Alastair hit 5 months on Thursday, the same day that Amanda gave notice at work. She's going to stay home with him and raise him. I can't tell you how much that excites me. He needs to have mom in his life, and he needs a huge dose of her.
Her last day will be on Bastille Day. Vive la revolution!
But along with the milestone of his 5th monthday came his first foray into parental manipulation: crying for attention at night. We've evidently been putting him to bed wrong. He tends to fall asleep on the breast, or rocking in my arms. I've then been putting him to bed, generally without incident. On Friday, though, he decided to be difficult, and refused to go to sleep until he had been rocked repeatedly.
Saturday was more of the same, as was Sunday. So we pulled out the books and dug through for restlessness, and found what I'd suspected: he was only crying because he knows we'll come in to comfort him. Sneaky little devil.
Tonight we start Ferberizing him. This is the process whereby we change his bed-time routine to putting him down awake but drowsy, rub his tummy, and say "good night, I love you," and walk out. We then let him cry for 5 minutes before going in and rubbing his tummy again, but we do not, under any circumstances, pick him up (unless he's somehow broken his arm). Throughout the night, and indeed over the next few days, the intervals between rubs increases by a few minutes, until he just gets bored with trying to call us.
I can't wait. Hopefully we can break this by the weekend, when we're due to make our 2nd overnight trip to Irvington. I can't imagine importuning my dad with Alastair's "hold me" wails all night.
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I'm rocking out to Fiona Apple right now. I'd forgotten how much I love her music. It's edgy but relaxing, and I love what she's able to do vocally. It was really cool to discover that Johnny Cash was a fan, too (she sings with him on his version of "Bridge over Troubled Waters").
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The Miata is coming on nicely. I have street-able tires on it right now (the Falkens), which I think will also be my track tires in July.
The roll-bar arrived on Thursday, a full two weeks before I expected it. I think I'll try to install it in the driveway, rather than taking the car anywhere. The bar is very large, and transporting it and the car separately seems like a huge hassle. If the weather clears (3 days of on/off torrential downpours, causing traffic delays, transportation shutdowns, and random evacuations on the east coast), I'm going to start stripping the interior parts necessary for the install today.
My harness came with the bar, and seems to be missing some hardware. The eye-bolts didn't come with anything to which they could be attached. There should have been some backing-plates to mount under the floor-board, and they're not even referenced in the instructions, so I'm guessing people fabricate their own. Weird. Hopefully someone mass-produces plates that I can order (and that are inexpensive); I'm not excited about getting someone to weld nuts onto strips of metal locally.
I also ordered a mount to affix the video camera to the roll-bar, so now I can continue filming my runs on the autocross and at the track.
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I really love Amanda. She's my inspiration. That's all, just thought I'd put that out there.
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