- Buying iLife ’09
- Hating on iPhoto’s new “Faces” feature (I’ve since been calling it “Feces” instead)
- Loving Garage Band’s new music lessons
- Borrowing a guitar to use the included guitar lessons
- Wanting a piano to use the included piano lessons
- Playing the guitar a lot
- Starting a band
- Kicking my daughter out of the band (it was a group decision)
- Nursing sore fingers
- Buying a cheap used guitar on Craigslist
- Learning to play “More Than Words”
- Buying new cheap strings for my new used cheap guitar
- Learning how to re-string a guitar
- Continuing to nurse sore fingers
- Developing a taste for tapioca pudding
- Craving tapioca pudding
- Finding famous people on Twitter
- Work, work, and more work (my work days are much fuller of late, hence the less computer time when I’m home)
- Relying heavily on the iPhone
- Reading all of my regular blogs
- Sporadically commenting on my regular blogs
- Getting things done
- Getting nothing done
- Making lists
- Making early plans for the girl’s first birthday (!!! It’s still a month and a half away, I just can’t believe she’s that old already!)
Update because I forgot one:
- Developing an obsession with Nanerpus

A couple of weeks ago, The Girl reached 9 months old. It seems cliché for me to say that kids grow up too fast, so instead, I’ll say that I am growing up too fast.

It occurs to me that I haven’t really blogged much about her. Part of that was on purpose, but mostly, it’s because there hadn’t been much to say. In fact, let me break it down for you right now: Months 1-4, she cried. Months 5-7, she smiled and laughed for her brother, while she quietly tolerated everyone else. If she had signed up for a T-Mobile account and had to pick her fave 5, I don’t think I would have made the cut. And she only really knew seven people. I’m not small like her brother, I don’t have lactating breasts, like her mother. It was hard to compete.

When she was 7 months old, she started turning the corner. At 8 months old, I dare say she was downright charming. And now at 9 months old, she has successfully completed wrapping me around her finger. (She looked so cute crawling around last night, I almost gave her the car keys without her even asking.)

Anyway, that pretty much brings you up to speed. All that background info doesn’t really have to do with why I wanted to post about the girl, I just wanted to give background info for the sake of giving background info.

The point of this post is supposed to be about the girl’s hair. I can say with complete subjectivity that she’s the cutest baby to ever exist ever. Part of her physical charm is her hair. It’s always one of the first things people say about her when they meet her or see pictures of her, because it’s quite long for her age. Or to put it another way, she’s got a huge rat’s nest on her head and it will undoubtedly be the source of lots of crying and fighting in the future when it needs to be combed. Or to put it yet another way, her hair is BANANAS. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Because I know that not everyone who reads this blog has seen her before, here’s a photo of her from when she was 7 months old. And before any of you funny guys make some Cousin Itt jokes, I’ll add that she’s facing the other way. Her hair’s not that long:

I’m a guy. My first kid is a boy. I don’t have any sisters. My own hair varies between 1/16″ and 1/8″ in length. I know nothing about how to maintain girls’ hair. Obviously, the wife will be taking the point on any girl hair issues, but what about those times when the wife isn’t home? I am to hair care as oil is to water, as Tom Cruise is to sanity. Thinking about it makes me hyperventilate. She’s too young to care about how her hair looks now, but it won’t always be that way. I’m in her Fave 5 now, I don’t want something like hair care to get me demoted! I’m almost as anxious about this as I am about having to shop in the “pink aisle” of the toy store.

Almost.

As promised, here is the boy singing the Guyanese National Anthem*. I’m not gonna lie, this is not his best work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very proud of him. But if you can’t get honest feedback from your parents, where can you get it?

In fairness to him, I’m the one who taught him the Guyanese anthem. The wife (primarily) taught him the American and Canadian anthems. So if we’re looking to assign blame here, we should probably blame the teacher, not the student.

Or better yet, we can blame my parents. Yeah, I like that.

Enjoy!

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* I just realized that I also promised “Take me out to the ballgame,” but we stalled on that. Maybe by next baseball season.

Thanksgiving – For the first time in my memory, I didn’t have turkey on Thanksgiving. There was turkey available, I just didn’t have room on my plate. We also didn’t do two dinners this year, for the first time since 2000. Though the idea of two dinners is appealing, it got to be too exhausting.

Taking Christmas card photos – I took over a hundred photos in an effort to get THREE good ones for a photo card. And you might think it’s the 7-month old who was having trouble cooperating, but you’d be wrong. The whole time I was snapping away, I was thinking about how if we still lived in the film era, I would have tried like 3 pictures, then resorted to sending out non-photo greeting cards if none of the 3 came out. Times were so much simpler back then…

Having the internet everywhere – I was dangerously close to publishing a blog post from the grocery store over the weekend. The reason? Because I can. In the end, I resisted the urge. But I did create the new post category of “on location,” and I do reserve the right to use it.

Site housekeeping – I have (finally) decided to bring over a bunch of my old posts from my old site to this one. I have really been wanting to re-use the old domain name for something else, but I haven’t wanted to delete the old posts. Those who have only been following me in the past year or so, you guys missed out. 2005 to early 2007 Omar was hilarious. Anyway, I bring this up because you may see a ton of really old things appear in my site feed (if you use my site feed). Sorry about that.

It’s time for my annual blog tradition of angering my incontinent readers by revealing my scary Halloween jack-o-lantern!  Though I guess that now I’ve warned you, you really shouldn’t have any reason to be angry, right? Do what you need to do to ready yourself right now. I’ll wait.

Great! But before we get to this year’s effort, let’s take a peek back at the last three years:

2005, the metrosexual vampire jack-o-lantern. He’ll scare you by showing you his credit card statement after all the shopping he’s been doing! Boo!  Mani-pedis all around!

2006, the pirate skeleton and spider that looks suspiciously like a tick. The pirate skeleton may be my best effort to date.

2007, the ghost with a giggle so annoyingly cheerful, it’ll make you sick to your stomach in such a way that it will be indistinguishable from that feeling you get in your stomach right at the moment you’re being scared.

And finally… drumroll please… the Suburban Juggernaut jack-o-lantern for the twenty oh ate:

Happy Halloween, all. Be good to the kids, give out good candy. Don’t give out those nasty caramel cream things, unless the kid isn’t wearing a costume.