Let the baby-proofing begin!

Finn’s starting to crawl. Which is simultaneously awesome and awful. I’m proud as punch of the little fella, but now, knowing that he can get from point “A” to point “ohmygoddon’ttouchthat,” I need to start hiding stuff like power cords. Finn’s main play area is in the living room, near the television and all the associated gear, which means a whole mess of wires, remotes and buttons that he’s love to experience first hand.

Admittedly, the set up is a bit more of a mess than usual at this moment, as I’ve been experimenting with a Mac Mini as a home media server, and also had to deal with a replacement DirecTV box recently. Here’s the way things looked when I decided to start documenting my progress.

I had already started to unplug stuff, but you get the picture. It was a mess. You can understand why the kid wanted to crawl over there so badly.

So, first step was to undo everything I had set up previously. I’ve already set up the basic wires to go up through the wall, so I did not have to worry about that. Had to take the display off the wall - thanks to Jenn for helping of course.

Now, I’m a complete idiot… so I made sure to label all of the wires so I would not have to go on a scavenger hunt later on in the day to plug things back in the way they were. Scotch tape served me just fine, but later in the day I found my inner-geek and broke out the label maker. More on that later.

So once I had everything disconnected, I had to determine what I was going to do with the stand we’ve been using. If you look at the first picture, you’ll see a Wii set up on the left hand side of the picture, and an XBOX (plain old XBOX - not a 360) in the cabinet. I had two goals with respect to these items: first was to find a place for the Wii that made sense and was out of the way, the second was to actually hook up the XBOX, as it has been sitting unused since the arrival of the HDTV a couple years ago. Until recently, I have not missed it really, but now with Finn around, I find myself spending more time at home at night and on the weekends, and get an urge for some Halo here and there.

Now it was time for some light modding. Granted, not modding of the A/V gear - I told you, I am an idiot - only the stand on which everything goes. I decided that the gaming consoles would be best inside the cabinet, since they get relatively less use than the DirecTV box, the DVD player and the Mac Mini. I broke out the drill and cut a circular hole in the back of the cabinet, through which I could feed the bulky XBOX video connection.

Next up, after vacuuming the dust out of the cabinet, was placing the surge supressor/power strip on the back of the cabinet. We wanted absolutely NO WIRES on the floor for Finn to wrestle with, which meant that everything had to be would up, zip-tied and strategically hidden behind this little red cabinet. I took a few measurements, put some screws into the back of the cabinet, and hung the power strip vertically. Remember the label maker I mentioned? Yeah. Broke it out and giggled like a schoolgirl at how organized I was making things by labeling which cord went to which device. I realized I was taking things a bit far, but I was enjoying it, and no one else was hurt in the process (to my knowledge.)

This is where I got on a bit of a roll, and stopped taking pictures as I was going. That and the fact that the process of pulling the cables through the wall took about three times as long as it should have, as “someone” needed to eat and be put down for a nap. At this time, I was thinking, “That sounds wonderful.” However, I was determined to finish the project as soon as possible so Finn could get his space back and resume banging small colored plastic cups together and chewing on the corners of cardboard-paged pamphlets. (I’d call them “books,” but really, if it can be read during a 30-second spot, does it deserve such a grandiose moniker?)

Now began the process of plugging stuff back in, and hoping I had my labels right. Every thing was looped and zip-tied, so nothing was going to dangle down from behind the cabinet. Finn approaches things from a pretty low angle most of the time - if anyone is going to find a dangling cord, it’s likely to be him. Once everything was looped up (myself included) I grabbed a couple of electrical wire clips and secured the Apple power brick for the Mac Mini to the back of the cabinet. Once again I enlisted Jenn’s help to move the TV back into place, while I re-connected all of the smartly labeled cables, and said a little prayer. With a bit of a heave-ho, we placed the TV back safely on the bracket and I finished hooking up the Mac Mini.

Of course, I buzzed through all of the inputs to make sure everything was working correctly, and shockingly, it was all good. Plus, no dangling wires (except for the coaxial cable and the ethernet line - no controlling where those pop out of the wall) and in the end, what I was call a darn-nice looking set up. All it took was a bit of patience, time and some zip ties. I probably spent about 3 hours from start to finish on the project, but that was largely due to interruptions of the infant variety.

Hiking with Finn

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Mike Likes…

Finn’s new boots

Posted via web from Mike’s posterous

Sweet Baby Jesus

It’s hard not to think that at this time next year, I won’t be thinking so much about what *I* want for Christmas, but rather what kind of gifts I can shower our 9-month old son with. It’s going to be fun - though I think we’ll need to be careful to not spoil the young lad. Of course, I am sure all parents go into the ‘hood with the greatest intentions, but then when it comes down to it, the spoil the crap out of their kids.

Even cooler will be seeing how the rest of the family responds to the kids. I say “kids” because my brother and his wife are due not 6 weeks after we are. I think it’s going to be awesome to have two little kids growing up at about the same developmental stages. I’m hoping that as cousins, they will be as close as me and my brother were growing up. They are not going to find out the sex of their baby until the delivery - though I may have convinced them to take the same quiz I did a while back.

I am sure my mother will do exactly what she did for my brother and I around Christmas time - total equality. She was always very conscious of what gifts were given and how much money was spent on each one of us, so that one or both of us would not feel slighted. I can honestly say that there was never a case where one of us felt that way. The funny thing is, now that we’re 33 and 36, she still keeps very close tabs on the gifts she gets us each year. Back then, it was pretty easy - they’d just buy 2 of everything, or matching items, like if my brother got a GI Joe, I got a GI Joe. Somehow, my brother always seemed to open his up first - there are some great pictures of me looking frustrated and disappointed with my presents at the age of 5 or 6 - the truth is, I was just not terribly surprised by any of my gifts, since I had just seen my brother open the same thing.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it. Any suggestions for gifts for 9-month old boys for Christmas 2009?

Who knew?

Wow. Call me impressed. Little did I know when I took that little online quiz that it would be RIGHT!

Yup. It’s a boy. There was really no question in the ultrasound. The little bugger was bouncing around more than enough to see lots of detail… fingers, toes, and a little face. Of course, he looked a whole lot more like Skeletor that a little bundle of joy.

Think I am being harsh? You tell me:

Sex on Monday!

Get your mind out of the gutter…

Monday is the 18-week (ish) ultrasound where we’ll find out the sex of the critter growing inside my wife. Both Jenn and I are pretty practical people, so we’ve decided to find out. Friends of ours have taken the “we want to be surprised!” route, and others have found out but kept it a secret from everyone else, but we’re finding out and letting people know. First off, as I mentioned, we’re practical. But beyond that, there’s no way Jenn could keep the secret for the next 5 months.

I found this website (didn’t take much effort… showed up first in Google) that helps you determine the sex of your baby based on a bunch of questions and old wives tales. According to them:

So, we’ll see.

Trade rumors

Anonymous sources have been quoted as having said that Jenn and Mike Hollywood will be trading their carefree, “double-income-no-kids” lifestyle for a player-to-be-named-later. Terms of the trade were not discussed, though it can be safely assumed that nothing from here on out will be done on Jenn and Mike’s terms.

Spy photos of the-player-to-be-named-later (TPTBNL) were obtained. “The kid looks strong… has solid fundamentals. We think we’ve got a potential 5-tool player here” said Mike.

Say Hello to My Little Friend…