July 2001 Archives

I played bridge last night, with some old friends from my Amazon days. My pre-Henry days. Another life, almost. It was fun, even though I only stayed two hours and lost 3 spades doubled and a 4 spade contract. I played to game with another 4 spade contract, though. I need to play a whole lot more. Learning the ins and outs of bidding alone could take hundreds and hundreds of games.

Yesterday, the three of us spent a couple hours at the 2001 Seattle Street of Dreams down in Auburn. Billed as "the nation's largest-attended one-site luxury home and garden tour," this extravaganza gives the hoi polloi a peek of luxury, or at least a certain disturbing version of luxury. Every year, the organizers select a street in a new development and recruit several local builders (and architects, and interior designers, and landscape architects, and...) to do their best.

Welcome to the new, improved bradandkathy.com. We've finally caught up with last years big trend by turning our site into a weblog. We plan to post updates every few days. Some updates will be informative, others introspective, and yet others completely pointless. The site design will continue to evolve over the next few weeks. If you have any feedback about the new site design, let us know. You can also post comments about individual entries by following the link at the end of each entry.

Brad is miserable with allergies right now. The grasses get him. He has awoken with his right eye swollen shut a few times recently and the nose blowing and sneezing have reached epic proportions. While up in Victoria, BC yesterday, he bought some Claritin (it's non-prescription there); hopefully that will at least take the edge off things.

Henry had his nine month check up today. He did great! He peed all over the wall while being weighed; being naked on that scale must have been chilly! It was a good way to register his protest. For those who like statistics, he is 20lbs 14oz and 28.5 inches long, both right around the 50% percentile for his age.

Henry is nine months old today. Nine months, the mythical length of a pregnancy. Of course, anyone who has been pregnant knows that ten months is a more typical gestation time. In Henry's case, he had to be induced to come out at ten months and one week. He does not miss his first home in the world anymore. He likes this one a lot. I can hear him crowing and giggling with Brad in the next room.

All that pregnancy stuff seems so remote. Is that really how Henry came to be? I still have a picture from his 18 week ultrasound sitting on my desk. Yesterday, Brad found some of the fetal "kick count" charts I filled out when we were tracking Henry's movements. On July 7th, 2000, it took me one hour to count 10 kicks (or perhaps they were elbow jabs or headbutts...) On July 7th, 2001, I watched him kick, jab, and headbutt 10 times in as many seconds.