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OK, it’s not really her first steps, but today Sam walked unsupported for the first time in her life. Of course, I wasn’t home for it. 🙁 But I did get to see a repeat performance later in the evening which I captured to share with you. In other firsts today, Sam also cried when I left for work. She and mom stand at the picture window at the front of the house and wave as I go by (the path to the sidewalk is on the east side of the yard, and I head west on the sidewalk).

It may come as a shock to some readers to know that my mom has re-married. I know it would have come as a shock to me had she not called me a few days before to let me know that they’d decided to do it. That announcement was the shocker. Both she and her beau(I mean husband) Tom enjoyed each other’s company and they’d been together for a while, but they had also both exclaimed their intent never to re-marry.

In an effort to make it easy for friends and family this holiday season, I’ve decided to purchase a Nintendo DS Lite. This might also help a little bit with my commute, but really, it’s mainly out of consideration for others. That way anyone that wants to can find a convenient and not terribly expensive gift for me — a game for the DS! I’ve put a few on my amazon wishlist, but feel free to find other references and sources too if you’re so moved.

Addictive little shockwave game. You have been warned. 🙂

Dear Sam, Today you turn 13 months old, which means we have completed the first month of your second year of life. This means that for the past month, we’ve been saying things like “Oh, remember this time last year…?” This time last year you were too small for the Halloween costume we had for you (a black cat), we barely noticed the change back to Standard Time, I was still getting the hang of feeding you, and Daddy and I spent the better part of the days in pajamas.

No, this is not about some new software from Valve. Instead today is momentous for a different kind of half life. It was Halloween in 1988 that Carolyn and I started dating. For those of you not doing the math, that was 18 years ago. For those of you continuing to not do the math, or that don’t know us that well, we were 18 at the time. Carolyn and I have been some form of romantic partners to each other for half our lives (at least at the year-granular level… I’m not going to write a script like my friend to do the to-the-minute calculation.

I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in each of Windows XP, Ubuntu and MacOS X for desktop computing, and I have all three available to me right now. But mostly, I find myself in the MacOS. Partly this is a machine issue — the Intel box that dual boots XP/Ubuntu I built years ago and sounds like… well like someone who wanted to put a lot of hardware in and so needed a lot of fans.

While I have been missing some of the aspects of our previous life (see previous post) — one aspect I’m not missing so far is the weather! Today in Altoona, PA, was a high of 48 degrees F with a low of 32 (and a chance of light snow.) Today in El Cerrito, CA was a high of 72 degrees F with a low of 49.

There’s been a little bit of activity on our home in Altoona. We have a contract with a contingency that the buyer needs to sell his home, and we just learned that he had a contract. While I’m terribly excited that soon we won’t be having to pay both rent and mortgage, and glad not to own a house that would otherwise sit unattended through a winter, I’m still a little saddened by it.

Dear Sam, Do you hear that noise? That’s your parents laughing and crying and jumping up and down because you turned ONE YEAR old, which means we MADE IT! We survived the first year, and here you are laughing, smiling, talking, and nearly walking. One full orbit around the sun and our newborn blob has become a little person with opinions and personality. Dad and I feel like we can finally breathe after 365 days of worry.