3 year checkup

Sly Devil
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Hunter went in for his three year checkup this week and we found that he had jumped up above 50% on his height and weight chart. If he stays on his current path, it looks like he'll end up between 5'11" and 6'. The doc was also impressed with his cognitive development because Hunter met all the milestones for a 4 year old: counting, letters, recognizing shapes, and naming colors. Of course every parent thinks their kid is smarter that the rest, but this validates all the work that Sarema has been doing with him at home.

Happy Birthday Sarah

First Birthday Cake.JPG
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

We celebrated Sarah's first birthday this week. She participated in the time-honored tradition of wearing as much cake as she ate. According to the pediatrician, she's a big kid on the high side of percentiles for height and weight. Because she's my daughter, her head size is off the growth chart completely. The one thing Sarema and I are surprised about is that she still only has two teeth. By his first birthday Hunter had all but four of his teeth.

New iMac for Sarema

On Sarah's birthday, we went down to the local Apple store (it's nice to finally have a "local" apple store) and bought Sarema a new 20-inch iMac to replace her ancient Apple G3 desktop Mac.
This new computer has a large hard drive for all her pictures and cleaned up all the cable beneath/behind her desk. Now there is only one cable on her desk... the power cord. The most stunning change, though, is the iMac's monitor. It's gorgeous: pictures and graphics appear crisp, clear, and vibrant. We even tested out the computers built-in iSight to share Sarah's birthday party with my parents via iChat.

Back from Annual Training

IMG_8784_2.JPG
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

It's been awhile since I posted.
I just returned from 2 long weeks at Fort Irwin in the California Desert. My battalion was there for our Annual Training, where we ended our time by firing about 150 live artillery rounds over the heads of infantrymen and tankers. As the second in charge of the battalion, my focus was planning and preparing for the exercise over the last three months and supporting the guns with ammo, fuel, chow, etc. during the execution.
A brigade-level CALFEX or Combined Arms Live Fire Exercise is graduate-level stuff for active duty guys and unheard of for national guardsmen. We were in over our head from the get-go, but we did get a passing grade on the exercise. Although we didn't execute things as fast as i would have liked, we finished the CALFEX with all of our rounds landing in the right spot and no infantry bubbas dead. All in all, it was a successful two weeks.
More pictures from AT are on my flickr account (link is to the right on top)
The picture to the right is from the "stable call" that we attended during the last night of our annual training. Apparently it's a cavalry tradition to get together periodically in your hats and spurs and reflect on a job well done.
On the home front, I returned to see Sarah walking all over the house on her own. I got to see her take 6 steps in a row before I left and she refined her skills while I was playing with guns in the desert.
Now, it's back to work as a computer geek to catch up on what I missed while I was gone.