Three busy weekends

I am heading back to work tomorrow, so this is probably a very bad time to write my first blog post because I'm not sure I'll actually have time to continue blogging. Oh well, here goes anyway!

The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Three weekends ago, Vivek, Kiren, and I went to Keystone, Colorado for a conference. Vivek was doing a presentation, so Kiren and I tagged along. Kiren did really well on the trip -- he swam for the first time, took lots of naps, saw some fireworks, and was great at two of our four dinners out (he was pretty fussy during the other two, though. We spent his first few months on this planet taking him out to eat several times a week while he slept. We may continue to eat out, but the sleeping days are pretty much over). Also, I had a massage, we went for a family nature walk, we had a great dinner with Vivek's co-presenter and his family (they have an 8 month old), and we spent an afternoon exploring Breckenridge. All in all, a great first family vacation for Kiren.

We almost missed the fireworks, though. Kiren was sleeping, and we decided to wake him up to go (I know, I know, never wake a sleeping baby). The resort said the fireworks started around 9:30. Apparently, "around" was the key word because they actually started at 9:15. We grabbed our shoes, jackets, and Kiren, and made a mad dash for the outside. We made it for the second half of the show. Kiren was pretty mesmerized by the lights, and he didn't startle or cry at the noise, so we think he liked the fireworks...although, it could be that he was just so surprised to be awake.

The weekend after Colorado, Vivek's parents and two family members came to town for our nephew's first birthday party. They arrived on Thursday evening and stayed through Sunday morning, with the party taking up most of Saturday. It was a nice, but quick, visit. On Sunday, we were looking forward to having a quiet day. It was not to be however.

That morning, Vivek was sweet enough to let me sleep-in while he was in charge of Kiren (although, truth be told, Kiren stayed asleep the whole time -- lucky Vivek, but it was still a sweet offer). Eventually, Vivek woke me to tell me our freezer had a big pool of water under it. In my sleepy stupor, I thought he was talking about our chest freezer. I almost had a heart attack because I have lots of bags of frozen breast milk stored for my return to work. Instead, he meant our fridge freezer. We moved into action and moved all the frozen stuff we could salvage into the chest freezer. We couldn't tell right away whether the fridge side was also broken, but it quickly became clear that it was. In an inspired bit of problem-solving, I remembered that our neighbors have a beer fridge in their garage, and they leave the garage door open. So we moved all of our frig contents next door. I then spent awhile calling several places that SAY in the phone book that they are open 24 hours, but don't actually answer the phone, which makes it hard to make an appointment. I finally did manage to get a service call scheduled for the next morning, and the woman on the phone mentioned that if the compressor is the problem, we will simply want to replace the fridge. It is only 7 years old, so I thought that was pretty silly. However, according to Consumer Reports, 8 years is about the life a fridge these days -- that is terrible! My parents still have the fridge I grew up using, and my grandmother apparently bought a used chest freezer in 1958 that she is still using. As my uncle pointed out, she has never been shy about putting it to work, either. Apparently, though, they just don't make 'em like they used to.

Upon her advice, I spent the rest of the afternoon researching new fridges. Vivek and I then went to Home Depot to look over my choice and pick up our own, smaller beer (or coke) fridge; we are now the proud owners of a dorm fridge -- I guess Kiren can take it to college (if it lasts that long, which seems unlikely given the current sad state of fridge making).

On Monday, the service folks came, and for a mere $70 (plus $100 for the service call), we are back in the cooling/freezing business. I will just save my fridge research for another day.

As an aside, on our way to Home Depot, we stopped by a used children's stuff store and found a jumperoo for Kiren -- it's a hit! He really likes it. I will try to post some video of him jumping when I figure out how to do that.

Then for the final busy weekend, for Labor Day, we went to NJ for a family wedding. But since it is my bedtime, I will post about that later.

I think this post is entirely too long, but since I don't have any readers, I am going to post it as is. Good night!