We spent a week in Cabo San Lucas at the beginning of September.

This was our first time using our brand new timeshare, and we had a fantastic time.   more »

So I headed to an Apple store to get some tech service on the Macbook.  The guy said it was faulty memory - the 2G of ram I've installed was "a cheap brand that an Apple laptop will reject" according to the verging-on-stuckup Apple service tech.  So I stuck back in the original 512M of ram and lo and behold it started to work properly.

For about 5 hours. Then it started to flake out on my again, with various different types of errors occurring seemingly randomly.  Finally ended up with the flashing folder icon again, and this time I *really* freaked out.

I took it into a different Apple store for one last shot.  Really I was heading in to buy a new laptop but I figured why not, let's have another tech look at it before I drop $1200.  So the tech here took one look at the flashing folder and goes "Hmmm, looks like your drive's failing.  I bet it's just not seated properly."  So he pulls it out and reconnects it.  Bam, everything's back to normal - I've even reinstalled the 2G of ram so we're completely back to the way things were.

So it was a false alarm at the end of it all.... *phew*


... though it was exciting to think about getting a new laptop for awhile there...

Uh oh.

When I turn on the Macbook, instead of a spinning icon indicating OS bootup, I get a flashing folder with a question mark.  Looks like my drive just died.

Can I panic yet?

We're in Boston now, with me at my work conference and Sara and Cam staying with Jeremy and Cindy, and after some encouragement/peer pressure from Jeremy and Cindy, we've decided to sleep train Cam so he no longer wakes up every two hours through the night... and of course by sleep training we mean "let him cry until he falls back asleep."

Theory goes that you just let him cry and cry until he falls back asleep.  First night, he'll cry for 45 min before falling asleep, second night, he'll cry for 30 min, third night, he'll cry for 10 min, and then voila, baby sleeping through the night.  That's the theory.

The first few nights I was staying at my hotel so Sara was dealing with Cam on her own.  It's a heckuva lot easier when a) you can close the door to muffle Cam's cries, and b) you can leave the house to go shopping with Cindy while Jeremy is at home and can ignore Cam's cries.  Last night, he cried an hour before falling asleep.  Sara went in to check on him 15 minutes after he fell asleep, and as soon as she entered the room, Cam sat up and looked around for her.  He continued to wake up every couple hours that night.

My conference is finished and I'm staying with everyone tonight, two nights into Cam's sleep training, and it looks like it's working.  Cam woke up and cried for about 15 minutes before falling asleep on his own.  Then, two hours later he woke up but only cried for 5 minutes before falling asleep, and now he's been sleeping for four straight hours!

The tough part lies ahead.  We're heading home tomorrow, and so we'll have to deal with Cam's cries being loud and clear in our open condo.  Also, we will probably have to sleep in the guest bed so that Cam doesn't see us when he wakes up and cries.  Hopefully by Sunday he'll be completely sleeping through the night.

Sara and I hit up The Original Park Restaurant, a Cabo restaurant which serves awesome Mexican food - best tacos I've ever tasted, by a mile.  We were there for an early dinner at 5pm, so we were the only customers in the place.  As a result, we got a lot of attention from the restaurant staff, with no less than five different people serving us in various capacities.  Even the owner dropped by on multiple occasions to chit chat.

They all loved Cameron, talking to him and playing with him a bit.  One of the ladies came up to me and asked "What's his name?"  ... except that she asked in Spanish, and seeing as how I don't speak Spanish I thought she asked for Cam's age, so I held up my index finger and said "One year."  She looked at me, a little puzzled, and said "Juan Yeh?"  I confirmed and then she started to play with Cameron in broken English: "Juan Yeh, Juan Yeh, hi Juan Yeh, you are so cute Juan Yeh."

It was awesome.

We're on our way to Mexico and on our flight we were feeding Cam slices of peaches. Cam dropped a slice onto the floor and he says:

Uh oh!

His first words!  Soooo cute.  I guess the toddlers at his daycare say this so he's picked it up.  It's a great parlour trick, too - we say "uh oh" and says it back.  I got a video of it, will post when I get back from Mexico...