vonRoeschlaub Family News

Haven’t updated in a while. Not much to say.

Victoria is growing fast. her hair has started growing again after thinning out a bit since her birth. This is normal. He eyes have stayed the greyish-blue she was born with. We’ll see what color they choose, if any.

Claire has been playing Pokémon and loves it. We will probably get her Pokémon Diamond or Pearl, but she’s still a long way from real game play. She has a level 39 Bulbasaur and a level 12 paras, and still leads with the Bulbasaur. If you don’t play adventure games much, this means the Bulbasaur will continue to get stronger, but at the expense of all her other pokémon.

Avery is the king of being difficult. he gets away with a lot by being very cute and very very sweet, but when he decides he wants something he can be incredibly stubborn and difficult. He’s also built up a habit of running away when called — not a good one to have. Fortunately, he starts preschool soon and I know he is not going to be nearly the most difficult kid in his class. He should have fun and get in enough play time with other kids to satisfy the hyper-friendliness we see now. He makes friends so easily and his heart is broken every time we leave them, even if it was just a kid he met in Ikea.

Yeah, we went to Ikea to get some baskets for the basement bookshelves and passed a family with a crying child just a little younger than Avery. Avery stopped and gave the kid a hug and told him it would be okay. About ten minutes later, while waiting for Diana to change Victoria the parents and child came out of the register section and Avery ran over happy to see the crying was done. They played for about five minutes, and then we had to go. Avery sobbed that we were taking away his “bestest friend” and sulked the whole way home.

He needs more play-dates.

Eating lunch getting ready to go to the fair, the kids were well behaved. “I guess we’ll keep them,” I said.

“I guess so,” answered Diana, “What do you guys think.”

Claire nodded.  “But sell Avery to the Gypsies.”

“No,” Avery argues, “I’m cute.”

“Oh, that just makes the Gypsies want to buy you more,” replied Claire.

Been very busy.

We settled on Avery’s school. Boces seemed the best, even though it is also the farthest, about half a mile south of Old Country Road in Hicksville (actually just over the border in Levittown). Avery liked it there too. It is housed in what used to be a public school, so the facilities are great.

Tori had her checkup today, and clocks in at just over ten pounds. Not bad. She still has gas pains, but the Neocate is doing the trick as far as screaming pain goes. It’s not like there is anything milder anyway — at least nothing that would keep her healthy.

I may be going to Japan in a few weeks. We’ll see.

Today we went to the first candidate for Avery’s school. He didn’t like the name “Oyster Bay-bies”, but he did enjoy the school and we eventually had to drag him away sobbing that he wanted to stay. Four more to go.

Meanwhile, Diana’s aunt Caroline has come to stay in our basement. The house is getting pretty crowded.

Back to the old problem. Tori (cocoa-bean) spent all night up crying. Looks like a formula problem. The doctor said a day on pedialite and then try the soy. If that doesn’t work, a day on pedialite again, the nutramagen. Only if that doesn’t work do we go with neocate.

Diana came home today. I picked her up at ten from the hospital, there were no issues. Everything went smoothly and before we knew it we were home. She slept soundly in the playpen, and my father dropped by for a while (we picked up Claire at the bus stop). Grandpa, Noni and Duke came for dinner, I cooked up the ribs and some hot dogs and hamburgers. All in all, a very nice introduction to the family for Tori.

The new computer arrived today. I’m pretty excited. The current computer isn’t bad hardware-wise, though it’s difficult to upgrade any more than it is. The big problem is that the software is a disaster. The new herd drive can’t seem to install Windows 2000, I’m not sure why, and our current install is flaky as hell. Diana often has to log into my account just to view web sites, which defeats the whole purpose of having accounts.

It was time to switch to Windows XP (Vista is still in beta, even if Microsoft is selling it) but it’s hard to get it at any reasonable price. My solution was to buy a Dell small business computer. I assembled the machine I wanted and balked at the price: $1300. So I went to newegg and price checked every extra. Eventually I even ended up downgrading to the cheapest processor and buying a new one (yep, Dell actually charges more for a processor upgrade than the processor itself costs).

Some of the purchased pieces were nicer than what Dell was offering (wireless keyboard/mouse combo, the 65W 4600+ which runs much cooler, 2.5GB instead of 2GB). The stripped down Dell machine was $525 and the add-ons were $450, for a total of $350 savings ($345 after I realized I needed to buy some thermal paste for the new CPU).

It took about an hour to install all the pieces and figure out a way around a bug in the Dell BIOS, but it works beautifully.

This morning I made the kids pancakes for breakfast, then we were off to church. I showed off Victoria’s picture. After church we walked down to Harborfest. Claire wanted to try the rock climbing, but the operator was so slow (and I do mean slow — he just sat there rubbing his chin and sighing most of the time) that we stood in line for an hour with Avery slowly melting down.

Once on the ride Claire climbed about two thirds of the way up before looking to me to see if it was okay to stop. Of course it was, she did great for six. We went to the food lines which were equally as nasty, except for the hot dog line, so the kids had hot dogs, period. After that we made bead necklaces and Claire did some sand art. The kids were pretty tired, but it was a long walk to the car so I had to keep them moving.
Before going home we went to the hospital to visit mommy (and cocoa bean). Victoria was asleep in the room, but we had a good time visiting until Avery started to melt down again. We were going to have ice cream afterwards, but the cafeteria was closed.  I finally brought the camera back to the hospital, so we should have more pictures once everyone gets home.
On the drive home it was raining, so it looks like we left Harborfest at the right time.

Claire had a play-date with Ava today, so Avery and I went out to pick up a blanket for Victoria. On our way to the hospital to see Diana he fell asleep, but woke up cheerful when we got there.

Diana called the nurse to have Victoria brought in and Avery held her for a moment. I fed her for the first time (well, Diana had fed her earlier) and she is one hungry little kid. I had to burp her after every half ounce, but that was about ten seconds of bottle. She polished off all two ounces and kept looking for more (no crying, though). She did cry a bit when I changed her diaper, but that was it.

She also spent the whole time looking around, especially at Avery. She’s going to adore her older brother.

Victoria Staten vonRoeschlaub, born 6/1/07 at 8:30 AM. 7lb 13oz.
Overall the most uneventful birth we’ve had. We went in, an hour and a half later Diana was wheeled into surgery, twenty minutes later the C-Section was complete and we had a very alert new baby girl. During the post-op cleanup we got to hold her and, aside from the initial shock, she didn’t cry at all. She did keep opening her eyes until, by the time she was taken off to neonatal care, she had both eyes open constantly and was looking around at everything.

In the picture her hand looks a bit purple, but that’s misleading since in reality it was very very purple. The doctors assured us that was normal.

Diana is now in the maternity ward and I am headed to sleep for a very needed nap.