I’m not lying. We really don’t have a lot to discuss — only 2 Updates — 1 on Pets & 1 on Crafts.

Pets: Some of you may remember the post from a couple of weeks ago where we started to get Baby Stuff, and our resident cat-in-the-box, David, decided to test drive the bouncy seats. He has also decided to test-drive the changing table and the carseat. Not quite sure what it is, but maybe he thinks he’s the baby…

Crafts: Over the last couple of weeks, I was able to finish a couple of long-standing projects.

First — my girlfriend Julie asked me to make a custom patchwork quilt for her brother Gregory. Gregory is autistic, and loves Snoopy. So the quilt uses a bunch of different fabrics (including corduroy and waffle-weave) and Peanuts fabric to make a special quilt for him.

Second — Andrew got his first quilt. It’s blues, greens, and yellows. And while it’s not jungle-themed, like the nursery, it is bright colors that hopefully we can use later to help him learn a little more about the crazy world we live in. Don’t worry — the pets think both quilts are comfy — all 3 of them have “test drove” them for coziness and give them their approval.

So tonight was a sort of slow night, and I ended up spending some time checking out baby names.

I looked to see what were the top ranked names by year, and believe it or not, the Social Security Administration has a pretty decent page to look up name popularity. Using data from their website, I took our families’ first names, and plotted them in popularity over the last 50 years:

Andrew is the only name that has consistently gone up in popularity over time.   All of our other names have taken a drop; some even considered a nosedive.  Heather, in particular fad-ish — extremely popular in the 70’s-90’s; peaking in popularity (3rd) in 1975.

Update to the MixTape for Andrew Post..

Amazingly enough, everyone’s comments helped us to get 7 albums’ worth of music! 4 albums are actual purchased compilations, 3 were ones that were mixed from various places. Thanks again to everyone who helped out. If you want to add more, that’s great. I still haven’t burned the CD’s, so I am more than willing to consider other songs too…

Here are the albums, sorted by artist — not in playlist order:

1 & 2) For The Kids & For The Kids Too: Both of these were charity albums done by indie folk & rock bands. There are a lot of very cool songs on both albums. I actually purchased these about a year ago for my Godson & his twin to listen to. The first album’s proceeds goes to VH1’s Save the Music; the second to the Lili Claire Foundation, which helps those born with neurological disorders.

3) Jack Johnson: Sing-A-Longs & Lullabies for the Film Curious George. Just a lot of fun.

4) The Best of the Irish Rovers: The Irish Rovers are a Canadian-Irish folk band, and their most popular or well-known song is probably The Unicorn. One of my favorite albums growing up, and hopefully it will be for Andrew too.

5) Mix Tape #1: Fast songs that are not necessarily kid-related.

Barenaked Ladies — Little Tiny Song
The Beatles – Octopus’s Garden; When I’m Sixty-Four; Obladi-Oblada (life goes on)
Bob Marley — Three Little Birds
Cat Stevens — If you want to Sing out, Sing out
John Denver — Garden Song
ELO — Mr. Blue Sky
Guster — Great Escape; Happy Frappy
Len — Don’t Steal my Sunshine
Live — Love Shines (A Song for My Daughters About God)
The Monkees — Daydream Believer
Neil Diamond — Porcupine Pie
Simon & Garfunkel – Me & Julio (Down by the Schoolyard); 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
REM — Shiny Happy People
Talking Heads — Nothing but Flowers

6) Mix Tape #2: Fast songs that do have kid themes or aren’t traditional songs:

The Muppets: Mahna, Mahna; C is for Cookie; The Alligator King (SEVEN!)
Cab Calloway: Minnie the Moocher
Disney: Be our Guest; Bear Necessities; The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers; Under the Sea; You’ve Got a Friend in Me; The Hokey Pokey
Harry Belafonte: Jump in Line
Jimmy Buffett: Mr. Spaceman (w/Gonzo); Carribean Amphibian (w/Kermit)
The Sound of Music: The Lonely Goatherd
Mighty Mighty Bosstones: Zig Zag Dance
They Might Be Giants: Birdhouse in your Soul; Istanbul (not Contstantinople); Particle Man; Fake Believe; Can You Find It; Clap Your Hands; Lazyhead and Sleepybones; Why Does the Sun Shine (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)

7) Mix Tape #3: Slow Songs & Lullabies:

Alison Krauss: Baby Mine
Barenaked Ladies: When I Fall; When You Dream
Billy Joel: And So It Goes; Lullaby (Goodnight, my Angel)
Dan Fogelburg: Longer
Disney: Winnie the Pooh
Guster: I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today
Irish Rovers: Puff the Magic Dragon
Israel Kamakawiwo’Ole: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
James Taylor: Sweet Baby James
John Denver: Annie’s Song; Rhymes and Reasons
The Sound of Music: Edelweiss
Kermit the Frog: Rainbow Connection
Neil Diamond: Song Sung Blue
Paul McCartney: Little Willow
REM: Daysleeper
Rufus Wainwright: Hallelujah

As you may have read about, we’ve been busy updating the nursery for Andrew’s arrival. Earlier this summer, we purchased some shelves to hold knick-knacks in the nursery. We finally got around to putting them up today. And we had quite the surprise…

We noticed when we purchased them that the boxes were not quite the same. Same exact UPC/SKU & barcode, just different font.

This didn’t really surprise us, there are always different batch numbers, and since the SKU was the same, it would be the same make and model, right? Wrong. Upon further inspection, we found that there were a number of differences between box “A” and box “B”. Including:

• Box A was made in Swaziland, Box B in China.

• Size of dowels and dowel holes were different– bigger in Swaziland.

• Screw/slider mechanism and drywall anchors different between the 2 boxes. It also appears the triangular “supports” have a different router edge to them.

• Swaziland appears to still believe in better paint jobs, and1/2 painting the sides of things that will not be seen by the naked eye. China appears to no longer believe in painting, and instead chooses to use a wallpaper method. Swaziland shelving does appear to have mitered edges. Hard to tell with the Chinese Wallpaper treatment. Apparently this Chinese Quality is part of the “greater good”.

• Even the routered edges of the shelves themselves appear to be different. Apparently getting the same router bits in a monarchy vs. a communist country is a problem.

As an aside, the resident expert handyman (Rob) says that the Swaziland-style shelves installed better. The Chinese ones fell apart and the screws stripped out of the supports when he tried to install them.

Update Sunday:  We went to Home Depot again, to exchange the Chinese shelf with one from Swaziland.  Home Depot was luckily very accomodating, so we did not have to go on a long diatribe about the differences in intercontinental manufacturing techniques.  We were told to go select the same shelf, and an exchange would be granted.

We went to the aisle where the shelves are stocked.  There were 3 shelves remaining in white.  One from Swaziland, another from China, and a third from Vietnam.  Vietnamese manufacturing looks very similar to Chinese shelving.  I’m thinking it again comes down to being Commie/Socialist.  So we stuck with the African monarchy — we’ll tell Andrew this goes with the Jungle/Safari theme until he’s a little older & we’ve given him an education on different forms of governance.

We then tried to learn more about our international options.  If we wanted walnut-colored shelves, we had another source — Brazil.   I tried to search for more information on the “Perfect Home” brand (which is distributed by Homer TLC; the parent company of Home Depot aka Agent Orange), but there was nothing on the web that would provide more details about where the Perfect Home company manufactures their products.

So Lesson Learned — And buyer beware.

I decided that it would be fun to make a mix tape for Andrew.

I’m looking for songs that would be fun to play in the car, that are kid-friendly, but also are good ones for adults to listen to.  Enough for 1-2 mix CDs would be great. 

Some examples I thought of are:
– When I’m Sixty-Four  = The Beatles
– Octopus’s Garden = The Beatles
– Mr. Blue Sky = ELO (you may have heard it used in a VW commercial)
– Daydream Believer = The Monkees
– Porcupine Pie = Neil Diamond (yes its real, and yes I like it; the song, not the pie)
– Song Sung Blue = Neil Diamond
– Shiny Happy People = R.E.M

If you have ideas, please send them my way…

Karen & Kevin were kind enough to let us load up our trunk with items the twins no longer use, when we visited them this past weekend. Besides clothes and other supplies, they sent us home with 2 infant bouncers. We set them up last night in the living room while we sorted some other stuff in the nursery. Apparently David finds them very cozy.

Either the swing or the cat attracted the ‘Tude. Buster apparently wanted to give David a kiss; they were nose to nose. I almost caught it on film, but the red-eye reduction was on and the flash scared the buddies.

We added some information to our Baby Page.

You can find out more about how things are going on the “Baby Preuss Timetable” page.

A large thank you to all of the current parents who are offloading their baby stuff to us.  We appreciate it, because the more stuff we get now, the less we have to buy, and the longer Heather can stay home with Andrew on unpaid leave.

A lot of you have asked how the summer has gone.  We have been pretty active — weddings, camping, etc.  But definitely not as busy as other summers.  The heat hasn’t been too bad, and I haven’t gotten swollen — but the dog days of summer haven’t showed up yet.  So wish me luck!!

We’d love to hear from you, so if you’re in VT and want to stop by, we’d love to see you.   Or drop us a line to chat.