Life of Spud

I just arrived at the Excelsior Hotel in Berlin for the start of this trip. On my way, though, I blogged offline for a bit, so I'm going to paste those entries here. I will update it at the end. Travel 6/29/08 It’s so hard to say goodbye… but I just did that to my wife and daughters and now I’m at the BWI airport. And of course, the experience has been “an experience” already. First off, I got pulled aside for a “random” security check. It seems like every time I travel alone I get pulled aside for these security checks. I don’t think I can complain about racial profiling, but it does feed into my general paranoia that my youthful looks cause me more harm than they do me good. As I was going through security I noticed that the air-conditioning had mysteriously ceased. I wrote this off to some weird security measure necessary for properly screening bags and assumed that the AC would reappear on the “other side”. But no, I was sadly mistaken. Turns out, the air-conditioning...

Enticing title, for once, eh? Those subjects pretty much sum up the day, though. Of course, the day started with me taking the 2 and 5/12 year-old to camp. And, of course, she was really excited all morning and in the car ride over. And, of course, she ran ahead of me to get to the front door quickly. And, of course, she cried when it was time for me to go. At least we have a routine. The next move was home to prepare for our trip to the post office to get the baby's passport. The last time we had gone through this process was in Palo Alto, when we had a less-than-memorable experience... Although we remember it quite clearly: The long line, even longer wait and the bureaucratic organized chaos that seemed imported from somewhere in Asia. So I wasn't looking too forward to this date. And I guess that sometimes you fear your fear into happening, because we went to the Post Office with what I thought were all of the documents necessary and, Lo and behold, the birth certificate wa...

Yesterday was a wash. I awoke to continuing back problems. After dropping Elana at camp I headed over to Patient First to get some medication to soothe my ailing back. While I do have a primary physician, I don't really like him because he thinks that all of my physical ailments are stress-related. It's not that he's necessarily wrong; it's more the manner in which he dismisses my symptoms. Like I think that my stomach problems are caused by some weird Asian virus that somehow managed to track me down on a flight from Paris to Tel Aviv and he sits there and listens to my theory and then scoffs and says, "it's stress". And then he charges $55 for the visit, which doesn't exactly ease the stress. So it was off to the clinic to get some meds. They prescribed a muscle-relaxant, some ibuprofen and a painkiller. I took the muscle-relaxant and some ibuprofen around noon, and that was pretty much it for the rest of the day because that knocked me out! I think ...

Yesterday was Elana's first day of camp. She has been going to the same babysitter for almost two years and she was getting a bit too old and active for the place, so we decided to sign her up for one of Pikesville's many backyard camps. These camps are run by local H.S./Seminary girls, out of their parents' homes. They're not always the most professional endeavors, but the price is right. We were really nervous about how Elana would handle the first day of camp. We had talked it up a lot for about a month before she actually went and bought her many new things especially for the experience (new bathing suit, swimming diapers, a backpack, sunglasses...), but we were unsure how she would handle the adjustment. I took her to the camp for her first day. She was talking excitedly the whole way there, but when we got to the front door she refused to walk over the threshold and the fear in her eyes was palpable. I ended up staying for 20 minutes to get her a little oriented a...

Once again things have been moving too fast for me, so I haven't blogged in a while. This blog is an update. Four weeks ago we welcomed another little girl into our family. She was born at 7:29 am and weighed in at 8 lbs. 3 oz. We named her Ariella.

I'd like to start off this post with "Happy Mothers Day" wishes to my wife, mom and sister and sisters-in-law. I hope the day is an enjoyable and relaxing one. On Friday I realized that I had yet to buy anything for my wife to mark the special day. So I stopped by Target to buy a card and a gift. I already had an idea of what I was going to get for her, so I was in and out in less than 15 minutes with both a gift and a card (I have a philosophy of not spending more than 5 minutes looking for greeting cards - you're either meant to find it, or you're not). But later in the day, when my wife got home from work, she showed me that her sister had sent her a card with earrings attached to the inside of the card. And when I read the card I was disappointed to find that IT WAS THE EXACT SAME CARD that I had so carefully selected just a few hours earlier. Sheesh. Of course, when my wife saw that something was wrong, I had to tell her about it. We both shared a good laugh...

I just got off the phone with my brother-in-law who asked me about my blog. He was concerned that I had not blogged in many months (since January?) and encouraged me to do so again. And so, here we are. I wo'nt bore you with details of the last five months. Instead I'll let you know of more recent highlights and future expectations. My wife - God bless her soul, my wife is only a couple of weeks away from her due date. We've been trying to get prepared for the baby but, compared to last time, we just can't seem to focus well on what needs to get done. I guess we figure that we're prepared (in terms of stuff) because we already had one baby, so how much more do we need for the second one. I hope that our optimism has some foundation. I personally cannot remember anything from those prenatal classes that we took in preparing for Baby # 1. What I do remember from the previous experience only makes me more nervous for the current expectation (lack of sleep, dealing with...