La Familia Brophy

There’s Nathan in one of his new diapers that came in the mail yesterday. He got two of them, the other one has little airplanes on it. I love these diapers. They are AIOs (All in Ones). That means that we don’t need a separate cover for them. And that means that Ben will happily change Nathan’s diaper without complaining about cloth.

They are from Lucy’s Hope Chest. I love that she has a ton of fabrics to choose from and the diapers fit really well. And she was so fast. I ordered these on Wednesday and even though they were custom made for us we had them Saturday afternoon! Now that is service! I’ve got to order more.

Ben and his dad took Nathan for a walk so I could get the floors cleaned which was one of my goals for the weekend. I was so speedy that now I get a few minutes to sit on the couch with my laptop. Ahhhhhh.

It has been HOT! Nathan and I have mostly been hanging out in the shade. Yesterday morning we had Andrea and Fernanda over. They helped me with Nathan a bit and then we did some sewing while he napped.

We don’t have a little pool for Nathan yet so I kept putting him in the bathtub and sticking my feet in to cool off. It was Nathan’s first time in the big tub and he loved it. He got to splash a lot which he thought was great fun. One more hot day and then it sounds like it will get better. I like hot weather but going from 60 to 97 in just a few days was hard.

A few weeks ago we had Nathan’s ceiling repainted because it ws peeling (that’s when we also had the porch that no longer exists painted). Well, we had to take all of the stuff out of Nathan’s room for this and just yesterday we started to slowly move it all back in. This afternoon I decided that we should put his bookshelf of boardbooks in the living room rather than lugging it all the way back to his room. I figured we would read to him more this way. Usually we just read the same book over and over because it is the most convienent way.

I cleverly blocked off an area with the shelf so that Nathan can’t access the lamp wire that tempts him beneath the chair (the chair that Oscar used as a litterbox the first two nights he lived with us). And within minutes Nathan belly-crawled over as fast as he could and promptly empty the shelves.

Here he is about half way through his project:

Well anyway, we did read a lot of books today.

We’ve got a bumper crop of stawberries. We planted then last year and got enough for the occassional bowl of cereal and snacking while we’re in the garden. This year they have taken off. We had our first harvest today, and there many more ripening. We’ll probably get several pints this year. They are so sweet, a totally different experience from grocery store strawberries.

Did I mention I recently got accepted to the Library and Information Science at Simmons? I was reminded of it after reading that Becky just got admitted to an LIS program. It’s such an interesting field these days. I signed up because I can focus on courses that are all about information architecture and web design. It’s also fascinating because libraries are right in the middle of the politics of copyright and privacy, issues that are so hot they are beginning to seem like a new culture war (see Lawrence Lessig’s blog for reports from the front lines). There are tons of good library blogs out there.

Here’s our sad story of the week:

While having our porch painted we discovered a significant amount of rot. We were afraid we’d have to remove the whole thing but the guys who came out to give estimates all thought that it could just be patched up. That was a relief!

Well once the work began it was evident that there was nothing but rotten wood holding our porch up. It was a mess. With great sadness I listened as the contractor told me the bad news. So yesterday they tore it down. We are putting up a much smaller one story porch and sealing up our door upstairs.

This is a very expensive project made even more so by the fact that we painted the porch just a week or so before tearing it down!

Here is how it looks right now:

Listen to what Nathan said to me this morning!

It’s amazing yesterday he just started babbling, using tons of consonants. It’s beautiful to hear, it really sounds like his voice. I wasn’t able to record the best of it, some times he goes on these long riffs of “ya ya ya ya da da da da wa wa wow” and stuff like that.

Nerd note: Here’s how I captured the audio:

1. took a short movie using our digital camera, a Canon elph that can record short video clips as well as photos.
2. downloaded the .avi using Image capture (an OS X utility)
3. imported the .avi into iMovie
4. split the audio and video tracks, then deleted the video track
5. save as quicktime movie, and chose the expert settings
6. did iMovie to AIFF with no compression
7. Dragged the AIFF into iTunes
8. Selected convert track to MP3 in iTunes
9. Found the track in my music folder and uploaded it to the website.

It has been a beautiful sunny day. Nathan got me a new shaver (an appropriately manly fathers day gift) and a water proof radio so I don’t have to miss any NPR while I’m in the shower. I got to try both of them out first thing. We went to breakfast at my Mom’s. She made popovers, yum. More gifts.

We came back in time for Nathan to take a nice long nap while Lisa and I mulched the cottage garden. I love mulch. My dad came over and we went to Millennium Park in West Roxbury. We took the nature trail to the Brook Farm ruins, one time hang out of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Emerson and that crew. My dad claims there is an extinct volcano back there. We didn’t quite make it to the ruins, or the smoldering crater. Nathan decided his first nature walk had gone on long enough, and the mosquitos were starting to swarm, so we tuned back.

Here’s three generations of Brophys on the trail.

Nathan is napping now, and I am thinking of doing the same. Lisa is making me enchiladas tonight. More yum.

Poor Mr. Jones. Oscar has really taken over. He chases Mr. Jones and makes him sad. The hardest part is that Oscar sleeps in our bed. But that is where Mr. Jones has always slept! I still think that they will work it out.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jones is ever more desperate for attention. He’s decided to take what he can get:

MIT’s commencement happened on Monday. My department was web casting the event live, and we’ll be making a DVD this year as well. But I wasn’t really involved in any of that. I was just smiling thinking about the students going home. Man, I don’t miss them all. My commute is easier, the gym is going to be nice empty, and the line to the food trucks will be nice and short.

I was even more excited at this time of year when I lived in the Fenway. One of the reasons we moved to Roslindale was to get away from the Northeastern students, the most annoying students of them all. I am sure there are intelligent, lovely NU undergrads, but the ones on Symphony Road were thick as bricks. When I was in college I was an insanely bad neighbor, so I can’t complain too much.

I love working at a university, and if weren’t for the students I wouldn’t be making a living right now, so I’m glad they are around. Heck, since I got admitted to Simmons last week, I’m a student myself. But I will definitely be savoring the quiet…