Well, we signed a lease on a condo in Urbana / Champaign. May 20 is the magic start day of the lease; though her job doesn’t start till June 16. I suppose we may have jumped the gun, but honestly every other place we were looking at was just not nearly as good as this one. We didn’t look at a whole lot; maybe 5 or 6.

The landlord is a nice Korean lady I met with, who actually owns the condo. She also is co-owner of “Am-Ko” grocery, a Korean grocery store there in Champaign. We went to her store to make copies of the lease & stuff, and she gave us a free snack & pear juice. and some chopsticks we need for home and were gonna buy. =)

It’s 1400 square feet, and has a one car garage. the whole thing is up on the 2nd floor(Except for the garage & entryway, of course), but since UIUC is paying our moving costs, doesn’t matter!

Oh, and it’s literally FIVE MINUTE WALK to our future Day Care provider!! That’s gotta be worth something, eh?

1. Not our building exactly, imagine this building but without the landscaping, and we enter the door on the right.

Another semi-accurate picture; this shows the back of a similar building, and the pool which we have access to; but our building faces a parking lot with another building across from it; and our balcony looks at a four lane road. whooo!

This is the “Half Bedroom”, it has a sloped ceiling, kinda low, but with a skylight. Good for a computer room or office type place!

The Kitchen. Notice there are NO KNOBS on the cabinets… some new style by which to confound me? I may just install them anyway…. and there’s no pantry either, so I may just go up to Grandpa’s & build a big ol’ pantry with him! It’s only big enough for a little breakfast nook type area.

The main living room. This is what you see looking out from the kitchen sink. The fireplace is JUST like the fireplace in my current house; wood-burning. As earlier stated the balcony looks down on the nearby road. The space to the left there is sort of an alcove for like a computer desk / tv / whatever.

Second bedroom. Not much to say here. it’s a room with a closet and a window. woot!

Guest Bathroom. woot.

Master bedroom. double-sized closet, big window!

Master bathroom. Notice the strange alcove in the corner; a deep space next to the sink. Not sure what that’s gonna be for, but Derezz says, “FOR JUNK!” I hope she’s not right… but she probably is! Either that or a giant sized stuffed clown. Or maybe a server rack. all that shower humidity would be great for a computer!

Honestly I’m thinking, some zen-like plant area with natural lighting, a miniature waterfall, some bonsai, etc.

Or junk.

So, where is this place? Well, I forgot the exact address; but here’s a Google Map of the location:

View Larger Map

Trying out the new WordPress Gallery.

Each day a new milestone occurs.

Yesterday we played "Stand up", where she stood on Daddy’s tummy and I’d help her stand up whenever she pushed off with her legs. she seemed to enjoy this game, so I’ll play it more with her so she can exercise those little legs more! Of course she can’t even roll herself over yet.

But another first, was that I saw her actually sleeping on her side for the first time. It was right after breast feeding, a temporary thing.

Yesterday there was a FIRE in the building I work in!

Around 3pm, my co-worker Matt and I heard a beeping noise. We thought it was a computer, but I got up & walked around and realized it was coming from the hallway. Soooo, we did the begrudging, cynical exit of the office, and the fire trucks and cop cars were going all crazy to get here! Well, they roped off the building, and as more overheard conversations occurred, come to find out that a projector in a conference room on the 3rd floor had caught fire and burned up (mostly smoked up, really) the conference room and the hallway.

And what good would a story be without some pictures to go along with it?

Hi everybody, man, it has been a while since I have sent out a Mia Update!! Babies grow up so FAST in these first few weeks, and we’ve been so busy, that I’m sure I’ll forget something. But let me try to get the highlights:

The other day, I suddenly noticed that her eyes had turned a wee bit asian. This was an OVERNIGHT change.

Second, she had her first puke Monday morning… poor thing! Well, she was probably fed a bit too much in the morning as we were getting ready to leave for work… then she was placed in an automatic swing, and, well, I guess it acted like a butter churn. She made a noise that I had not ever heard before, and then, GUSH! Poor thing!

She doesn’t sleep through the night yet, and no sign of when that’ll happen; but she did go a whole five hours last night! She’s still only six weeks old, though; so who knows when she’ll be ready for that. Giving her baby cereal might help.

We shaved her head at 30 days, which, I guess, is some sort of chinese tradition. I was not aware of this till the day my wife said it was happening. So I busted out the clippers and did a horrible job of shaving our poor baby’s head. I now call her Curly. Grandma Jenkins was sad to find this out… We decided that all baby traditions have to be on the table before we go and do any crazy stuff again.

Well, that’s all I can think of right now. Keep an eye on the gallery for new pics, I’m sporadically adding more all the time.

In other baby news, Powell’s baby was born. More details on that later.

as of 3-3-08 1:30pm should be finished the upload of 101 new pics. Many are blurry and crappy; but I don’t have time to sort them and ironically in this day and age it is less trouble to move them Whole Hog up to the photo gallery than it is to meticulously pick out the good ones. Besides, in thumbnail view, they actually look sort of OK.

TODAY she is beginning to SMILE in response to our playing! Biggest milestone yet!!