Saturday, November 22, 2008

21 month old + Spaghettios =

This was an early picture it didn't take long for him to realize he could also make his hair orange. Good times.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Living Room Remodel

We finally took the plunge this weekend and painted the living room/dining room. We had a couple goals, first and foremost to make the living room brighter, especially the dining room. We decided on Midday yellow because it was bright, but not too bright. It turns out at night the yellow dims quite a bit. The other goal was to possibly reconfigure to provide Kaleb with a dedicated play space. We ended up accomplishing both goals. Here are the photos:
Living Room Remodel


Kaleb was sick on Saturday and very clingy so Jennifer had to do her part while lugging him around in one way or another. The first layer didn't go very well, but then for round two we used a special edging tool and finished in almost half the time. We were able to finish around 7 last night and then played around with the furniture. Today we got up nice and early and I spent most of the day working on the trim. For some reason the previous painters decided to paint the trim around the windows the same color as the walls, which was a beige color. Now you actually notice that there are windows in the living room. Also by removing the dark table and dark rug from the corner of the room it makes the play room very bright and the white rug helps it out too.

Finally, after finishing all of the trim I wanted to take a photo of it, but couldn't find the camera anywhere. We looked all over the house and I decided to go for my last resort and checked the trash. Sure enough after five minutes of digging around the trash, yep the one with the old paint try, I found the camera covered in yellow paint. Luckily it was all superficial and it works fine. It is hard to say whether it was Kaleb or not, but it seems likely. He denied it and claimed he thought it was in the car though.

Keeg

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Autumn Weekends: Rainy and Sunny

Here are some more photos from this past weekend. Some big news today was that Kaleb said his name for the first time. He says it like this "Kay-bah", but at least he is on the right track.

Rainy Weekend


Leaf Pile


Autumn Harvest Party


Topsfield Fair

Monday, September 15, 2008

Ages

It sure has been ages since my last post. I don't exactly know why I haven't posted, probably mostly from being very busy and then just plain forgetting to post. We have taken tons of photos of Kaleb's, but the process of rating them, uploading and posting them is apparently too much at this point. Hopefully, it will change soon.

Kaleb has grown up quite a bit over the last month or so. He has mostly switched from using signs to actually saying words, which you may think is good, but at least the signs were pretty clear cut where the words are sometimes hard to figure out. Mom, milk, tomato and lawn mower all sound pretty much the same. We are managing though and he is picking up more and more words everyday. He also understands tons of words he can't say and follows directions more than ever. As for sleeping there was a really good stretch where he would sleep from 8pm until 4 or 5, but now he is back to waking up around 12:30 or 2:30. We have been very good about putting him back to bed, despite the price we pay for being up so late.

Work has been okay lately. It has been busy, but not really with much new stuff, just fixing some of the stuff we worked on over the last few months. Basically same old same old there.

I am getting pretty excited for the coming weekend because I am going down to Tampa for the last two home games of the Rays season. It is lining up like they probably won't get first place, but are nearly assured their first playoff spot. My fingers are crossed that they clinch a playoff spot during one of the games I attend. Currently there magic number over the Twins is 7, with four games against them this week. They just need to register a win against the Red Sox and they will be on their way.

Okay now I have to get back to work.

Keeg

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Annual BBQ Time

Mid August Fun


We had our second annual BBQ at the house and it was a success. This year we grilled pizza and everybody loved it. After all of the festivities at the house we then went to the beach to cool off. The waves were huge and the water was warm (for Salisbury). All in all it was a great weekend.

Keeg

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Home Alone

Jennifer and Kaleb have gone off on vacation, so I am again home alone. It is a work week so I am sure to busy, but I still miss them. Last night, Mark and Kate came up to visit and we went did a local food tour first stopping at Skip's (which is not closing) and then to Hodgie's for some ice cream. We then came back to the house and I showed off the Wii Balance Board.

We did some major work at the house over the weekend. It was a two fold effort, Jon worked on putting up a railing and squaring off the upper deck and I tore apart the old lower deck. Now there is just a dirt area next to the shed where the lower deck used to be and a couple of cement footings (out of the ground). The ground is very damp and hopefully now that it is exposed to the open air it will dry out, before I start leveling it out and creating a nice patio or terraced lawn area.

That's all for now.
Keeg

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Friday, July 25, 2008

Fenway Park




At the Yankees-Red Sox game. not sure who to root for though.



Posted by ShoZu

4 Days with My iPhone

Okay so it has been four days since I purchased the iPhone and here is my little review so far. First of all as I expected the phone service from AT&T is complete garbage. Despite the coverage map on the website showing I should have a strong signal at our house (we can see the tower from the porch) I still have had moments of No Service while sitting in the kitchen. As far as I am concerned this is completely unacceptable and I will be calling AT&T every week until it is resolved. I have had more dropped calls and poor reception in the last four days then I had with Verizon in three years. I am also having a hard time getting solid 3G coverage as I drive around the area and usually end up on the Edge network, which is much slower and what the old iPhone supports.

The phone service aside the iPhone has been working out really well. I have switched over my work email to use the new Microsoft Exchange functionality on the phone and the push calendar and mail have worked as expected. The new apps have been really great and expand the functionality of the phone to a whole new level. I am still getting used to some of the features, but the phone address book is easy to use despite some lag when loading my entire contact list which contains about 200 contacts.

Unfortunately I have witnessed a couple bugs which are rather annoying because it requires a reset of the iPhone. First of all the accelerometer sometimes gets confused and then is only fixed by resetting. I don't have solid steps to reproduce, but it effects several applications including the camera which ends up taking photos upside down. The other issue appeared for the first time this morning, the phone didn't have any wifi capabilities. I tried to pick a network and the menu option was disabled. Both of these issues have been reported online and will hopefully be fixed in the next bug fix release in the near future.

Overall I really love using it and have integrated it into my life. Now I just have to hope AT&T gets there act together and fixes the service, because I don't want to have to spend a few hundred dollars on a cellular repeater.

Keeg

Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Beach Again

We went to the beach again today for about an hour so here are some photos we took.
Kaleb: Day 518

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Picasa Finally Working

Sorry I didn't get photos up sooner, but Picasa was broken over the weekend. We are now back from our vacation in Maine. I went up today to pick up Kaleb and Jennifer.

Maine Vacation Part Two


Maine Vacation: Part Three

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Vacation in Maine

Maine Vacation Part One


Here is the first bunch of photos from our vacation in Maine. We are currently staying on Westport Island which is about fifteen minutes south of Wiscasset. The weather so far has been gorgeous, although a little bit hot today. We have done a little exploring and today visited our favorite village in Maine, Camden. Kaleb slept all the way there, which was perfect. We got there earlier than expected, so we went to the library amphitheater to let Kaleb run around a bit. Next we went to the water's edge so Kaleb could see the ducks before eating lunch at the Camden Deli. We did most of our usual stuff and had a lovely time. I really like Camden and wish we could have spent more time there going out to eat, hiking and other various activities we didn't have time for today.

Kaleb has been great on vacation and despite the giant change of living in a different house has been pretty much on his regular sleep schedule. You can see how being in a new place has helped stimulate his brain and he has really stepped up his walking and signing. He actually runs around now and has been walking up the dock and hilly backyard. The list of words and signs he now can pull from is extraordinary. He is such a smart little guy and is always wandering around exploring something new.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach, which should be a nice change of pace. Oh yeah and I have also been working on a computer program to resolve issues I have been having with iPhoto and iMovie. Apple was really great with the new iMovie and gives you the opportunity to access movies from your iPhoto library, but you can only view movies in your default iPhoto library, which is problematic if you archive your library on a separate disk. So I wrote a java application this week that shows you all of the events in your iPhoto library with movies and lets you copy them directly to your iMovie Events directory. It still has some UI issues, but overall works well so far. I even packaged it into a Mac OS X application package so it looks just like a standard Mac program. This is probably only exciting to me, but I just had to blog about it.

Keegan

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Pre-Vacation Photos

We are currently on vacation in Maine, but thankfully have interweb up here. So here are some photos from the week prior to our vacation.

Kaleb: Day 500


Seacoast Mothers Pool Party


Fourth of July


Gunnie's House

Friday, June 27, 2008

And a new Movie

Photos, photos, photos...

Cooperstown - SPAC DMB


Kaleb: Day 491


Maudsley with Jeny


The Noonans Head South


Strawberry Picking

Sick and Tired

I know it has been ten days since I last posted, but I have an excuse I am sick and tired. I caught a cold from Jennifer at some point over the weekend and have been working extra long hours at work lately. Combine that with a couple Dave Matthews concert and you have a really tired Keegan.

On Saturday I met Kate, Amy, and Mark for a ride to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. We got there in a relatively short time and spent a relaxed afternoon in the museum and eating in a local restaurant. Next we got in the car and drove to Schenectady where we checked in to the hotel before driving up to Saratoga Springs for the Dave Matthews Band concert. The show was unbelievable, Mark and I had balcony seats which were really good and unique for Amphitheater type venues. After the show it was back to the hotel and then back home on Sunday morning.

Kaleb has been doing great and continues to learn new words, he has mastered the sign for shoe and can now say "Buh-Bye", "Boo-Boo", and more. He spent Saturday with Jamison and Megan. It was there last time up visiting us since they will be moving to North Carolina. Jennifer and Kaleb actually went down to Newton today to help see them off. Its very sad to see them go. Jamison has been Kaleb's closest friend and I think they were finally getting to the point where they would interact with each other.

On Tuesday, Jennifer had her last day at school and then afterwards met me in Andover. We went down to the Comcast Center for another Dave Matthews Band concert. It was a very long drive, only made longer by the insane rainstorms we passed through, the traffic and some annoying woman who rear ended me in the traffic. The car was okay, but I got her information just in case, despite her questioning the need to pull over. We made it to the concert about an hour before the band took the stage and met up with Rich for a little while. The show was alright, our seats were really far back and right in front of a major walkway. The walkway was good because you got to do a lot of people watching, but bad because it was so distracting.

I have all sorts of photos to review and upload so I am going to stop for now.

Later gator,
Keeg

Monday, June 16, 2008

Kaleb's Development

I think over the last several entries I have failed to really touch upon Kaleb's milestones. As you know and can tell he now walks and is getting better at it everyday, well except when he tries to look up and walk at the same time. He is getting much better on the stairs and has been extremely stable while going up and down with and without help. He has even been starting to climb things besides, for instance tonight he climbed up on a kitchen chair and then up on to the table. Ten minutes later he was in the living room, put his leg up on my computer bag and then onto the dining room table bench and finally up on to the table.

Outside of the major movement category he recently learned how to use a recorder and a kazoo. His hand eye coordination is greatly improved, he can now put the tops on bottles and also connected the wii remote with the nunchuk. He now eats with his hands and also drinks water from water bottle with ease. Tonight we got some bathtub crayons and he was drawing all over the inside of the tub and even better he cleaned it up and scrubbed the walls to make it disappear.

Communication-wise he has been awesome. As of this morning he knew the signs for Up, Bunny, All Done, Drink, Out, Hot, Bird and Airplane. As for spoken words, he has mastered All Done, Up, Mama, Dada, That, Duck and Yep. He also knows several animal sounds like Sheep, Elephant, Cat, Lion, Dog, Duck and Horse. So as you can see he is doing very well. Of course there are many other amazing things going on with him, but I seem unable to document them right now, plus they aren't really easy to document. The most important thing has been how much easier life has become with his newfound communication skills. It makes life so much easier now that he can answer our questions and let us know what he really wants.

Okay that is all for now.

Keeg

Sunday, June 15, 2008

New York City

New York City


We went to New York City yesterday to visit Auntie M. I have uploaded the photos and plan to make a movie in the next bit of time.

Keeg

Friday, June 13, 2008