New pics of Claire

Colleen | November 27, 2007 | Claire, Family | 1426 words and 2,980 views | 1 comment

Sorry for not posting for so long. Sorry you all had to read about Matt’s new big daddy website thingy… I don’t get it either. Now, on to the most important stuff… CLAIRE. We have done about a million things in the last month-I can’t remember all of them. These pics are all from at least 2 weeks ago, and I have a new set on my camera that I haven’t even uploaded yet. We have been busy traveling- to Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Claire is doing new things everyday whether it’s screaming louder, or scooting farther, it’s all so much fun. You’ll have to read the description on each pic to see everything in order. Claire is sleeping now, so I can’t type much. Enjoy the pics.

Claire sucking on her toe. Can you do that? I didn’t think so.I apparently disrupted Claire’s activities. I think she’s trying to say “excuse me!”Great Aunt Cheryl and lil baby Claire. They got to meet for the first time at Jeff’s last home game a couple weeks ago.Here is my little baby brother, the big football star. They had a special ceremony at the beginning of the game, and my parents go to escort him on to the field.The Esser family after the game!Big Jeff with his big poster at the senior reception.Claire was watching the OU game back at the hotel room, and she really wanted to wear Daddy’s hat! It looks pretty cute on her too.Yummy fingers!!Sitting with my mom’s dog Emma.What’s that thing they say about kids’ favorite toys being the boxes they come in? Um, yeah. Claire’s favorite toys are waterbottles, and the big pink tag they put on her carseat at the airport. At least we’ll save a lot of money.The bad thing about the water bottles is that she can’t really get her mouth around it, and that just makes her mad….Yep- mad at the bottle.I call this “the sneaky look”. I do not think Daddy is going to be the remote control King for much longer. (Claire dressed up for the game, as we headed to a friend’s house for bbq and watching football.)I think this must be the biggest, cutest smile in the whole wide world. Just my opinion.Here Claire is practicing her cheerleader moves. Thanks to those good moves, OU won again!The two cutest OU fans, ever….Ok, so Claire didn’t exactly pull herself up to a standing position, but she will hold on to objects and support herself. Now if she could just put one foot in front of the other… she’ll be moving in no time!We went to visit Grandpa John, to celebrate my birthday.Claire looking cute. She really liked sitting on Grandpa’s lap, but she especially liked trying to pull his mustache!

After Seven Years, I finally moved to a new host…GoDaddy

Matt | November 18, 2007 | Nerd | 505 words and 1,237 views | 1 comment

This is the first time I’ve ever attempted to move Toid.net and Supertoid.com to a new host. The whole process took four days or so, as I also included a domain transfer from BulkRegister to GoDaddy. (Which BTW, if you have never done a domain transfer, it’s an involved process because they want to make sure you know what you are doing and takes a couple of days)

I really had no reason to move as I was pleased with my previous host: WebHostIt but they recently upgraded to MySQL 5 and things went downhill for me fairly quickly. I was suddenly unable to post new posts, Colleen was unable to upload pictures, there were memory errors, not to mention I was paying $11.95/month for 1GB of space. That was the final straw for me to do something about it.

Enter GoDaddy. So, if you Google “GoDaddy and WordPress”, you will find a lot of comments stating that it is hard to get going and next to impossible to import your old MySQL Databases with the 2MB limit on the SQL Import. Thankfully, I found a PHP Script called BigDump that worked wonders importing my database. Once that was done, I did have to go into PHPMyAdmin and make a couple manual database changes where a few file locations (Oh…900 instances or so…lol) were hard-coded to the file location on my old hosts webserver. After changing those, I was able to upload a new custom PHP.ini file that I could specify things like Memory Size and Max Upload Size and I’m one happy guy. No more 8M limit for me! But the best part is…for $6.29/month I get 100GB of space. Yes, 100 times the space for half the price! Now, I can use the extra space as an offsite fileserver for critical files as well. Furthermore, I can manually edit all the CNAMES of my domains without having to pay $10 everytime I want to make a change and I can edit the MX Records as well whenever I want without having to submit a ticket and pay another $10 fee.

I know this doesn’t mean anything to most everybody, but it took an entire weekend to transfer all my stuff over to GoDaddy and I *still* don’t have everything imported into WordPress yet. Once I get that done though, I’ll be sure to let you know, because I know you’re holding your breath…haha…yeah right. At least I got a feature added where it automatically creates a gallery out of the images so that Colleen’s friend Jamie can either click Next or just use the arrow keys on the keyboard to go back and forth between the images! :)

Alright, now it’s time for a break…Colleen will return and upload tons of cute pictures which is why everybody comes to the site anyway now.

Introducing… Mary had a little lamb

Colleen | November 1, 2007 | Claire, Family | 363 words and 1,406 views | 1 comment

It was tough to not give in and buy Claire a cute little $30 (?!?) Halloween costume, but I think we pulled off a costume with maximum cuteness and we didn’t have to spend a dime. She was Mary, and she had a cute little lamb. We skipped trick or treating, and headed to the church to see all the costumes, jumping castes, decorations, and of course to get some candy. Matt collected the candy (thanks honey, it was really yummy) and I carried Claire around. She even participated in some games, but basically she was just cute. It’s great to have a kid now, it makes these holidays so much more fun!
Mary and her lamb.Mary and Aunt Jenn before we all headed to the church.Daddy and Mary playing Plinko to win Mommy some candy!!!Collecting their hard earned candy.Dad and Mary again, jumping castle in back ground.Mary and Mommy.

Anyone want a dog?

Colleen | November 1, 2007 | Misc | 148 words and 1,598 views | 5 comments

Sooner has been very naughty lately. She keeps destroying Claire’s toys, including the purple Care Bear we picked out for her when she was just a few days old. I think she may have to go and live on a farm somewhere…
Broken Care Bear.Blind seal.Sooner Banooner. Anyone making an offer?

My lovely girl

Colleen | November 1, 2007 | Claire, Family | 3249 words and 1,205 views | 1 comment

Well, too much has happened for me to write about everything. Another trip to KS, a play date with Lyla and Val which included a trip to Berry Patch Farms in Brighton, Grandpa Rick came to visit, Halloween, new toys and tricks, lots of drool and of course lots of cuteness.
Claire wants to MOVE so badly. We spent time at a friend’s house Sunday where there were two little boys (9/10 months) crawling and walking all over the place and Claire watched them so intently. She wants to move, as you can see from the pics she can hold herself up on her hands and knees now, but she doesn’t know what to do next. This is really pretty frustrating for her, but I am sure she will figure it out soon. Also, everything goes in her mouth and we are always getting lots of drool kisses. Every once in a while she will just start laughing, and then Matt and I scramble to recreate whatever she found so funny, but that usually doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s the dog, sometimes it’s a funny noise, sometimes it’s a kiss on her cheek.
Also, she loves when we sing to her!!! I tell everyone, if she cries, all you have to do is sing ABC’s and she immediately stops- it’s amazing! We also sing Old MacDonald had a farm (until we run out of farm animals and start singing about lions and tigers), twinkle little star, itsy bitsy spider, little tea pot, and Lilly taught us the little turtle song.
Well, enjoy the pics. The captions should tell a little more of the “Claire Story” for the last few weeks.
:) Colleen

Claire and Daddy watching tv, but Claire wants to eat the channel changer!Claire and her halloween jammies!After I nurse her, Claire always falls asleep on my shoulder while I try to get the burps out! Then, it’s an easy “transfer” to her bed where she sleeps for the night.Claire and Lilly at the football game. It’s hard to pay attention to the game, with these little cuties entertaining us!Grandma Susan bought Claire some cute shades for the game. They are purple and butterflies- Claire’s favorite things!Lilly really likes playing with Claire, and you can see Claire looking up at her. Claire loves her too!Sometimes the football games are too much, and Claire just has to take a nap!!Jeff and Claire at the restaurant after the big game. Jeff is so huge next to lil Claire, but she loves to sit on his lap and grab on to his big fingers.Claire always entertains us back at the hotel room in Topeka. She is talking to Grandma and Jeff, even though she should be getting ready for bed!Sometimes though, she’s just too tired to play anymore, and she gets a little grumpy! Jeff doesn’t know what to do with the crying baby!Everything, even her clothes, Claire tries to put in her mouth!After the long drive back from KS, Claire needed a nice long relaxing bath. So Daddy put on his swim suit and Claire went for a little swim in the big tub! She is really perfecting her back float, and she likes to look upside down at you while on her back.In the tub, and loving it.Look at me, Daddy!Look at me, Mommy!I bundled Claire up one morning so we could go out on the back porch and give Daddy his buzz-cut. Claire looked so cute in her hat!This was Claire’s favorite toy. SHe loved to chew on it, and shake it. However, Sooner got a little jealous and she stole it, took it out in the yard, tore it’s little froggy head off, and we had to throw it away. Bad Sooner!Claire joined us on the porch, but she didn’t last too long. There must be something soothing about chewing on that froggy.We got some hair accessories with an outfit, so I decided to try it on Claire. She doesn’t have enough hair yet, but soon…We took out the Rain Forest Jumperoo, that has been assembled since Claire was about 5 days old and put her in it finally! Her legs can’t touch the ground yet, and she’s not extremely interested in the flashing lights, but she does love the little bug which is the only part of the toy that will reach her mouth. She could just sit there and chew on it all day!We also have the Rain Forest high chair (and the Rain Forest swing and pack-n-play…) and Claire likes to sit in this too. I was putting her in her Bumbo seat while I ate lunch at the table, but since they got RECALLED and she is a little more interested in the toys, she really seems to like the high chair. Again it’s frustrating to her, because she wants to pull everything in to her mouth.The high chair has a tiger that reaches in to her mouth. She loves that, but sometimes she acts like she is trying to bite a piece off!She loves when I spin the big toy!Watching the toy spin!OK, here is the frustration. “Get in my mouth!!”Don’t think we are cruel parents, she looks a little mad but she is always trying to push up on her arms. Almost ready to crawl!Here she is a little happier… and with drool of course!PLaying with the Gym, her fave.She loves the little toys that hang down, but when she gets bored she tries to roll over…… and then she ends up running in to the gym. Silly girl!Grabbing her toes, is her one of her new tricks.Lyla and Claire finally get to play together. Lyla is 6 weeks older and a cutie too!It was hard to take a pic of the girls, and steady them at the same time. But you can see that Claire and Lyla get along just great!Claire and Lyla trying to pose by the pumpkins at Berry Patch Farms… it was hard to steady them and snap pics!Claire and Mommy on the farm on a beautiful fall day!!!They even had some chickens and roosters for us to look at! Claire didn’t really seem to notice…Claire in the cutest outfit later (thanks to the Tredways). She looks good in pink!“The girls” as I call them.. hanging out, playing on the floor together. Actually, it’s more like Claire playing with her cute fluffy toys and Sooner waiting until no one notices her snatch one and run through the doggy door and take it out back.Grandpa and Claire making funny faces at eachother.Grandpa is teaching Claire how to play catch with Sooner. If only Sooner would release the ball.Sometimes we have to pause play time to snap a pic. I think if Claire could roll her eyes, she would do that here, and say - Geez, Mom. Enough pictures!


Facebook LinkedIn RSS Feed Twitter YouTube
Background Image