about 40 minutes on our short-distance journey! (Not that I minded — my main purpose in taking the walk was to get out and enjoy the 60 degree weather while trying to get less wet than we did at the park yesterday.) Traveling that short a distance in that long of a time frame would probably be impossible without a toddler in tow.  Madeline is very curious about the world around her and stopped for lots of puddle splashing, looking at/picking up sticks, rocks and leaves, watching other kids, drawing lines in the snow with sticks, popping small bubbles in puddles, and generally asking questions about her world.  It’s actually a lot of fun, at least on days like today when we’re not heading someplace purposefully.  Even though Madeline was again wearing a pair of semi-waterproof boots and didn’t splash in any puddles that were too deep…her feet and pant legs again still got pretty wet. 

In an adventure completely unrelated to warm weather, we got a portable dishwasher today! Yeah for not spending 45 minutes to an hour per night doing dishes! We received a couple of belated housewarming/early baby gifts this weekend to be used “as needed” for something for the house or the baby.  We decided the best use of those gifts might be to buy a used portable dishwasher, since it is both something for the house and something we will greatly appreciate once the baby comes and we are going to be exhausted and have even less energy for doing dishes! When we looked on craigslist yesterday, there was only one portable dishwasher in our price range, so we made an appointment to look at it tonight.  It looked great and our gift money covered most of the asking price so we brought it home with us.  It seems like it works great so far!

As we arrived home from picking up the dishwasher, we noticed several parents and lots of small kids congregating down our block.  Since it has been wintry and cold most of the 2+ months we’ve been here, we’ve not met very many people in our neighborhood.  We walked down the street to introduce ourselves and had a great time chatting with several other families who live on our street. There’s another little girl who is within a month of being the same age as Madeline, and a number of other kids ranging from baby to young elementary school age — as well as two other babies “on the way” besides ours.  The people we talked to said that the block is pretty friendly, especially on our side of the street.  Apparently they try and do some social things together and it seems like the kids must play together fairly often.  We’re excited for the warmer months ahead and more chances to get to know our neighbors!

http://tonyandkirsten.org/pictures

You might have noticed that the link to our photo gallery disappeared a little while ago. That’s because the Wordpress API for dealing with bookmarks changed from version 2.0.x to 2.1.x, and that broke the code I had in my header for the links.

With no functional photo gallery link, I decided it was high time to switch photo gallery software. The plugin to link Wordpress and Coppermine was abandoned by its author. To top that off, Coppermine has had a rash of security vulnerabilities discovered, and it’s a major pain to update when you have a large photo library. Meanwhile Menalto Photo Gallery is easily managed with the Dreamhost “One-Click Installer”. So, I one-click installed it and migrated our photos over.

With some help from the WPG2 plugin and a couple lines in .htaccess, we’ve got a new photo site to debut!

I realize that it’s not perfect yet, and may very well break on your browser. I haven’t thoroughly checked and fixed the style of the gallery to fit within the page. So, if something looks funny, comment on this post, and I’ll see if I can get it fixed.

Oh, and we’ll post pictures of our new baby when he comes!

Although my due date is still a little over 10 days away, we’ve been getting a little excited thinking that baby boy might make his appearance a little sooner. I went to the doctor last Thursday, and they told me that I was already dilated to 3cm. If you aren’t familiar with the process of childbirth, labor is usually really getting into swing by 4 or 5cm (and sometimes earlier for some women), and 10cm is the point where the baby can start coming out.

Of course, they weren’t promising me anything when they told me that I was 3cm dilated. The general gist of the doctors comments was a “could be tomorrow, could be in two weeks or more” sort of thing. But, she did say that it was somewhat likely I would have my baby before the due date.

Thursday night through Friday night we tried to get all the “last minute” preparations done just in case — washing the baby clothes, finding the infant car seat and swing, sorting through boxes of baby supplies to find things we might need right away, getting a bag packed for the hospital, and so on. I have an issue of Daylights that I’m supposed to have finished by April 1st, so I’ve been spending time trying to get that as finished as possible before the baby comes.

All day Friday, and even more so on Saturday, I was experiencing lots of what are called “Braxton-hicks contractions.” Basically these are “practice” contractions that occur as a woman’s body gets ready for labor. Sometimes as real labor gets closer, these “practice” contractions slowly become more like the real thing and are kind of a head start of sorts toward the actual event. By Saturday night, I was getting pretty uncomfortable. The “practice” contractions were starting to last a little longer and they practically had a rhythm to them. I was experiencing even more muscle soreness than normal and in general I just didn’t feel very good. I was pretty convinced this might be the lead in to the main event — so much so we even canceled our dinner plans for tonight to have two of Tony’s co-workers over, figuring that even if I wasn’t in labor I probably would be feeling equally as bad if not worse.

Then, much to our surprise, today was a different story. I hardly had any Braxton-hicks contractions and I felt really good overall. After having brunch with my Dad’s family, we went for a walk around Lake Nokomis. This was partially motivated by the beautiful weather, and partially by the fact that we’ve heard it said (at least anecdotally) that some good exercise can help labor get started sooner. I was feeling so good that we walked all the way around the lake, just taking the “shortcut” over the bridge that cuts off a small portion of the route — still leaving us having taken a walk of about 2.5 miles!

I’m still feeling great tonight, so we’ll see what the coming hours and days have in store!

I enjoy reading a few random blogs about various topics that I find interesting. Sometimes I keep up more than other times, but my Bloglines feed-reader keeps me supplied with news about various topics from coffee to church marketing to cheap cooking.

One blog I read fairly often is called “Language Log.” It’s written by several college professors in the field of linguistics. While some of their posts are uninteresting or over my head, I find I often enjoy their commentary about modern uses and mis-uses of language.

They had two posts lately that really made me laugh, and if you consider yourself a grammar or writing geek you might enjoy them too. The writers of the posts billed them as “The dumbest story of the year so far about adverbs” and “The dumbest story of the year so far about adjectives.” You probably don’t even need to be a grammar geek to appreciate the second one. It involves a parent overheard saying to a child (who had just called something “silly”), “Don’t you remember? We do NOT use adjectives!”. That line made both me and Tony laugh out loud!

Herbert Humphrey Hill

Neville Francis Hill

Dwight Ulysses Hill

Ulysses Samuel Hill

Declan Dirk Hill

Susan Elizabeth Hill

Brayden Aiden Hill

Crazy Maddog Hill

Hugh Heman Hill

Harold Hector Hill

Hepatitis Alfred Hill

Hepatitis Bartholomew Hill

Bartholomew Maximus Hill

Linus Rox Hill

George Paul Lawrence Hill

Barry Stephen Dwight Hill

Geoff Andrew Hill

Hugh Ulysses Gavin Hill

Lewis Lance Ibrahim Hill

Phil Bill Hill

Zachary Yves Xavier Walter Vernon Ulysses Trent Seth Robert Quinlan Peter Octavius Nathaniel Mark Lester Kevin Joseph Isaac Hill

Phew! I’m glad I got that off my chest!