Will is Traveling Ninja!

For Halloween this year, Will dressed up as a NINJA! Of course, you might be thinking, wasn't Will a ninja last year? And then you realize that, no, Will does not have creative parents. Plus, his outfit was big on him last year and it fit perfectly this year. So congratulations to his Aunt Robin on making a versatile costume.

Did Will like being a ninja? Last year he wore his cool ninja hood. It felt funny against his tongue This year, it made him kind of mad.

Seemingly Happy Ninja wearing Hood

Angry, Escaping Ninja

There were parts of Halloween that made Will happy. For example, he really like the pumpkins. Of course, he thought they were balls. But I think he finally learned that they are called "pumpkins" and started calling them that.

Happy Ninja with orange "ball"

You might be wondering why we called Will the "traveling ninja." As I was on a business trip until Halloween evening, Dan was trying to take Will trick-or-treating when my taxi pulled up to drop me off. Will loves luggage and immediately stole my rolling laptop bag. Even though it had heavy papers and a laptop in it, he is quite good at maneuvering it around and decided to take it with him to collect candy. I think he only ended up going to 4 houses or so, but as you can see, he started having fun when he got the bag.

"Traveling Ninja"

Ultimately Will figured out that his orange pumpkin bucket was for "treats" and went home to eat some and zone out on the comfy couch.

Tired Ninja

Does Will get to be a ninja again? Day of the Ninja is coming soon! Mark your calendars for December 5th! He probably won't be a ninja next year. His costume won't fit. But his brother will be about 10 months old and could take over the legacy. Maybe Will could be a pirate. Or maybe they could be some sort of other complimenting pair. Any ideas? Krispy Kreme box and donut? (oh, sorry... "dough"-nut) . Batman and Robin? Astronaut and Spaceship? We shall see. Maybe something train related. Will loves trains. Here he is at the mall riding their train.

Happy about Trains!

A Surreal Work Experience

As my pregnancy progresses, I am getting bigger. That's how it works, right? So at the end of October, I went on a 3-day work trip to San Antonio. The airlines don't seem to be concerned about my size yet, but I always feel a little self-conscious when I get involved in a professional environment. However, it seems I didn't have to be concerned with this particular engagement.
The first day of working, I met the guy who I would be consulting with. His name was Chris. Turns out, he drinks a lot of decaf coffee. That worked for me. And, he also was a new father of a 4-month old. This also worked out, when queries were running, we had something in common to talk about. Plus, he was perfectly comfortable hanging out with a pregnant woman. We even discussed the advantages of a natural birth over lunch and he told me how hard it was to convince their OB that no, they didn't want to schedule a c-section to accommodate the doctor's schedule, but wanted to wait for the baby to come naturally.


However odd it might be to discuss natural birth with a guy who I just met, that wasn't the surreal part of this work trip. The final day of the trip was on Halloween. I was going into work early to attend the local Toastmaster meeting since Chris was also involved in Toastmasters. I signed in with security, then found Chris at the Toastmaster meeting. He was dressed for Halloween as a pregnant woman! This was slightly disturbing, but he reassured me that no, he wasn't mocking me, this had been planned in advance. There was a pregnant woman in their department. They had told her that their entire office was dressing up as doctors for Halloween. But secretly they were all dressing up as pregnant women and she would get to be the "Maternity Ward" doctor. Here is the sign they put on the door to their department.


And, here is the picture of Chris in his Halloween costume, platinum blond wig and all.


One of the activities that the departments do on Halloween is wander around to the other departments to show off their costumes and see the other costumes. I tried to bow out of this activity since I could be perfectly productive staying in the office. Plus, it's not like I was dressed in a Halloween costume. But they dragged me around with all of the fake pregnant women (3 women, 2 men in costume) and the actually pregnant "maternity doctor." Not what I expected when I signed on to this contract. A surreal work experience indeed!

Fire and Water Update

It's been a busy month, I can't believe it was October 23rd since the last post! And it is about the fires and our lack of hot water. So, here is the update...

The fires slightly affected us. The day after I posted about it, it got really "cloudy." Being outside in the daytime was weird because everything was cast in an orange glow with the sun being partially blocked out by the clouds. Also, there were tiny, visible bits of ash floating around in the air. Will's poor stroller was outside on our porch and collected a thin layer of particulates. Cars also got kind of dirty, we actually still need to wash ours. It wasn't as bad as the amount of pollen that builds up in a day in the DC Spring, but I'm sure inhaling the particulates was a bit more unhealthy than inhaling pollen. We kept the house closed up as much as possible and ran the air conditioner in the car. Now all is well and we are back to our mild, normal sunlight colored California weather.

The office that I interviewed for a job at was not burned down in the fires. However, I did not get the job. Me and my silly demands to work part-time!

Now onto the soggy water issue. I finally went to the Y to take a shower on Wednesday. It was great! Although I did have to keep pushing the button to turn the water timer back on for the shower.

The home warranty people sent out a repair guy who wrote us a repair estimate for $650-$900 and told us that the warranty people would be contacting us. The warranty people did contact us and told us that the pipe was not covered because it was "outside" of the foundation of our house. You see, our water heater is in our garage. The pipe that was leaking was somewhere between our house and garage and therefore not covered. We were quite annoyed since we had waited for the warranty people to take care of it instead of us taking care of it ourselves. It's not like we didn't tell them where it was in the first place. So, rather than being stuck with a large bill, which included leak detection, Dan and Will went searching for the leak.

Will Learning about Home Ownership Issues

It wasn't very hard to find the leak. Since it was a hot water leak, the grass above the leak had died by this time. So Dan and Will dug a hole in the middle of the dead patch of grass. They found pipes, then had me turn on the water. It sprayed pretty strongly, freaking Will out a bit, so we quickly turned it off. Then, we called a plumbing company recommended by Carlie (she knows stuff), they came out, charged us a lot less to fix the pipe, and all was well.

We were kind of disappointed that we had to spend money to fix the leak, but a few days later, we received a check from the home warranty people that covered all but $25 of our expenses. I think that our realtor, April, had given them a call and 'convinced' them to reimburse us a 'good faith' amount to keep us as happy home warranty customers. If anyone needs a referral to a realtor in the South Bay Area, let us know. It's been a year since we bought the place and April is still very helpful.

So we got our water back. And Will eventually got used to his baths in the big bath tub. It seemed to help him out to either sit close to the front of the tub, or to sit wedged sideways in the tub so it felt a little smaller. Now when his brother is born, we can use the little tub for the little one and maybe Will can hang out in the bigger part of the tub.

That's our update!