So Far, so Good

So far, being a parent is awesome. Cassie is pretty easy to manage. She's sleeping most of the time; when she cries she needs one of four things: food, a diaper change, the pacifier, or a little quality time with daddy. Fortunately, Tolkien the dog has been fairly flexible. The working instinct is strong in him and he really wants to help when he can: he whines when she cries, he watches when we change diapers, and I actually watched him rock her in the bassinet the other day - it was amazing. I do worry occasionally that the dingo in his heritage will come out and I'll turn around and he'll have snatched her out of her swing and carried her back to his kennel to gnaw on her toes.

Here is a picture (self-portrait, of course) of us watching football while mama takes a nap.

On another note - Google has really got its poop in a group when it comes to application integration. Mama downloaded Picasa to manage our photos. It's got a super-duper easy to use mini-editing suite which I used to work up a print for the birth announcements. I just ordered 100 prints for the announcements by clicking a button; they'll be ready at the Walgreen's down the street in an hour. Then I clicked another button to upload this photo to a new blog entry. Another button will email photos from my library to anyone through my Gmail account. As my homeboy Elwood would say: "That's dope-fly-monkey!".

Here's the photo from the announcement:

The Future of America

Our little Fish-imp was born yesterday at 1:24 PM. Weighing in at 7 Lbs 4 oz, measuring 19". She's got a full head of strawberry blond hair and is a voracious eater. Mom is recovering well, I'm getting plenty of practice honing my swaddling skills. I'll put more photos up soon, but in the meantime there are some available on the sister-in-law's website:

kentandbeckybaer.com - click on the Baby-Girl Garrett link at the top.

Thank you for your support!

Racial Profiling

Three of us from the office went out for Thai food yesterday. The food was delicious, but the racial overtones were hard to ignore. If Johnnie Cochran was still alive I'd have him on speed dial by now. Be prepared before you read the following scenario; you will be outraged.

After our food arrived the waitress, who I assume is from Thailand or one of it's neighbor countries, came back with one pair of chopsticks for my Filipino coworker, but none for me or my fellow Caucasian at the table. I'm not sure which assumption I'm more outraged by, that Whitey can't use the chopsticks (I've been rockin' the chopsticks since Mrs. Dumas's 1st grade class had a unit on Japanese culture) or that my Pacific Islander brother from Spokane eschews the fork as an eating device.

It's a good think the Pad Kee Mao was so delicious; otherwise I might have had to actually say something controversial like "May I please have some chop sticks?"