Latest news from the Whitakers

Well shoot. You get constantly warned about not having any time once a little one arrives. I guess we're finding out that everyone wasn't just full of hot air. :) It is pretty amazing how quickly days go by now. Man, we wake up in the morning and the next thing we know we're putting the little guy down for bed and then relaxing ourselves for a bit before turning in. It has been a rather action packed couple of months since the start of the new year.

Bruin is doing absolutely great. He is still a really healthy baby. At his 4 month appointment he weighed in at 16.9 pounds and I think he was 26 inches long! Everyday is an adventure and it seems as the weeks go by he is just developing faster and faster. We aren't swaddling him to sleep anymore, we just have bath time and then get him ready for bed. We lay him down and then he's out. The night's are still a little interesting. He gets up one time to eat and that's about it. However, a couple of night's ago he did sleep for 12 straight hours! We were amazed! Of course, I did sneak in there when I got up at 4:30 to make sure he was still breathing. :) He is rolling over which is pretty dang cool and he is so interactive it's amazing.

We all went to San Francisco last weekend and spent a total of 4 days there. Andrea nor I had ever been before and it sounded like a fun place to go. This was our first family vacation and maybe our last for a little bit since Andrea is going back to work relatively soon. It was a blast though - the only downside was when we first arrived.

Bruin did absolutley great on the plane ride and the only question we had was how to get from the airport to the hotel. I figured we could take our chance at public transportation. How hard could it be right? We only had 2 - 50 pound suitcases, a carseat attached to one of them, and a stroller attached to the other, a backpack diaper bag/carry-on, and a 17 pound baby. Public transportation? Easy Peezy.

Well, we were able to drag, carry, hoist everything on to the train in San Francisco from the airport - no biggie. There was one stop that we needed to get off at to get to our hotel, we figured it out and were waiting for that stop. The stop came and we easily got off the train with our gear, oh and the baby too. We get off the train underground, so everything looks as it should. We calmly walk to the elevator to get above ground. Well, the elevator didn't go to the street, it went to one level below the street. Whatever - it's all good. We walked through the station a bit and found another elevator. Well , we found a broken elevator. No biggie - there's gotta be an escalator or something we can use. Yahoo! We found an escalator! Well, we found a broken escalator. So, you guessed it, we had to take the stairs with all of our gear. Andrea dragged one of the suitcases with Bruin attached to her front in a baby Bjorn, and I dragged the other one. Finally we were street level. Another couple of blocks and we can relax in our hotel!


Not so much.


Turns out we were about 12 blocks away from our hotel. Now in a normal, flat, city - who cares about 12 blocks right? No big deal, suck it up and do it. San Francisco is a different story. The first couple of blocks weren't terrible, a slight incline. However, the rest of them were just like the San Francisco streets that we all know and love. I happen to love them less than I did, say 3 weeks ago.



This is one of the hills we went up. Trust me when I say there were several blocks that looked just like this. I've never experienced looking up the street, and you are literally looking UP the street. I swear the street disappeared into the clouds, I know it did. So we just hunkered down and kept on going. Me dragging the 100 pounds worth of luggage, stroller, and carseat, and Andrea with Bruin. Talk about a workout.

Anyway, the rest of the vacation was fun. We went to Alcatraz, the Walt Disney Family Museum, the Painted Ladies (these are the Victorian houses from Full House), Golden Gate Bridge and all that kind of touristy stuff. While we were there we rode the cable cars, the city buses and did so rather well. It was a really fun vacation. Needless to say, we paid extra and took a cab back to the airport.

Outside of that, life is pretty chill. Watching Bru grow up and looking forward to Spring to do some work on the outside of the house, landscaping type stuff. Nothing too big.

Okay, some pice and then I'm done.