Welcome to the world!

I would like to give a warm welcome to my newest niece, little Ava! She was born March 27th at 10:30 (ish) pm, 8 lbs 8 oz. Congratulations to Erik and Tara!

You can find her babybook-blog here.

This post brought to you by Granddad Friend and my shiny new to me Asus laptop.

Only it's blue, not bamboo

It's purse sized and amazing, and he doesn't use it anymore, and I was talking about how we were planning on buying one before I knew he had one languishing in his office, and I. am. thrilled.  You know you wish you had my in-laws.

I'll be able to use a decently fast computer at the Cottage now when I'm on duty, and have keybord-connected internet even when my darling husband is using our (his) desktop, and be able to answer my emails with more than just one line, and be able to make decent blog posts. Does anybody else have a terrible time writing on anything but a qwerty keyboard of ten-finger capabilities? I delete most everything I start to blog on my phone, because it comes out nonsensical. My ten fingers can keep up with my ideas much better than my two thumbs can.

Speaking of ten fingers and typing, I was thinking the other day about my sixth grade computer teacher, Mr. Mulvaney, and how grateful I am for all those tortuously boring classes of nothing but Mavis Beacon typing tutorials. Ooh, I hated it at the time, from the computer voice to the fact that there were only three games, but the current benefits of having a typing speed of 100 wpm more than outweigh the boredom of years ago.  Just think: if I were to cease my job as houseparent of troubled teenage girls and need an income, I could take dictation.

But then I wouldn't be able to play with my baby all day.

Granddad spoils her and gives her spoonfuls of coffee, but what can I say? He spoils me and gives me laptops.

Downwardly mobile

I scooted all by myself, Mom!

Another turn in the road

After a long hiatus in real posts (because cell phone posts are, after all, only good for pictures), the Friend Family finds ourselves in a position which, if you had told us we would have six months ago, we would not have believed possible. We are so lucky to have gotten jobs as houseparents at the Methodist Children's Home and to be moving back closer to the Mr's family and my parents. We live on campus and for 20 days out of a month we live with the 10 girls in the cottage, have our meals with them, play with them, counsel them, and teach them how to have healthy relationships and productive lives. These are girls who come from troubled backgrounds and whose families have placed them in the program usually because they do not know how to handle them anymore. Our job is to provide them with a loving and stable environment and to guide them into habits which will hopefully break the vicious cycle of dysfunctional familites and abusive relationships. We don't have an easy job - we just got off our first full ten-day shift, and the last five days when we were the only couple on staff were a learning experience like none other - but we're getting paid to stay home and raise our baby and her new big sisters. I don't think we could ask for anything better. They are all excellent babysitters and love to hold Heidi as much as I will let them, though in the beginning I was naturally very cautious when I let them hold her. These are girls the world has given up on, but they have hearts full of love and promise if you can find them under their shells of toughness, aggression, introversion, false faces and the myriad other coping mechanisms they have used to survive.

That said, this may be my first and last blog about the job, because for the sake of confidentiality and the girls' security I can't reveal their identities on the internet, and I'm wary of telling stories of "girl A" and "girl B" in case patterns began to emerge which would allow people who knew them to find their whereabouts. As I said, some of these girls come from very troubled backgrounds and have found a safe haven here. I have to be very careful to guard their safety. It's too bad, because the video I took yesterday morning of Webb Cottage's version of Down By The Bay is really something that must be seen to be believed. There was definitely some headbanging and jumping up and down going on. Have you ever seen a whale with a polka dot tail? ..........DOWN BY THE BAY!!

Good thing the bouncy seat designers were smarter than that.

Me: No you may NOT slingshot her down the hall like Angry Birds!

I love my swing

and OMIGOSH the mobile turns around!

Oh, the iPhone. Oh, the inescapable connectedness.

I got an iPhone for my birthday. That is, we had to get a real-grownup-not-on-anybody-else's-family-plan phone plan, we were up for an upgrade, the Mr. had been sold since he saw the StarWalk app, and I wanted a GPS. And then we saw how much they cost, and then mine became my birthday present. Of course, my anniversary present was a Nook, which the Mr promptly decided was cool and claimed. I'm seeing a pattern with the presents and the technology.

And I'm not gonna lie, there are all sorts of things I love about the iPhone. The Siri app, for instance? I can ask it out loud what sushi restaurants are open nearby right now, and it gives me a list with directions and websites. Not terribly useful if the nearest sushi is 2 hours away, but still awesome.

I'm not so much a fan of how life is turning out now that we have phones that can do so much, though. I got up this morning, and after feeding and changing the baby, I got on facebook. Then I checked twitter. Then I took some pictures and started writing a blog post. My husband is reading all the news stories that have come out with certain key words (SkyGrid, if you were wondering what app could deliver every article that mentions Lindsay Lohan or QE2 or the collapse of the Euro (and I'm going to laugh if this post shows up on his feed because of the QE2 reference)). We could be talking and drinking coffee, I could be knitting his Christmas sweater or we could be playing with our dog in the park. But we're buried in our phones. It kind of makes me nostalgic for when the super sophisticated phones could oh my goodness text.

On the other hand, I can take pictures with this phone, email it in two clicks, write some text and send it to blogger, and you can see my cute baby in many fewer steps than it ever took before. That means more baby pics for you, and that has to be a good thing, right?