New Babies, New Computers, and Old Dogs

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, just been really busy as I'm sure you can understand.

Things have been going absolutely great with the baby so far, much better than I expected actually.  I have to admit I was pretty nervous about how the baby would affect my life and my routine but I think we got lucky.  Cooper is pretty quiet and just sleeps a lot, and really only gets fussy when he's hungry.  I also never realized how much I would enjoy having the kid around.  Everything about him is just so great and I just love spending time with him and seeing him do things, even though he really doesn't do much yet.  And yeah I know I'm probably a little biased but he's so darn cute it's hard not to want to take care of him and be there for him.  I'm not really much of a "baby person" normally but it really is different when it's your own son.

Cooper wondering why daddy is resting his head on him:

Family pic:

Doing one of the things he does best:

Me hanging out in the basement with the baby and the dog (more on the dog later):

And just for fun, here's a pic of me when I was 4 days old:

On the non-baby front, I finally stepped into the modern age of online poker and bought a new computer with a 24" monitor.  I know it's not a super baller setup compared to a lot of the online grinders, but it's a big step for me, because I've been playing on a laptop ever since I started playing online.

My old laptop is there on the left side of the picture.  Actually the story is a little better than that, I first bought this computer about 10 days ago because my old laptop was having some issues and I didn't think it was stable enough to play poker on anymore.  So I bring this computer home and it won't boot up because it doesn't have Windows installed properly so I try to reinstall Windows and it still won't boot up properly.  Finally I have to take it back to Best Buy and have them reload everything on it.  When I take it in they tell me it might take up to 3-4 weeks to fix (to reload Windows properly, wtf?).  So at this point I'm on tilt so I end up buying another laptop while I'm there because I still need a computer to play on while my other new computer is getting fixed, and I don't trust my old laptop enough to play on.

Fast forward about 5 days and they call and say my new computer is ready to be picked up (still not really sure why they quoted me 3-4 weeks originally)  So I bring it home and I still have my new laptop hooked up. That night Deb and I are drinking wine and I accidentally knock my glass over and it gets all my new laptop and soon after smoke starts coming out of it and it reeks of a burnt circuit board so I obviously try to turn it off as quickly as possible.  Luckily I bought the warranty so they should fix it or replace it, but they said 2-3 weeks this time, but with them who knows how long it will really be.


Back to our dog, Peanut.

We've had him for 7 years (Deb actually got him just before she and I met each other) and he's been a great dog around us.  Basically he's just a little snugglebug and he licks a lot.  He doesn't shed or pee in the house or anything like that, and he's pretty easily trainable.  The only big issue with him is that he tends to nip at people's ankles when he's nervous or being protective of us, so we have to watch for that.  But really that was easy enough to guard against in general because we'd just keep him out of situations where he'd be nervous, or obviously on walks or whatever we'd just keep him close to us.

The problem is now that we have a baby, it's so hard to say what he might do.  He's actually been really great around the baby so far and has been sniffing him in a curious, non-aggressive way.  The biggest problem so far has been that when the baby is on our lap, he gets really jealous and will try to nudge his way in.  We've kind of solved that though by making him stay on the floor and he's listened really well so far.  I don't really think there are any issues to worry about for now, but there will definitely be issues once the baby starts moving around on the floor.  Eventually the baby will do something that Peanut doesn't like and Peanut will nip at him.  When he's nipping at an adult's ankles, the worst that can happen is the person gets a scratch, but if he did that to a baby, who knows what could happen.

So in the last few days, Deb and I both came to the realization that we're probably going to have to get rid of him soon.  She's cried about it a few times and I actually cried a little with her once (I can't remember the last time I really cried about anything, probably been since I was a kid), just because it's so sad because we know the dog really means well, it's not like he's a mean dog or anything, but it's hard to imagine him being compatible with the kid.  It's really not his fault or anything.  So we're trying to look for a new home and we're getting a dog trainer to stop by to see if they can help us in the meantime.

Here's one more pic of Peanut humping the PokerStars monkey:

I actually have more I want to blog about but I'll save it for another post in a few days.