Category Archives: Isabelle

Welcome Isabelle

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Isabelle Paige French joined our family at 12:27 p.m. today. She weighed 6 lbs. 10 oz. and was 20 inches long.

We arrived at the hospital this morning at 6:00 a.m. for our appointment to be induced even though we didn’t get back from picking up my parents from the airport until 1:00 a.m.

Things were progressing pretty slow around 11:30 a.m., so I went out to grab a bite to eat. It’s usually not a good idea to eat in front of your wife while she’s trying to give birth. Around 12:10 p.m. I got a call on my cell phone that I had better hurry up because the baby was going to be here soon. Fortunately, I was just around the corner and I zipped back up to the delivery room. The midwife appeared soon after I got back. A few pushes and Isabelle was here.

I will follow up with more pictures, but I had to get in the obligatory scale shot which I also have for Abby and Emily.

The Play Gym Arrives

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Five days and counting. Jennifer is going to be induced on Monday, if she doesn’t go into labor before then. I can’t believe it’s already here. My parents are flying in Sunday to help us out with Abby and Emily while we are at the hospital. This week has gone by fast and Monday will be here before I know it.

It’s been a pretty busy week. On Thursday, Jennifer took the girls to the beach in order to get their picture taken by a photographer friend of ours. She gave us the pictures digitally, so Jennifer will be putting them up on dotPhoto or one of the other picture sites so that anyone who wants one can order a copy.

On Friday, the play gym that we ordered arrived and they started to install it. They ran into a snag while installing it: our back yard isn’t level and they had to use brink pavers to set part of this up. We weren’t comfortable with that, so we are gong to get that part of the yard leveled and they are going to come back and set the play gym back into the leveled area. So, even though it’s put together in today’s picture, there’s more work to be done.

The last two days Abby has been going to gymnastics in order to get her out of the house. She’s been really liking it and she’s been telling me a lot about her exploits on the “high bar”. She told me today that a clown came and painted their faces.

We’ve had great success on the Emily potty training front. She’s been dry for two days now. She gets up in the morning and goes right to the potty and tinkles. She now will tell us that she needs to “go poop on the potty” and runs off into the bathroom. I’m pretty impressed that she’s caught on so fast. Hopefully we won’t have a relapses once the new baby arrives.

Jennifer’s Baby Shower

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Today the neighbors threw Jennifer a baby shower. I came home early from work to watch the kids and she walked next door for dinner and socializing. She had a great time and we received several new outfits for the baby. Jennifer is counting down the minutes until the baby arrives. She’s definitely ready. She said that it was nice to get out of the house, away from the children, and have a chance to talk with the neighbors.

Now that Abby is out of pre-school, Jennifer has been desperate to keep Abby and Emily occupied. Abby and Emily individually are good and play well. When you get them together and then throw Austin into the mix, it’s total chaos around the house.

This past weekend I picked up The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the Game Boy Advance. I was looking for a game that I could play on my GBA while sitting around the house because I haven’t had much luck making it up to my computer in order to finish Half Life. So far it has many elements which are throw back to the old Nintendo Legend of Zelda, but with better graphics.

Today’s picture is of Austin patiently waiting at the back door to go outside and potty.

It’s a Girl? Part II

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Yesterday we went back for our second ultrasound appointment and they still couldn’t tell if the new baby is a boy or a girl. However, they are still leaning towards girl. Jennifer doesn’t know if we are going to have any more ultrasound appointments, so it might just have to be a surprise when the baby’s birth day rolls around. We are currently going under the assumption that it’s a girl so that if it’s a boy we will be all surprised and happy, but if it’s a girl, we will not be disappointed because that’s what we were expecting.

After the appointment we drove down to South Orlando in order to go to a huge McDonald’s which is down near Universal Studios. This McDonald’s has a few unique features in that it has want it calls McBistro. It serves sandwiches, pasta, and pizzas that looked to be at a higher quality than the usual McDonald’s selection. The main reason we were there was because it has an arcade and a gigantic play gym. The girls ran wild for about a half an hour, which was great, and fun was had by all.

Today Abby and I went to see Robots at the movie theater. Abby liked it and said her favorite part was where the robots were fighting at the end of the movie. I on the other hand didn’t think it was all that great. The story was pretty simple and I really didn’t think it was all that funny. Maybe I’m spoiled by Shrek. But, hey, Abby liked it and that’s all that really matters.

What Are We Going to Do?

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Abby has been acting like a wild child lately. She’s been really hyper and jumping around and talking constantly. It’s like she’s hopped up on sugar, but she isn’t (we hope). Yesterday she wrapped a ribbon tape measure around one of our lamps and pull it off the side table, making it shatter on the ground. Today while I was watching her she couldn’t sit still for a minute.

Meanwhile, Emily has been the angel. She’s been cracking us up with what she does. Today she pointed at a picture of Santa Claus and said, “Ho Ho Ho”. I was like, okay, Christmas was two months ago, how do you know that now and not back then? She also has two very funny expressions that crack us up, and thus she continues to do them. She’ll go “Hummm” and have her fist balled up against her cheek with a poutty look on her face. The other one is she’ll put both hands on her cheeks and go, “What are we going to do?” Both very funny.

Jennifer has started peeling the wallpaper down out of our bathroom. The previous owners did a horrible job wall papering and we’ve always hated it. She finally could stand it no longer and started peeling. We’ve been toying with the idea of getting the house painted because my Employee Stock Purchase Plan money is about to arrive. I also like making the joke that Jennifer is “nesting” because she’s pregnant. So far with every child, she’s done some sort of house remodeling while pregnant.

Working Too Hard to Post

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Sorry it’s been over a week since my last entry. It’s been another busy week at work. Fortunately I’ve been able to do all of my work from home, but it still takes it’s toll when you are having to constantly think and do work. Even when I was my busiest last year while we were finalling Madden 2005, I had time for a small entry. This past week I haven’t even had time for that, if that explains how busy I’ve been. I’ll try to get better from here on out.

Enough about work, this morning I was woken up by Abby screaming “Sister is throwing up!” Emily has had a runny nose lately and apparently coughed once to many times and ended up gagging. Up came all the milk she had been drinking in the morning. Because Jennifer’s queasy due to the pregnancy, guess who got to do the honor of cleaning up the mess.

Because Emily wasn’t feeling well, she and I stayed at home while Jennifer and Abby went to church. Today Abby was singing in the choir. She was giving one of the small choir robes and stood in front of the church and sang. We’ve been working on her stage fright and she did very well. We had to bribe her with a trip to “Burger Cheese” in order to accomplish it, but hey, she wasn’t a crying mess, so that was a bonus.

It’s a Girl?

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It’s been a week since my last post so I guess I’m going to have to do a week in review. The biggest news this week is that we went to our first ultrasound appointment for the new baby on Friday. The nurse couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy, so we are pretty much going with the assumption that the new baby is a girl. This is the third time that the first ultrasound has ended in “I can’t really tell”, so I think it’s a pretty safe assumption. We are a little disappointed since we were hoping for a boy, but I guess I’m destined to be in a house full of women.

We did get some fish. Abby says they are named “Abby” and “Emily”, but we are holding off officially naming them. I’ve tried convincing her to name them “Nemo” and “Dory” or “Shrek” and “Fiona”, but haven’t had much luck. So, for now they are called “the Fish”.

The reason for the lack of posts is that I’ve still be working really hard at work the past week again. It’s starting to get a little easier as more and more of the project starts coming together, but it’s still really chaotic. My new boss has come up to speed rather quickly even with the programming staff having doubled over the past two weeks. There’s still going to be a rough couple of weeks as we try and plan the entire project while finishing up our second milestone.

TiVo is amazing. At work, Tom and I were talking about this particular television program, Mr. Show with Bob and David, on Wednesday. It was on HBO in the 90’s and I wasn’t a big fan of it, but I knew of the show and the two comedians who were on it. Last night my TiVo recorded it. How does it do that? Apparently TBS is showing syndicated versions. Amazing. I set up a season pass.

Today’s picture is of Abby who fell asleep with her chair turned upside down. She doesn’t take naps anymore and she usually paints or colors while Emily takes her nap. However, sometimes if she’s had a fun time at school that day, she can’t help but curl up and doze off. We just thought this was a weird way to fall asleep.

Week In Review

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Sorry it’s been all week since I’ve made a new entry. I will have to make it up with this one. First off I would like to make the official announcement on Frenchville that we are now expecting a third child in June. Most of our families know already so this isn’t a surprise to many of our readers, but I thought I would go ahead and make an official announcement on Frenchville because the pregnancy is starting to have newsworthy events in our life. This week Jennifer has been queasy and not feeling well. I had to come home one day this week to help out because it got so bad.

Abby has been having a lot of fun at school as they have been singing Christmas songs. I know this because she will be sitting in her room singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs. I had to explain to her the difference between screaming and singing. Today’s picture is of Abby getting ready to slide down a giant inflatable slide at a Fall Festival we went to a couple of weeks ago.

We’ve been having a pretty bad problem with Emily this week. She has been taking off her clothes and diaper. We will come around the corner and she is running around naked. The wost part about it is sometimes her diaper isn’t empty when she takes it off and then we are cleaning poop off of the floor. Fun times had by all.

We lost in our softball game on Wednesday to the top team in the league. We were actually keeping up with them, but ended up losing in the last inning. I did fairly well. I was 2 for 4 and had some good plays, participating in a 6-4-3 double play.

The Texas Longhorns beat Kansas yesterday 27-23, but it wasn’t pretty. Once again the defense had to bail out the bad looking offense. They were down by 10 and had to come back and score two touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game.

The Big Move

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On January 30th we closed on the sale of our house in Austin, Texas and started the big Trek to Orlando, Florida. We started by going to Jennifer’s sister’s house in Houston. There we were visited by more of Jennifer’s family.

We stayed there until February 3rd and then started on the road to Florida. We stopped in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tallahassee, Florida. During the trip, we stopped at several rest stops and we got pictures of Abby entering Mississippi and Florida. On February 1st, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas. The rest stop in Mississippi had a make-shift memorial outside and I took a picture of Abby standing in front of it.

We survived the trip, but Abby was pretty grouchy the entire trip. She didn’t like being awaken in the middle of the night by Emily crying. She learned first hand what her parents had been going though each night for the past month since Emily was born. She was not happy.

When we got to Florida, we stayed in a hotel near Disney World until our stuff was to arrive on February 8th. We played some putt-putt and ate at Margaritaville at Universal Studios.