Marissa, Bears and a Cherry Picker

Life continues to be busy and promises to only get busier this summer. On top of my consulting work has been 4 more days of continuing education for real estate, several evening meetings and office training for real estate as well as actually helping some folks do some research on homes. It's all good, but very busy. Real estate will only get busier as the weather turns nicer (if it turns nicer!) and softball will be thrown in there as well. Don't forget spending time with LL and sweet Marissa. Oh, and our vacation to Puerto Rico is coming up at the end of March. There's a lot of stuff going on!

Marissa does or learns something new every day now. The other day she crawled across the room to where I was standing, pulled her self up on my leg, looked up at me and said "Up!" It was the cutest thing ever. She's getting better and animal noises and her repertoire now includes: dog, owl, snake, turtle, lion, sheep and monkey. I think that's all. She continues to eat well consuming everything from spinach and broccoli to yogurt to Cheerios to chicken. She's an equal opportunity eater. She now walks behind a little mower-like thing as well. See video:

Modeling her spring collection.

On the sad news side of things, I had my last Bears Season Ticket Holder Advisory Group meeting. The group meets six times a year and provides feedback to the Bears on everything from game day operations to marketing pieces. It's good fun, but your term only lasts two years. 

Newly remodeled Halas Hall. 

Yes, welcome us!

A typical breakout session; 8-10 of us around a table talking.

Our parting gift: a personalized game ball. That's going in the trophy case!

My last picture...which happens to be on the site of where I slipped and fell about a month earlier. Ha!

 ESDNM came into town to call on our clients last week. Though we've had a horrible winter, when he landed it was 48 degrees!! It literally had snowed 6 inches the night and morning of the day he arrived. The next day, more melting and more 40's. Then he left town in the rain and the cold moved in shortly thereafter. Here's a link to the restaurant we tried called Carriage House. Pretty good food. Not all was easy-peasy though. This cherry picker broke down and blocked our exit from my parking spot. We had to do our first meeting via conference call.  Later, I was able to go over a snow bank that the contractors shoveled out for cars to get by. It was a little strange.

I'm still here!!

Been very busy and there are many things to catch up on. This past week I had four days of continuing education classes for real estate which were mandatory. 8+hours a day complete with the train commute. Oh, and did I mention it was cold? Ugh.

Anyway, we did get to see ESDNM's daughter AinA for dinner while she was in town on Thursday. That was fun, though a much shorter visit than any of us would have liked I'm sure.

Marissa turned 11 months the other day and actually took two whole steps as she walked from LL to me. Pretty awesome.

Speaking of Marissa:

What kind of trouble will I get into when I can walk anywhere I want??

And lunge 2, 3, 4 and point.

This is my "Blue Steel" (look it up if you don't get the reference).

Picture time

Update on the rash: it's mostly gone. I've cut Splenda out of my diet, whether there's a correlation or not, we'll probably see at some point. But for now, the crazy rash is gone.

We were invited by one of my new co-workers in real estate to attend Donut Fest. Haven't heard of Donut Fest? Me neither. It's exactly what you would think though: purveyors of donuts and those that like to consume them. You get a ticket to sample each of the offerings, but only one per. It ended up being an interesting time not just because who doesn't love donuts, but because you actually have to manage your intake somewhat. Now they had it at 9:00 a.m. so you should be plenty hungry, but boy are the donuts filling. Some places, like the first one pictured, had mini donuts that were fairly substantial. Other places offered quarter donuts or even smaller. Still, with about 25 or more offerings, you're downing about 10 donuts minimum. It was awesome. But, if you took a bite of a donut and thought "Meh.", you would throw it out!! You had too! If you didn't, you wouldn't have enough room for all the good donuts.

These raspberry iced donuts looked better than they tasted sadly.

These were cherry iced with chocolate shards I think. Also not great, but looked awesome.

One of my favorites: mini long-johns with chocolate icing and bacon on top. Yum! Not as good as their version with maple icing though. I was not complaining however. 

I can't remember which donuts these were.....

Here's a picture of the event. Decent size. 

We finally got a new entertainment center. One of the many good things about sweet little Marissa, is that she gets into anything she can reach now. That meant the old, open air entertainment system was going to get destroyed or worse, cause her injury. So we went online, found this bad boy on Amazon and two days later it was at my door waiting to be assembled. The next day I put it together and BAM! All good. The other one was over 20 years old! 

Little Marissa getting ready for lunch with LL on LL's birthday Friday!

We went out for dinner for sushi at Rollapalooza, our favorite sushi place with the owners, Eric and Minnie. They were there and we had a nice visit. Turns out Minnie's birthday was the day before so she joined us for some wine in celebration (it's byob). Marissa here is fake smiling as she prepares for the flash.

Fake smiling again with the flash.

There she is all normal again! 

So Marissa now fake smiles, fake cries and fake laughs. All are pretty funny. She eats all sorts of food from eggs to yogurt to chicken to broccoli to pork to apple sauce. She's got a bunch of teeth with molars coming in as of late.  Though not walking yet, we feel that could happen any day now. She definitely gets around. She's also good at imitating animals: lions, dogs, snake, sheep and now monkeys in addition to a turtle (eating). All keep us in hysterics. 

Being rash about a rash

Back around New Year's, we were in D.C. if you recall visiting LL's sister and family, I broke out in a rash around my shoulders, chest, upper back and lower on my neck. It was a pimply kind of rash, very odd. Naturally the investigation into what was causing the rash. For Christmas I had received new undershirts and LL washed them and used softener, which I normally do not use. All of our laundry products are unscented and dye-less, so it shouldn't have mattered, but it was very much an example of Occam's Razor. However, re-washing the shirts and changing to other shirts didn't change the rash. It was a bit better in the morning and much worse at night. It didn't itch.

Could it be bedbugs? Could my inlaws have bedbugs? Naw, they are pretty meticulous and why would they only bite me from my navel to my neck? Plus they were pimples, not bites.

Two possibilities down. They have dogs, could that be it? I am indeed allergic to dogs, so possibly that was the answer. I settled on blaming the dogs.

Due to the weather, we only had three days at home before I headed out to Arizona for a softball tournament. The rash didn't get better, but guess what? The family I was staying with ALSO had dogs. Clearly it was the dogs at this point.

That was two weeks ago. Upon my return, my rash was not getting better. If anything, it was getting slightly worse. To the internet!!!

What could have been the problem? Here's the thing: while at my inlaws over New Years, we drink a bit. And we don't just drink beer or wine. No, we drink caipirinhas. If you haven't had them, they are made with Brazilian rum called cachaca (pronounced ca-shaza) which tastes like gasoline, an entire lime and about a half a cup of sugar, yeah, it's that bad. However, after you mix in the sugar and lime, it's awesome (but what wouldn't be). So last year in an effort to reduce my caloric intake, I started using Splenda instead of sugar. Seemed like eight packets would do the trick. Cool!

So this year I did the same thing. Three or four days of drinking those added up to quite a bit of alcohol....and Splenda. I also use Splenda in my coffee, three packs, three times a day. So all totaled, I was consuming roughly 40 packs of Splenda a day while on vacation. When back home though, I was only having coffee, 9 packs a day or less. However, we make our decaf ice tea with Splenda as well (about a half of cup per pitcher), so who knows how many more packets I was getting by drinking two to three glasses of ice tea a day.

But could Splenda be the culprit? I mean, prior to D.C., I had coffee and ice tea in comparable amounts to what I was having post vacation. The internet told me that Splenda gets washed with chlorine and there is some residual in the product. Normally harmless I'm sure, unless you have 40 packets a day. Apparently the body tries to expunge the chlorine through the rash. So I've cut out Splenda for the last few days and the rash is going away. Fascinating stuff.

Documenting

Everyday it seems like Marissa learns something new or does something new or interesting. This prompted two thoughts: I should really keep a journal or log (or possibly a blog?) of these events and wouldn't it be cool to have her grandparents keeping a similar journal?  So, obviously, I will try to document those new discoveries here. The second item, the grandparents journal, is really something I should design and sell. What I've seen has missed the mark and is mostly about the grandparent. What I'd like to see is something that yes, talks about the grandparents' lives prior to the baby, but also their interaction with the baby. So an entry might begin like: "I haven't seen you in a few weeks and you're so much bigger this time! You're standing on your own and eating so much......" something along those lines. Seems like that would be cool.

The latest things Marissa is picking up on are verbal. Standing on her own is old hat now and she can do that without any problem. Yesterday I tossed her blanket into the crib while we were playing on the floor in her room and she crawled across the room, pulled herself up and reached between the slats to grab her blanket and pull it out. She also grabbed a blanket from INSIDE the crib in the middle of the night.  That girl.....

So she's been saying "Baa, Baa." as in Baa, Baa Black Sheep. She's also been saying something resembling "peek-a-boo" when one of her toys says it. Stacking cups inside each other and putting these egg shell pieces together are two other skills she's getting better at every day.

It's really fun to watch.....and I'm glad I'm documenting it too.

This last one really cracks me up. It looks like she's in the middle of cabbage patching. Ha! 

A little catch up

It's been crazy around here with only 3 days at home from our NYE trip before I headed to AZ for softball. We went 5-0 and won the tournament there and I was named to the all tournament team for hitting over .700. Not too shabby for 47. Instead of staying with the team (10 people in a house that sleeps 8), I stayed with some childhood friends who also lent me their car! It was great. I took them out to dinner on Friday as a thank you in advance.

Oh, and we got to play on Wrigley Field at Big League Dreams in Phoenix. Four of our five games were there. 

The big news though is Marissa's development this last month. She's gone from not being able to crawl two days before her 9 month birthday, to pulling herself up at will by her 10 month birthday. She stands, sometimes unaided, for as long as she wants, which is usually dependent on how long it takes her to get into something she shouldn't be getting into.

She's also making various animal noises when you ask her "what does a ........say?". She can do lion, dog, snake (really!) and turtle. Yeah, that last one is a bit odd, but there's a story behind it. LL's parents have a picture of a turtle eating leafs which they took down in the Galapagos. So when they were showing her the picture they made a chewing motion with their mouths and Marissa does the same. It's adorable.

Marissa was a pretty good traveler, despite two 4 a.m. wake up calls. 

She loves to play on the table that Joisey Ken gave her for Christmas!

And here is Marissa with her cousin Aaron. 

2014, the year ahead

So many things are afoot for me in 2014.....literally when you consider one of them is that Marissa should be walking any day now. That means all sorts of things, not the least of which is replacing some furniture with more baby friendly stuff.

LL and I will also start working on second bundle of joy, whose arrival could take place before the end of the year.

In the spring we will revisit our wedding destination for some r&r, though we don't have any other trips on the horizon.

My new real estate venture will start to take shape in Q1 as I learn the blocking and tackling aspects of the craft while providing my new partners some guidance on growing their firm and generally trying to be a successful business. It should be very rewarding. There's still some CPE I need to do before April, but that should be interesting and possibly even enjoyable.

As always I look forward to another year of helping my consulting clients.  They are great folks with whom I enjoy working and there are some good things happening at all of them.

Softball will be more enjoyable this year as we've removed some less desirable players.  Hopefully the new group will click and softball will return to being as fun as it should be, which hasn't happened for a few years now. It's been fun, don't get me wrong, but there have been one or two bad apples that seem to spoil the bunch. It's tough to merge teams and get rid of the people with huge egos who put themselves above the team. We'll try again though.  Plus our 40 and over team should have another good year after going 16-2 last year.

Hopefully I'll be completely healed from my abdominal strain which would be nice for both softball and golf.  At the end of last year, I really couldn't golf as well as I would like because I couldn't twisted and rotate through the ball.  Hopefully that problem will be behind me this year.

It should be an eventful and interesting year!

Hello from Chiberia!

This morning's trip, while early, went off without a hitch. The flight was at 7:20 and with all the trouble, I thought getting there a full two hours early might not be a bad idea, so that meant getting up at 4:30. Ugh. Anyway, it all went off without a hitch this time. Heck, at Midway, where it was -15 degrees and the windchill was -40, we were able to wait INSIDE for a cab. They had an employee outside relaying to another airport employee that a cab was available and what size (we needed a larger one with the carrier, stroller and bags). It worked pretty well!!

Now the catching up begins....so much to do...so many people to call. And Friday I go to Arizona for softball!!

Are we residents yet?

The continued snowfall in Chicago has left us stranded in Maryland for a third straight day.  Now our flight is scheduled for 7:20 in the morning, but it's going to be -52 windchill in Chicago with a high temp of -15.  Not sure how well planes do in the cold, but that's crazy.  Here's hoping we can actually get home, but I'm not too optimistic. Still, it could be worse....a lot worse. How? Let me tell you:

1) The Bears lost last weekend in the final minute of the game to the Packers on a blown defensive coverage on 4th and 8 for the Pack. Had they won, there would have been a playoff game in Chicago this weekend. That means I would have had to, at worst, drive home on Friday. LL and Marissa would have flown by themselves whenever we actually get out. Not fun for anyone. 

2) It's very feasible that we could have been rebooked on a non-direct flight to Chicago on Friday and then been shut down in whatever city we were in at the time (Columbus, Milwaukee, Houston, who knows?).  

3) We could have been just on a trip and not visiting relatives, which would have led to at least 3 more nights of hotels and car fees. 

4) We could be sick. For the first time in a month+, all three of us are actually healthy as are our hosts. Very fortunate there.

So lots of positives, not to mention that we actually ENJOY spending time with our hosts.  Marissa is doing very well with the trip and has enjoyed meeting her cousin, aunt and uncle. 

Cold and snowy

There is so much that I want and need to do, but alas, we are stranded in DC with LL's wonderful sister and brother in law. Midway airport was closed down today, when we were supposed to fly out from BWI, so obviously our flight was cancelled. We are booked for tomorrow at 6:25 a.m. which no one is happy about, but it was either that or Sunday morning at the same time. Ugh. When we finally do get home, we'll be welcomed by anywhere from 12-18 inches of snow that will be turned to ice no doubt. Monday, the temperature is going to be -7 for a high. A HIGH!! It'll be warmer in Barrow Alaska.

No pics to post as I haven't figured out how to upload effeciently without my desktop. That's okay though. Lots of pics to come though rest assured.  Marissa met her cousin Aaron for the first time and we took a bunch of pics. Marissa is still a bit of a bull in a china shop when it comes to grabbving things, people, pets, whatever, but she means well.  Aaron is on an oxygen tube along with feeding tubes so there's lots of things for her to tug on that would cause problems.  All in all though, she was very good with him and had her first real up close experience with dogs. After being overwhelmed initially, she has taken to making a high pitched barking sound to identify the dogs when she sees them and always tries to touch them, however indelicately.  She was gleeful to realize that they would come running to her in her high chair if she were to drop food to them.

Congratulations to LL for winning the college football family competition, The Caipirinha Cup, named after the drink we down in copious amounts while watcing football games. Against the line she dominated with a 7-4 record, while her sister and I tied for second at 5-6 and her b-i-l garnered only two wins. On to the NFL challenge!!

I'm excited about many things for 2014. More on that in my next entry.

Flu taking it's toll

As I've mentioned, I've been sick since before Thanksgiving (post-Vegas) but started a round of antibiotics that has seemed to give me the upper hand for the moment. Unfortunately, my father, for his 77th birthday, got a nasty stomach flu and has been laid up for the last few days. He seems to be feeling better now, but still not 100%.  LL's mother also came down with the flu over the weekend, exact same thing. Ugh. She's not 100% either, but is getting better, just in time to take care of her husband who has the same thing in a bad way.

As a result, we've pushed back our Christmas Eve celebration until after Christmas.  Hopefully the virus has been contained, otherwise tomorrow's celebration could be in danger as well. Being healthy is really important and it would be irresponsible parenting to put Marissa in harms way unnecessarily. That said, Marissa could be patient zero. She was sick with a stomach virus that caused her to vomit and gave her diarrhea, the main symptoms people have now. Though I thought I got her sick, my sickness had a fever, no vomiting and lasted 24 hours, while she was sick with vomiting and diarrhea for about a week.

Regardless, this will be a Christmas for the books!

No Christmas Tree

Lots of things going on, so let's get to it!

First, everyone is sick. I'm sick, but now on antibiotics to help clear up a lingering cough that I've had for a month. After getting some sort of stomach virus on Monday afternoon and getting a 101 fever, I figured that if the fever didn't kill the cough causing agent then I needed to see a doctor. Finally on Saturday morning, with LL and Marissa down in Joliet, I went to a nearby quickcare facility to get evaluated. Being the smart guy that I am, I brought a bunch of Christmas cards to label and complete before mailing while I waited. Two birds one stone! The doc said it's probably some bug that's stuck in my sinuses as my lungs sounded good. Day two of the antibiotics and I'm already sounding better at least.

LL didn't get the 24 hour stomach bug that I got with the fever and all, but she's still fighting some lingering effects of the cold that she picked up from me after our Vegas trip.

Marissa has had some nasty (and I mean NASTY) diarrhea, though she seems generally okay.  Our biggest issue with her currently, except for her crawling and getting into EVERYTHING, is that she's not sleeping through the night. We've decided once the holidays are over and everyone is feeling better that we'll start some sleep training to make sure she sleeps through the night. That means a few nights of a LOT of crying, but she gets up twice a night now and that's just not acceptable for a healthy LL (who gets up usually).

So with everyone being sick, yet still having lots of events on a daily basis since Thanksgiving, we haven't had a chance to get a tree. No worries, Marissa will see plenty on Christmas day.

Despite the illneses, we all sucked it up and went out to the burbs to Bass Pro Shop for Marissa's first Santa visit. LL's parents and my parents met us out there for the excursion which involved lunch at Gordon Biersch afterwards. LL's mom was johnny on the spot with the photographs and did a great job. We chose this spot because they take a free picture for you and you can buy more if you want, but they also let you take your own pictures. Here are the results!

Marissa wasn't sure what to make of Santa, but didn't cry. 

She's thinking about what to ask for from Santa for the future. 

A great picture of my mom and Marissa checking each other out.

A decision has been made!

As I previously wrote about in this entry, I wanted to enter the real estate brokerage world. Last week, after many interviews with firms of different sizes, I decided to join Be Realty, a smaller brokerage firm with three partners and seven total agents. They seem like great guys and we share many of the same values, as evidenced by their 5-star Yelp reviews and several customer service awards. It also seemed like a great fit because they are looking to grow and would like me to help with the internal functions to help facilitate that growth. While I'm new to the real estate world, I know the business side of things pretty well so there's some real value added that I can bring to the company. It's another chapter of my working life getting underway!!

The stretch of holiday parties and sporting events that started the night before Thanksgiving has finally come to a close....sort of. Actually, it started with our trip to Vegas the weekend before Thanksgiving and runs through Thursday of this week. But, since discretion is the better part of valor, I'm backing out of a bank holiday party on Tuesday. It's just too much!!

Friday we had one of my clients' Christmas party. It was at a super chic, super hipster-dufus type of place in a super hipster part of town (Wicker Park). The place is called Violet Hour and it's one of those places that doesn't have a marked entrance (we literally walked and drove by it three times) and the bathrooms are also not labeled. A waiter pointed me in the right direction and as I turned down a hallway, I was face with four, unmarked, white painted doors. I said to myself, I'm opening a door and going to the bathroom. If it's a coat closet, it's not my problem! Fortunately for the other guests, it was indeed a bathroom. Normally at these places, the wait staff are very pretentious and just awful, but we they were actually quite attentive. The formally normally is pretty bad and overpriced. Now, I don't know about the prices, but the food was very good actually.

While Marissa was sick on Saturday and Laura stayed home to take care of her, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Harris Club for the Bulls game at the United Center by my good buddy Doug. At the Harris Club you get free drinks and food (very good food!). We had a great time and didn't see a minute of the basketball game from our seats. The Blackhawks were on TV, so we were watching them in the bar area. Ha! Great fun. Plus we played some pool. Here's a picture of the Saturday night crew:

Doug is on the right, his son Jonathon on the left and our football neighbor at the Bears games, Gar, in the back.

Speaking of Bears games, if you saw the Monday night game against Dallas, you know it was bitter cold. The game time temp was 9 degrees with an 11 below windchill, but I really didn't know it was that cold. It seemed cold, but not THAT cold. In the 10 years that I've been going to games, I've acquired warm clothing, layers and boots that really do the trick. I didn't even need hand warmers until the second half! Mike Ditka's number, 89, was retired by the Bears in a ceremony at half time and boy did he look cold. His speech was pretty quick, as you might expect. 

Last week our little girl turned 9 months! I feel so bad for getting her sick over the last week. This weekend she actually threw up several times for the first time ever. She was such a trooper though. Despite being so sick, she didn't cry at all while throwing up. We're hoping that she gets back to normal tomorrow. 

And here she is in her latest Bears outfit. Very cute!