He's not walking yet, but if you distract him, he'll stand there for like a minute before he 'realizes' he's standing.

Pretty funny.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is an invaluable resource for parents with small children. How often do you have someone want to 'save you money' and give you their garage sale, or hand-me-down item? The chance to save money with kids is almost always a great thought, as things kids use, especially when infant - toddler, tend to be used for a short amount of time.

Use the CPSC web site to look up product recalls. Check out really important things like cribs, walkers, high chairs, rattles, you know, the stuff you use daily. Let's face it, if there is a flaw with a product, especially related to safety, kids are going to expose it - quickly.

The CPSC site is awesome. You can subscribe to get recalls via email, you can browse the site, or even aggregate their RSS feed! They have concise bulletins explaining why something was recalled, how to return it, and what you're entitled to as a consumer.

Back when our first child was born, our mother in law brought us a play pen she had purchased at a garage sale for pennies on the retail dollar. We were happy to not have to shell out the $80 - $100 for a new one. But after a quick check on it, and finding out four children had died, and numerous other incidents reported, $100 just didn't seem to matter.

And it's not just children's stuff. It's all products. I had a dewalt rechargeable saw, and had to get the battery replaced as the one I had was a fire hazzard. Again, not something you'd know until it was too late.

Check it out.

Some cute video of the kid laughing and cooing. :) If you're here for technical stuff, scroll down. :) Oh yeah, ignore my baby talking... Heh...

Jake slept 7.5 hours last night. While it's for sure a good thing, my internal clock is tuned to that 5 - 6 hour stretch of sleep. I was awake from 4 - 5:30 AM. Ugh. I'm just so used to having to get up @ 4 - 4:30 AM, that my body is just expecting it.

So I laid there, waiting... waiting for that "whaaaaaaaaaa". It never really came. So I drifted in and out during that hour and a half. At 5:30 AM, I finally heard that hungry cry. I got up and fed him. When I was done, I put him back to bed, and I went back to bed, but could not sleep. So I just got up.

I'm gonna be tired today.

Jake is officially 8 weeks old. I don't really know why we have to talk in weeks when it's a baby, but people do. They don't say 2 months, it's 8 weeks, or 16 weeks, it's really kind of silly. Anyways, the big news is that last night, he went to bed @ 10:00 PM and did not wake until 5:15 AM! It was awesome.

To those of you that read without kids, you laugh and probably say, "Whoa.... 5:15 that sucks!" But let me tell you, it's way better than 1:00 AM, and then again at 3:00 AM. 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep is about as good as we can ask for at this point.

We attribute it all to routine. We're essentially training this kid how to behave, based on the methods we employ to create a 'schedule' for him. Around 8:00 PM, we start winding down, we do a quick bottle feed, and then just kind of 'chill' till 10:00. At 10:00 PM we put on some lullaby music, sit in the rocker, do the last feeding, swaddle him up TIGHT, and rock till he's sleeping.

He's then laid down to sleep in his crib, and, if we're lucky, we get seven hours of sleep.

I'll post some more pictures soon.

At 11:59 AM on 6/29/2006, Jake Ryan arrived in Portland, Oregon. He is 7lbs. 4oz., 20 inches in length.

The actual delivery was a short nine minutes, not to belittle the experience, but it seemed like a piece of cake for mom, and baby. Everyone is doing fine, and Katherine is so excited to finally meet her new baby brother.