I'm sorry, your camera has passed

He seemed healthy for so long. Occasionally doing something odd, sure, but everything seemed fine. Now he is dead and we don't know why. It looks like everything is fine, but there is no picture. It looks like just the cover is closed but, no, it is open, and nothing.

The video camera is dead.

It was shaky when I was transferring the fire helmet videos, often pixelating and going green in some places, but I assumed it was the old tape, not the camera.

It was the camera.

So now of our 3 cameras, only 1 is functional, my nice DSLR. So pictures and video of the girls will be halted until we can get back into the store and get a new camera, hopefully that can pull double duty.

Anyone want to buy a video camera cheap?

Fun with Fire helmets

Adorable is defined as...

Boomp-Beedle-ee

This the sound Morgan has been making as she and Eliza navigate the line of couch pillows now in a straight line on the floor. Morgan arranges them and Eliza watches, occasionally shrieking what can only be interpreted as approval.
With the carefulness of a mad dash for free food, Morgan runs down the line of pillows and shouts,
"Boomp-Beedle-ee" and falls diwn onto the pillows, causing Eliza to erupt in laughter.

Where did she learn such a strange word? From Jeana of course. This was the sound she made when someone would trip or fall, or make as though they were about to. Apparently I learned it and use it often enough that Mona has picked it up in common speech.

So the game of Boomp-Beedle-ee continues until Eliza gets involved on the pillows, blocking Morgan's running path. Eliza crawls up, lays down on the pillow with her head to one side, arms down near her hips and smiles and laughs. We call this a "bing." Not sure why.

This morning they are playing with the Winny the Pooh Fire Engine riding toy that makes all the sounds. Eliza enjoys sitting on it and being pushed, she has yet to master the art of riding it alone. Morgan, on the other hand, will car jack her every chance she gets.

So back to the coffee, Kim back to her paper and the girls back to pressing every single noise making button on the fire engine toy.

EDIT - Kim says, "and Eliza stood on her own yesterday."

A quiet day at Carriage House

A quiet day for us begins at 4 AM with Cleo crying to go out. She refuses to use her litter box in the garage.
Then on to 6:45 when Morgan awakes announcing she has wet the bed.

The new garage door went in this morning, he arrived just before 830.

830 was when the producer of the BBC show I'm going to be on called to get background info and ask me a ton of questions about the fire departments in the USA. I told him what I hoped to accomplish with the project and he sounded very excited.

930 was when I called Mark in England to relay how well the meeting went with the BBC and Kim and Morgan left for story time around 10.

1130 Had us eating lunch and Morgan and I deciding last minute to grab a train and head into the City for the big rally at City Hall. we were a little late, but got to make it into the rotunda with the others and show our disgust with the budget cuts the supervisors were trying to make.




Morgan passed out asleep on the car ride back from BART and we came home around 4 to Kim making dinner for a Mom's club friend.

So there it is, a standard day at Carriage House.

Ballet

Morgan sings Popular

The volume is low and she doesn't sing much but she LOVESto watch clips from the musical on YouTube. Thank goodness she likes this instead of the Wiggles. Drives me nuts listening to that stuff.

Updates, updates

Well, it was coming sooner or later, we all knew it.
Not Morgan's 16th birthday (shudder) or Eliza's prom (double shudder) but the time to close public access to the blog.
The exciting news we've been hinting about for awhile is becoming a reality.

I will be participating in a Paramedic exchange of sorts. I will travel to England to see how they run things first hand and a UK medic I met through the work blog will come here to see how we do things. and all of it will be filmed for a BBC documentary. That documentary will then be used as a kind of "pilot" episode for a more in depth series to be filmed some time next year.

And since the names will be out and the documentary shown all over the world, the words from Carriage House will need to be protected from looky loos.

So one day before too long when you try to access the blog, you will be asked to sign in with a blogger.com screen name and password. then you'll need to be invited to read, but you can request that from the same screen as the sign up I believe. Sorry ahead of time, but security is about to become a kind of issue.


In other news, Eliza has 7 confident teeth and is still flirting with the ideas of talking and walking. Morgan is becoming more of a handful each day and, like a trapped T-Rex, is constantly testing the boundaries of our patience.
The girls do play well together now that Eliza can hold her own against the Mona. when Eliza gives chase as Morgan leaves a room Eliza gets excited and starts to talk, which makes Morgan shreek and run. But when she runs she calls Eliza "Fafazu." We don't really know what that means either, so don't ask. But it is hilarious to hear "Run! it's fafazu!" see Morgan go flying by and hear the thunk thunk shuffle that is Eliza on the wood floor.

And Eliza now knows how to turn on the alphabet singing toy. It's still cute for now, try me back tonight and we'll see if I feel the same way.

And that is the news from Carriage House.

Slowly returning to 'normal'

The house is slowly returning to what we would call normal. The snot isn't flowing from tender noses, the coughs are fewer and farther in between. Sleep is returning to regular and only Cleo cries in the middle of the night.

In the midst of all the sickness, Morgan has gone a few nights without a diaper. It is still a challenge to get her to potty before bed and she often simply says, "I don't want to potty, I want a diaper." But she awakens in a good mood and has even awakened before Kim and I go to sleep to potty without a diaper.
She's getting there.

Justin is at work for the weekend, paying back a trade from our trip in May.

The Department is so screwed up when it comes to EMS service, it really makes my head hurt when they make suggestions that make absolutely no sense at all. The new suggestion is to limit the number of paramedics on fire engines in an effort to save money. This means virtually the elimination of overtime for paramedics, while hiring firefighters on overtime to fill the empty paramedic spots.

It is likely to change on Monday and if it does it will make San Francisco one of the least safe cities to get hurt in in California, possibly the United States, when actually implemented.

But then again, what do I know, I'm not an expert in these things or anything.

I'm going to go get a smile back on my face by looking at pictures of my girls.

The plague must have sucked

The whole house is sick. Morgan has pneumonia, Eliza an ear infection and deep cough, Kim and I both have similar symptoms to both girls and feel lousy. It really stops us in our tracks since we enjoy going places and doing things together.

But instead we're all mostly stuck at home.

Eliza has a cough and is congested which makes her very unhappy, but she's being medicated and is feeling OK when awake and fed. Right now she's wandering around pushing her walker. She stops to look at herself in the mirror, then moves a bit forward and looks again. She has 6 teeth now, 2 up, 4 down. She's on antibiotics for the infections, her first course ever.

Morgan is feeling better on her first course of antibiotics as well. We were so proud to avoid them this far, but to hear Morgan's cough and how miserable she was, something had to be done. She was well enough to go with me to Costco today and coughed only 1 or 2 times.

So we'll be medicating and waiting for this to pass along.