New Shelves...and Extra Closet Space

We had a very productive Saturday. We did a bunch of little projects around the house and on the cars. My favorite was putting up some new shelves for some of my models.

wood $10
brackets $4
hardware $1.50
spray paint $7
having extra room in our closets.........priceless!

These are the new shelves. The models represent 4 years of my life (for anyone that doesn't know, I have been working on a second bachelor degree in archi-torture. I can't count how many hours this has taken me, but that's why they call it torture). Amazingly they have been spared from destruction by cats and kids for all this time. I love being able to look at them and am excited to re-organize the closets with more space in them.

These are the shelves I put in the office a while back. It is now Alex's room, but nobody seems to mind the models being there.

Breech Baby (again)

On Tuesday I went in for another ultrasound and found out the baby was breech. My kids seem to have a habit of doing that. So today I went to see my midwife and she tried an ECV (external cephalic version). It was a bit painful and hard to not tense up when she was doing it, even though she was telling some pretty funny stories to distract me. It didn't work the first couple tries, but finally the kid flipped! Now I just have to stand or sit up straight for a while in the hopes she won't flip back. I have to say that I am so blessed to have such an incredible and experienced midwife. I cannot say enough great things about her. She was absolutely amazing with Alex's VBAC. I feel so sure that I would have had to have another C-section if she hadn't been there at the end of my labor last time. It makes me so excited to have the next one there--as long as she stays put!

Nursery and Hair

From reading other blogs it seems like everyone keeps wanting spring to come. I think I have had enough summer for the year already. But this week we've had a beautiful cold spell. This morning I walked out and it was 62 degrees! Normally this would be a little cold for me, but being pregnant makes things feel about 20 degrees hotter. This could be why I dressed Alex in shorts, a T-shirt and sandals. I took him to the doctor and felt a little bad seeing all the other kids in sweats and jackets. It's just been a nice (although I'm sure brief) change from the hot sticky weather of late.

Alex is now 18 months which means one absolutely wonderful milestone: NURSERY! He had his first week on Sunday and did very well. I think he is pretty used to being left places and likes to watch other people, so it was great for him (oh, and definitely for us). We have about 7 weeks of freedom before the next one pushes us back into the halls and mother's room.

Alex's favorite phrases are: "Here mom", "I did it!", "Read it" (as he hands me a book), "Hi Mommy" (or Daddy or Anan--which means Erin), "No kitty!", "Don't want it" and "Welcome" (which really means thank you). He is now repeating prayers and loves saying them (we had to say like 5 for lunch today between him and Erin until my hunger finally put an end to it). He loves his shoes. Right now he only has one pair that fit him but whenever you say we are going somewhere he immediately runs to get his shoes. Today at the doctor they had me take off all his clothes to his diaper but he insisted on putting his shoes back on. He always brings me my shoes or Erin's shoes. Can anyone see a good future in his shoe obsession?

Erin had her first real haircut last Friday. Granted, she is almost 4; but when you have no hair for 2 of those years, you can see why haircuts aren't first on our agenda. She just had the ends trimmed, but got it blow dried so cute. She didn't crack a smile the whole time but was very well behaved. She came home and told daddy about the beautiful cape she got to wear.

At home she can finally be herself and smile! That's our sweet Erin.

Motorola Layoffs

Well...I have survived the latest Motorola Layoff. It has actually affected the Plantation facility here in Florida heavily...at least as far as my area is concerned. They laid off ~350 people in one day! The only good news out of all of this is that each person that was "impacted" gets a two month notice (they are still employees for the next two months) and then they get a decent severance package. There are a lot of associates that I know personally that will no longer be working for Motorola in 2 months...including a member of my ward.

But...at the same time, and because of the large number of engineers that are being laid-off, there are several companies that have come to South Florida to interview. They include Foxcon (a Tiawanese Company), RIM (they make the Blackberry phone), Qualcom, Microsoft and Freescale (a Motorola spin-off). The most intriguing of these is RIM because they are setting up a R&D facility here in So. East Florida...and it will probably be very close to Motorola. In fact, they had an interviewing event this last Friday and Saturday and a lot of engineers that I know at Motorola were there interviewing, including myself, my co-workers and even my boss...all of whom were not "impacted" by the recent layoffs. RIM is expecting to hire quite a few people (probably a couple of hundred), and they will probably choose the best people for the job...regardless of their current employment status. If this happens it will really hurt the development of our current iDEN products...but with the recent layoffs and with Motorola spinning off Mobile Devices (their phone development business), nobody feels that they have any job security. We haven't received any decent cost-of-living increase in a while, and all of our bonuses have been really low (at least compared to previous years). Mobile Devices has been losing money for the last ~2 years...and there is no guarantee that anyone in our facility that works for Motorola's Mobile Devices will even have a job a year from now. Can you blame people for looking elsewhere?

It's no wonder RIM had such a huge turnout at their event...especially considering that their products are very similar to what most of the engineers at my facility have been doing for the past several years.

I still don't know if I'll accept an offer even if I get one...but it is a really interesting prospect.

I'll keep you posted!

Squeaky Clean

So the last few days have been much better as far as not being sick. I thought it was never going to end. Now we just have to get our kids back on a normal bedtime routine since the sickness sort of messed everything up.

Today Alex decided to wash his hair with yogurt (about an hour after taking a shower)

I found this one of Erin when she was a few months older than Alex is,

but the concept is the same

So I gave him a bath...

A little while later I realized that he was being way too quiet.
Yep, he was practicing putting on my make-up. What do you think?

So I gave him yet another bath (but only because Erin insisted on having one). Ahh, you gotta love kids.