Well, it seems that my lovely wife has been dragged into the blogosphere kicking and screaming. She has started her own blog called My Rammblings on Blogger.
She will probably pick up the slack on our family doings where I have dropped the ball. Plus all of her girlfriends will now have something else in common to talk about.
Please visit her site to keep up with the Ramm family happening…including the new milestone that Jacob hit just last night (07/16/2007).
Go there to see what I am talking about.
Michael
POSITION:
- Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma
- Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop
JOB DESCRIPTION:
- Long-term team players needed for challenging permanent work in an often chaotic environment.
- Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24-hour shifts on call.
- Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in faraway cities!
- Travel expenses not reimbursed.
- Extensive courier duties also required.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- The rest of your life.
- Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5.
- Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly.
- Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.
- Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets, and stuck zippers.
- Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars, and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.
- Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.
- Must be willing to be indispensable one minute and an embarrassment the next.
- Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap plastic toys and battery-operated devices.
- Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
- Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.
- Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.
POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:
- If you are lucky, you may be promoted to the position of Grandparent. Of course, you must still retain and fulfill all the responsibilities of Parent while assuming the new title and job responsibilities of Grandparent.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE:
- None required, unfortunately.
- On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.
WAGES AND COMPENSATION:
- Get this! You pay them!
- Offering frequent raises and bonuses.
- A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent.
- When you die, you give them whatever is left.
- The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.
BENEFITS:
- While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays, and no stock options are offered, this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.
While it is the hardest job in the world, it is always the most rewarding thing that I do EVERY SINGLE DAY.
OK, as promised I uploaded about 200 pictures to the Flickr site last night.
I have not been able to edit names, and tag all of them properly, but I will try to get to it this weekend.
Jacob is on Fall Break from preschool, so he is staying with Madison at his Grand’s (Julie’s mom) house today and tomorrow. He is going to spend the night there tonight so he will have BIG FUN all day and all night long.
He is going to visit the Fire Station tomorrow for a big tour. They were studying about fire fighters last week in school, and since the Fire Station is connected to City Hall, it seemed perfect for him to come up and see the station house. The last time he came up, was about 1 1/2 ago and I think that he was a little scared of everything. He is really excited now.
– Michael
Well, two months have past since my self-proclamation to start blogging more frequently…OOPS!
Life in our little universe has been pretty hectic lately.
Well, in August we became a van family. We purchased a 2001 Chevrolet Venture with the Warner Bros. Special Edition package. We really like it. We were able to sell Julie’s GMC Yukon to fund most of the van’s purchase. Jacob REALLY loves the van. It has a built-in DVD player with Wireless Headphones [so that Julie and I don’t have to listen to Finding Nemo everyday].
Jacob has started playing soccer in an Under-6 league for the Parks and Recreation Authority. He really seems to enjoy it a lot…NOW. There was a stretch where he wanted to only play in the “soccer ball games” and not as much at the practices. Then he really did not like having to “sit down” during the games [They rotate with 3 man teams for the 6-7 man rosters.] But I think that we are over that now. He has scored 5 goals and has 2 assists in his 5 games. They are taking the week off this week for the Fall Break that the school systems have in place. Hopefully, he will not lose that will to play after a week and a half layoff.
Madison is now 6 months old and has two teeth coming through. She is SUCH a happy baby. She is sitting upright by herself now, and we will just sit her down with some of her toy around her and she will play for quite a long time by herself. Julie got some of Jacob’s old toys out last night for her to play with and he was showing her how to play with each of the toys [you know, from his previous experience]. Every single one of them would then be thrown over her shoulder [by her] or placed directly into her mouth for the true test of a good toy.
Julie and I are just trying to keep up with the kids. There is not much else going on in our little corner of the world.
I will be trying to get the pictures that we have up on to the Flickr site this week. I have City of Northport Budget Hearings that I have to attend tonight. I might be able to get them up after I get home, but it will be more likely Tuesday or later.
Michael
My wife was told by her best friend that she is going to have to start hitting the blog since I am not doing it.
So here I am…back in the saddle…ready to roll…and all or those other good sayings.
There are a couple of thing that are happening in our lives, so I will offer this update.
Jacob had his tonsils out on the 28th of July. Everything went well and he has recovered fully. I don’t know if Grand (Julie’s mother) has recovered from watching both of the kids last week. I am sure that she is excited to be back to one child this week. Jacob is starting back to school this week. He will be in the Pre-K I class. He will have 4 other friends from his 3-year old class. All of this other friends are 4 years old and jumped to the Pre-K II class (that means that is their last year at the Preschool). Jacob has 2 more years at Preschool, then Madison will start going. There are discussions of her going in the morning, but is still being worked out.
Madison is now 4 months old…and starting to teethe. She has a couple of hysterical fits to which we had no answer until the Baby Oragel hit the gums…wow, that is some amazing stuff!!! She is right on time with her teeth development. We have not seen anything popping through, but we should see something soon.
We are currently shopping for a van to replace our 1999 GMC Yukon. We really need the third row of seating and really cannot afford another Yukon (for the price or the gas). We both realy like the Honda Odyssey and Chrysler Town and Country. So we spent this past Friday night and Saturday driving to all of the dealerships in town. We found an Odyssey that is a possibilty, but it has high mileage and we are going to have to think about it some more. If anyone is in the market for a Yukon, we have one for sale. Just drop me a line at michaelramm[at]gmail.com.
At this moment I am downloading many pictures from our camera’s 3 cards, and plan to have most of them on Flickr today. You can get to them by clicking on the ‘More Photos’ link to the right. There are some of Julie’s pictures for Madison’s announcement, and her third meal of Rice cereal (YUM YUM), and then some of us at a Barons game a couple of weeks ago, and some fun bathtime pics of Madison. She really loves her baths. There are now over 120 pictures on Flickr with more coming. You can register and leave comments and print off pictures if you want to also.
Well, I guess that is all for now.
We have some strange development is sleeping the last couple of nights.
Madison woke up one morning at 4:00am and Julie went to go and get her. She went to check on Jacob, but he was not in his bed. Julie got worried and woke me up, and we start combing the house looking for Jacob. We check all the rooms in the kid's side of the house, and were making are way back to the other side. I walked in our closet, and turned on the light and there was Jacob asleep on the floor…no pillow, no blanket. So I turned off the light quickly and just let him sleep in there the rest of the night.
The VERY NEXT night he again was missing from his bed. He turned up laying RIGHT next to our bed on Julie's side. It is a wonder that she did not step on him when she got up that morning.
Now he will come into our bedroom and stand there and bend over and lay down next to me. He did that a couple of nights ago, and again last night about 2am.
My mom brought up that she wonders if he is sleepwalking. We are not sure because we cannot see if he is awake or not when he is mobile. I am not really sure what to do about trying to figure out what is going on with him.
I did get in my email box a BabyCenter newsletter with a timely article: How to keep your kids in their bed. So check it our for yourselves.
It seems that we are having a bit of role-reversal.
Madison has consistently been sleeping throughout the night. Usually she starts eating around 8:30pm and fall asleep around 9-9:30pm and stays asleep until after 5:30am (last night she awoke at 3am, but that is not been the norm). We are ecstatic about this.
But, now it seems that Jacob is not sleeping through the night. He is waking up anywhere between 1 and 3 times a night…crying. Last night, he woke up about midnight and we walked back to his room and I stayed with him for about 10 minutes. Then he stayed down the rest of the night. Most of the times he wakes up about 12 midnight, 2am and sometimes at 4am also. We think that he is beginning to dream and is waking up from them. He says that he is scared when he wakes up…usually from the ‘big tractors’ or ‘Mr. Andy’s truck’ (our next door neighbor).
I told him last night that he should think of something good when he wakes up to try to go to sleep to…maybe that worked, who knows?!
I found this while going through some of our old pictures. It is me and a 1 year old Jacob after the high school baseball team that I was an assistant coach for went undefeated in our division. It was the first time is school history that had been done. We did it as a bet to the players, that if we went undefeated, they could shave all of the coaches heads. We went 22-6 that year and 6-0 in our division, and we had no hair for a LOOOONG time.
Here are the kids ready for bed. This is a couple of weeks old. Madison is 10+ weeks old and over 12lbs. We are going to see Cars tomorrow. Jacob has been wanting to see it for about 6 months now. Then our Vacation Bible School starts at University Church and this will be Jacob's first year to go.
I finally got some pictures up on Flickr. You can see them here.
Hope that everyone has a nice weekend.
I have started reorganizing all of our digital photos. It seems that prior to Jacob's arrival we have no digital pictures (because we did not have a digital camera). Since we got one, we have amassed over 6,000 pictures. There are a lot of pictures to go through. I am also going through and tagging them for easy reference and searching. I will try to get some pictures of Madison and Jacob up tonight on Flickr so that I can see if I like the service or not.
It seems that with Jacob, we always had the camera within arms reach. That does not seem to be the case with Madison (I don't even know where the camera is right now!). I guess I should know better that Second Child Syndrome is a real problem and should take better care to remedy it.
Probably a little more posted tonight.
Flickr Photos
Rammblings 