the ridlehoover family blog

Grandma Carolyn and Grandpa Mo are up from Sacramento, visiting Hunter & Grace.  As you can see, we put them right to work! So far, Hunter is flirting with his grandma... And, Gracie is giving grandpa a good once over... More pictures at our web gallery.

Yes, it has.  Both Hunter and Grace are doing well.  I weighed them at bath time tonight.  Hunter is gaining on Grace!  Hunter now weighs 9 pounds, 5 ounces.  And, Gracie weighs 9 pounds, 15 ounces!

After a couple of full days of using Flock, I've come up with a couple of niggles:

1. Flock seems to prefer it's formatting to the formatting on my blog.  I wish it didn't.  I don't want to have to use my control panel to "fix" every post I write.
2. Flock seems to prefer Technorati tags to the tags built into my blog engine.  I like the idea.  I just wish it would use both.

On the plus side, the blog editor did correctly handle the Categories used by Graffiti.  I wasn't expecting it to.  But, as it stands, these issues will probably prevent me from using the Flock blog editor for any serious blogging.  But, the rest of the browser is pretty darn cool.  I especially like the "my world" view for the sheer volume of information it presents.

Flock is a very cool new browser based on the same Mozilla bits as the more familiar Firefox browser.  Why should you care?  Flock integrates the Web 2.0 experience of sites like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube directly into the browser in an incredibly intuitive way.  I've only been playing with Flock for about 30 minutes, but it has already earned a spot on my dock.  In fact, I'm writing this blog post using Flock's integrated blog post editor.  This after importing my feeds from NewsFire and scanning them in about 15 minutes - unheard of, for me. Tags: technology

About once a year, or so, I redo the family web site.  It gives me a chance to pretend I still write web code.  And, it keeps me off of World of Warcraft, of which Jill is not so fond. Now that we're at home with the twins, I thought this would be a perfect time to update the family site.  But, frankly, I wasn't looking forward to it.  I'd been using Telligent's Community Server.  And, while it worked.  It sure seemed like overkill.  And, skinning the site wasn't exactly easy.  To get the look and feel I wanted, I was about to make the switch to Wordpress. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled on Telligent's new GraffitiCMS - a product built for small sites with a focus on blogging.  And, now that the transformation is nearly complete, I can heartily recommend Graffiti.  It does everything I need out of a content management / blogging engine.  And, it's extremely simple to setup and use.  Graffiti's mix of ASP.NET, simplicity, and the very cool Chalk templating language kept me from having to learn everything from the ground up.  Kudos to the Graffiti team for an excellent product!

Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony. ~ Mahatma Ghandi

So, we're a month into this parenthood thing, and one thing is abundantly clear:  A burp is the cork holding in the hiccups. And, yes, you can quote me on that.

Hunter & Grace had their one month checkup today.  Both passed with flying colors.  Dad was a little concerned about Gracie not eating as much as her brother.  But, she's gained over an ounce a day since the two week checkup.  So, she's doing fine.  And, Hunter?  Well, he's a little eating machine! Hunter is now 8 pounds, 5 ounces and 20.5 inches.  Gracie is now 9 pounds, 6 ounces and 21.25 inches.  Weeds they are.  Beautiful, flowering, happy little weeds! Gotta run.  One of the weeds is crying.

I weighed Hunter and Grace last night before their baths.  Hunter is now 11 pounds, 7 ounces - up 3 ounces in three days.  Grace is 11 pounds, 8 ounces - up 2 ounces in three days.  At this rate, Hunter and Grace should weigh the same on Memorial Day.

<< Hunter O'Neil Ridlehoover was born today at 8:21 AM.  He weighed four pounds, fifteen ounces and measured seventeen and three quarters inches.  Hunter's name comes from his parents' middle names, which are both family names.  Hunter is Jill's mother's maiden name.  And, O'Neil goes back four generations on Alan's side.

>> Sarah Grace Ridlehoover was born today at 8:22 AM.  Gracie weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces and measured nineteen inches.  Gracie's name comes from her parents' maternal grandmothers.  Jill's grandmother was Sarah Doris.  Alan's grandmother is Annie Grace. Glutton for cute baby pictures? Get your fix.