The Peanut Tracker

Whew, glad that’s over. The internet is the hood, I tell ya!

So, I’ve vanquished the baddies, upgraded the blog software, and (finally) been removed from Google’s list of bad sites.

Thanks to Andrew and the other folks at Dreamhost for verifying things and being responsive!

-T

Quick update on this…

• I’ve found and destroyed what looks like a hack here on our blog.
• I’ve upgraded our blog’s Wordpress software, which is supposed to solve a vulnerability probably responsible for the problem we’ve had.
• I’ve requested that Google re-review our blog and, if it looks clear, remove the danger warnings.

Look for more updates!

-T

Folks,

It seems that Google is saying The Peanut Tracker is an unsafe website. I’m investigating this and will post again when I find out what’s going on.

Hopefully you won’t be scared away by this, but I wanted to mention it in case you noticed any warnings.

In addition to here, I’ll be posting a status update at http://www.tiznobias.com, which Google is still friends with.

-T

Here’s an email that I sent to all our friends and family we had email addresses for. If I missed you on the email, sorry about that! (And please send us your email address!) There’s so much to say, but, for now, I’ll just post the email.

Dear Friends and Family,

Tania, Elliot and I have bittersweet news to share… We’re moving.

 

Say what?

 

Yep, it’s true. Here’s the rundown.

 

Where?

We’ve accepted a job in San Antonio, TX, with a company called Rackspace (see links below for more about the company).

* http://www.rackspace.com

* About them: http://www.rackspacecareers.com/index.php?page=aboutrackspace

 

When?

I start work there the first week of June, so we will be moving to San Antonio during the last week of this month (somewhere between May 26th through May 30th). It seems so quick, like we have so little time left here. But I suppose moving to a new state, and to a new job, is something that often does leave too little time to make the transition.

 

Why?

We’re excited about jumping on this opportunity, because we think it will allow us to better achieve the goals we have and the direction we want to take in life. My continuing to pursue school is a big part of this. We hope (and plan) for me to eventually try diving into school full time, which means surviving without me working–not working full-time, as least–for period of time. Moving to a place like San Antonio will put us in a much better position toward this end. Also, we like what several of the universities in Texas have to offer. And of course the new job is pretty awesome. Rackspace is very cool company: their values, their culture–they’re just a really good fit for us. Not to mention that I’ll be working with good friends, which is a big plus. And it’ll also be a great opportunity to learn and enjoy doing it.

 

So…

We probably wouldn’t have considered leaving now, except for the convergence of several circumstances at pretty much the same time. So, we’re deciding to “go for it”, knowing that if we don’t, we’d regret not trying. It’s an exciting time for us, even though we’re very sad that we won’t be near our family and many of our friends. However, part of this new job situation is the understanding that we’ll be traveling every quarter to visit family and friends!

 

Please keep us in your prayers, and don’t hesitate to call us, send us emails, mail letters, or even come visit, both before we leave for Texas and after!

 

But hey, we’re not gone just yet! Even though the next month will be a scramble for us, one of our top priorities is to spend time with all of you while we’re still here.

 

With Love,

Tobias, Tania, & Elliot Flattery

http://www.tiznobias.com/family

 

P.s. Once we figure out our new address, we’ll send it to all of you. We’ll have the same phone numbers for a while, I’m sure, but once we get around to changing them, we’ll send them to you all as well.

Sorry about the blog being down occasionally for short periods of time. The hosting company I’m with, Dreamhost, though normally good, has been a bit less than reliable lately. So, if you try to visit here and find the blog to be unresponsive or unavailable, try again later on that day–it’ll just have been another temporary outage.

Hopefully they get their stuff together at Dreamhost!

-T

Holy moly, I can’t believe this is a real product! My faith in humanity has been restored!

It’s the WeeBlock, and it comes in a variety of different styles. The Wee Wee Man is my favorite–because Elliot is our little Wee Wee Man–but I get a laugh from the “Lil’ General”.

I’m not sure I’d pay $9.99 for this when a single baby-wipe would do the job, but I give the WeeBlock full marks for originality!

-T

We’re home!

Tania and Elliot were just discharged this afternoon. The hospital staff were great, but we’re relieved to be home. Home at last!

You know me–I’ve got more thoughts, reflections, and musings than you can shake a stick at. But right now, all that isn’t important. (Besides, there’s too much to process at this point anyway–it’ll take some time.)

Thank you everyone for the visits, emails, calls, text messages, and blog comments! We appreciate your love and support very much! We’re trying to return those messages and get in touch with everyone, but it’s proving difficult to manage much more than the basics of feeding Elliot, changing him, feeding him, holding him, feeding him, etc. And, oh yeah, of course, trying to capture those elusive moments of sleep! I can visualize all the knowing nods of fellow parents. But thank you for your patience. We can’t wait for our son to meet all of you!

Stayed tuned! And yes, pictures to come very soon!

-T

In the absence of anything really interesting, I offer a list of stuff of a random nature:

• Tania’s 34 weeks along now. Full-term is 4 weeks away and the due date is just a couple after that!
• “Teething Bling.” Uh… What? I’ll venture to guess that wearing a little drool-popsicle around the neck isn’t every woman’s dream come true.
• How’s this for ghetto? Although, browsing ParentHacks will find you plenty ‘a’ parent who’s turned to the Tape of Duct for help every now and then.
• Pregnancy breaks you. Well, temporarily at least. Tania’s hands are the latest thing. She’s got that constant tingly feeling now. It’s that temporary pregnant-lady carpal tunnel syndrome, I guess. Sheesh. How come pregnancy doesn’t have temporary benefits instead of drawbacks? Y’know, like, oh, super-duper eagle vision, or the ability to lift a fridge with one arm, or maybe leaping tall buildings in a single bound? I can see it coming, I know it’s going to happen–one day I’m going to end up blurting out, “Listen here, son. Do you know what your mother went through to bring you into this world?“

-T

I recently read an article at BabyCenter.com that examined seven fears commonly experienced by expectant fathers. And interestingly, with the exception of the “paternity fear” (#3), I found these to be pretty accurate for me. Might be worth thinking on if you’re a dude. Or, if you’re not a dude, maybe it’ll help you understand the dude you’re married to.

Here are the seven fears from the article, including my probably overly concise description of each (see the article for the detailed version), and two of my cents (’cause, y’know, I’ve got at least like, oh, 3 or 4 cents):

1. Security fears
   - “Will I be able to protect and provide for my family?”
   - Heck, we live in an expensive area, and we’re a single income family. While I think we’re blessed to be able to live that way in this area, I feel the pressure too. And that’s just the financial aspect; there’s plenty of other things I don’t remotely have figured out, and I’m supposed to be guiding my boy in this world? (See the last half of this mini-column I wrote several months ago.)
2. Performance fears
   - Apparently most guys aren’t very confident that they’ll be strong enough for their wives during labor. Y’know, like am I gonna faint? barf? be useless? Etc. Turns out, according to the author’s interviewing of six hundred men, only one guy ended up fainting.
   - I suppose I sometimes worry that I won’t stay calm enough when labor starts, that I won’t make quick enough decisions, or that I won’t be rock-solid like I think Tania needs. But it’s actually only a minor worry for me. Planning ahead helps too. I know me; I’ll have like nine back-up plans for everything.
3. Paternity fears
   - This one’s interesting. Evidently, roughly half of all of expectant fathers feel a fear that they’re not the real father. But they also don’t feel at all like their wife cheated. So it’s this logically disconnected emotional thing that often has nothing to do with the wife’s character, but it’s a real enough fear for some guys.
   - I haven’t experienced this. Partly, this must be because Tania’s character is stinkin’ superb. But other than that, I’m just glad I don’t feel this.
4. Mortality fears
   - You’ve got responsibility now. You’ve got a helpless little baby who needs you. One expectant father, a race car driver, said it this way: “I don’t have the right to die anymore.”
   - I feel this one. Y’know, ’cause it gets pretty dicey in the office building sometimes! One wrong keystroke and it’s over… But seriously, I can’t leave my wife and boy right now. She needs me as a husband more than ever, and he needs a dad.
5. Fear for your spouse’s or child’s health
   - Pregnancy and child-birth involve risk. Sure, it’s been going on for thousands of years (at least), but bad things happen. Like Theoden said, “No parent should have to bury their child.”
   - This is a big one for me. We do just about everything a couple can do to have a healthy pregnancy, but life’s no guarantee. I worry about Tania every time I hear an odd noise in the other room. Did she fall? Is she sick again? I worry about Elliot every time a doctor doesn’t say the words or make the expression I expect. But, I try to just keep a line open to the Man upstairs, do everything I can here, and just enjoy life.
6. Relationship fears
   - “Men often fear that their wife will love the baby more than anyone on earth — and exclude them from that intimate relationship. It’s a very real fear of being replaced. In so many households, after the birth Mom becomes the gatekeeper, giving her husband access to the baby only when she sees fit.”
   - Part of this I can relate to. Heck, c’mon, let’s be honest here. When you’re married with no kids, you get to do more or less whatever you want together. You’re used to coming home and having your wife’s attention; you’re #1. But soon Elliot’s going to need his Mom–a lot. So it’s more a selfish fear than anything else; I won’t have Tania all to myself anymore.
7. Fears of “women’s medicine”
   - Ok, have you been to an Ob/Gyn hospital area? Yeah, not exactly the first place a guy wants to hang out.
   - Geez. Women have to go through a lot of stuff at the hospital. Also, most guys don’t know jack about women’s medical stuff or the reproductive system. But when you find out there’s a bun in the oven, you get to learn (and see) it all. Hooray. But it’s not just that. From what I’m seeing of hospitals and the medical system, it really doesn’t seem like dads are seen as “equal partners” during the pregnancy process. Sometimes I feel like I’m being “allowed” to participate. But we make sure I’m not excluded from any decision or part of the process. Our hospital is actually fairly good about this, too. But I still can’t shake the feeling. Maybe it’s our culture. Maybe the system has been shaped, at least in part, by the unfortunate reality that there’s so many mom’s having to go it alone as a parent. I dunno, there’s a lot to think about there…

Interesting stuff to ponder, anyway. Know thyself! Otherwise, you can’t change thyself.

-T

P.s. If you’re a guy, all the pastel colors and baby-product ads may cause your American male reflexes to close the browser window, so here’s the printer-friendly version of the article, which is a little less cluttered with unmanliness.

Here’s our little son in 3-D! Except, unlike Captain Eo, you don’t need any special (and painful) glasses. We had these taken earlier this month at one of those specialty places, but I’m just now getting around to posting them (sorry!).

These are pretty much the best photos, though we have a ton more and a DVD video recording of the whole session. But the video is pretty choppy, so that part is lame. Our appointment was around dinner-time, which is when Elliot often sleeps, so we were a bit worried he’d be sleeping and therefore not making all the funny faces and acrobatic maneuvers for the camera. And, unfortunately, that’s how it happened. We did get some decent shots of his little face (see below), but that’s about all we got. It looked like he was sleeping during most of the 30-minute visit, curled up in a little ball, and often hiding his face behind his feet. (He’s a flexible little guy!) So, the ultrasound tech, some under-trained 20 year old, had a difficult time getting good shots of Elliot’s face. He likes his sleepy-time. See, they (foolishly) didn’t tell us that it would’ve been best for Tania to drink some cold juice prior to the visit. We know they should’ve told us this because (1) about ten minutes into the session they asked if we had any cold water to help Elliot wake up. Uh, yeah, thanks a boatload for the late advice. And (2), we later read that juice help wakes up the baby (its the natural sugar, I assume) and that other 3-D ultrasound places advise this before you come. Sigh. Anyway, we still got some good photos of little Elliot’s mug, and that’s what mattered to us most.

Grandma’s, grandpa’s, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, hope you enjoy!

Click any of the pictures to go to the Gallery, where you can see bigger versions of these photos.

This one is my personal favorite. Some folks are saying he looks just like his daddy! A chip off the ol’ block! (I must be getting old to have said that…)

It’s hard to tell for sure, but he may be sticking out his tongue in this one… Either that or he’s starting to pucker his lips.

Chubalub!

His Aunt Ingrid has already nicknamed him “Marshmallow Man”.

They said he has my chin and my nose… You can see his little chin here. I think he’s got his mom’s nose, at least from the front, and maybe some facial structure.

And here’s a side profile shot.

-T

P.s. My complaints aside, this was so worth it! Depending on the package, it really isn’t all that expensive, either. And we get to keep these captured moments forever! Think about it–for anyone not born in the last few years, those nine months are a part of your life that you never got to see in any detail; they’re basically lost to you. But now we get to show Elliot a little bit of that part of his life, a little bit of what he looked like before he was born. And I think that’s pretty darn cool.

P.p.s. Oh, and If you’re from the school of thought that says, “wait ’til they’re born to know their gender, to name them, etc”, then, well, I don’t understand ya, but I got much love for ya! And I hope you enjoy our journey anyway! Unless you’re that one janitor guy at my work who doesn’t take off his latex gloves before he uses the door handle to exit the bathroom after cleaning it. If that’s you, dude, we gotta talk.