SNOW DAY!

Don't Carpe Diem

I just had to repost this because it is so well-written and so well captures the beauty of not only parenting but of doing anything that is challenging and exhausting but so deeply meaningful:

Don't Carpe Diem

Winter Family Gathering

The Weisbrod/Arnow family came to Seattle for the holidays. Sam was so excited to have a daily entourage. He met some local waste engineers and got to drive the truck...

At the park with Dad. 

Sam likes to climb the play-structure, push the merry-go-round and go down the slide.

When I got home from work, I got to sit back and enjoy some family time... Sam is learning how to cuddle some, but mostly he likes to run around.

Snuggling with Abba and Aunt Alexis.

Uncle Corey shows Sam how to light the Menorah.

Sam likes to share his milk with us and giggle.

He's learning to give kisses, but he's still pretty shy about it. This took me by surprise!

Playing with Kyle's childhood Cabbage-patch Kid!

The family ventures forth on Christmas Eve to the Ballard Locks where the boats pass between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. When the salmon spawn, you can watch them climb a ladder, too.

Walking in the neighborhood and another visit to our local park.

Alexis makes a killer cheesecake!

Christmas morning: all Sam really needs is a box to play in!

All dressed up, preppy but with attitude (note the skulls on the sweater), playing with his new "alphaberry."Better this than mom's phone...

Cups and spoons!

Steve has made a tradition of getting the family matching gifts each year. This year it was hats and socks!

Making latkes Christmas night. Steve called me a good "babooshka," meaning Jewish- housekeeper/cook. But Urban Dictionary also says that "Babooshkas are cantankerous old ladies in Russia who work in public buildings doing more or less nothing at all."

Go figure.

Sam so entranced with a toy, he falls over:

Playing with cups and spoons:

Talking with Steve (maybe he's telling Sam what a good Babooshka I am.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fall

Fall in Seattle means mostly cloudy days and darker nights. We've been spending more and more time indoors, trying to keep Sam entertained. He loves to move around, whether pulling toys behind him or taking a seat in a laundry basket for Mom to push around the floor. Spending time cuddled inside also means more time for reading. Sam likes to pick out books and bring them to us. He is learning how to sit in our laps for story time, but occasionally he flops himself on top of us instead (see very beginning of last video).

He loves to point everywhere and has trained us well to identify all sorts of objects on command. When quizzed, he can identify many things, like the appliances in the kitchen or family members photos on the refrigerator.

Life's a Beach!

At the end of October, we went on a family vacation to Florida. All of Sam's grandparents joined us, too. It was really nice spending easy time together, enjoying the sun and sand and, of course, Sam. He got a lot of practice walking on the beach. He would walk and walk without ever looking back to see if someone was with him. He is so fearless!

I didn't take that many pictures since we had the Papparazzi with us (i.e. Karen and Steve), but here's a sampling:

I enjoyed getting to savor my coffee at the grandparent condo while Sam got his fix of lovin'

The sand felt like flour!

One of two cloudy days all week:

Ahoy, I spy a ship over yonder!

 Sam loves pretending that anything is a phone. He'll hold it up to his ear and imitate us. But of course, he prefers the real deal. Here, looking slightly sinister, he's got my droid in hand:

The Siesta Key beach was beautiful:

My mom role-models, Karen and Beth:

We celebrated Sam's 1st birthday together and played with the decorations:

Stackin buckets:

Changes...

So, despite our best attempts to settle in to life here in Seattle, it seems that life has other plans in store for us. A little over a month ago my company, EW (I'm not using any of the companies actual names because I don't want this to be searchable), was bought by a company called DG. For employees there are good acquisitions/mergers and there are bad ones. You may recall that EW was purchased about 18 months ago by a company I'll refer to as LL. At the time, I had a little equity in EW and so this purchase was good. I received some cash and equity from LL in the deal. We were one of LL biggest customers prior to the acquisition and it didn't seem like LL wanted to change much about us. They were mostly trying to set themselves up to be bought themselves (which would have also been great).

Well, it turns out that planning to be bought is not much of a plan at all. The purchase didn't work out for them, EW didn't grow as projected and we were behind on delivery of key product that would have helped revenue. After their stock took a big hit in the first half of the year, LL quickly sold EW to DG in August at a huge discount. LL had purchased EW for $110 million and sold it only 18 months later for $66 million (ouch!).

This seems like a logical deal for DG. DG specializes in TV advertising and content distribution and over the past 18 months had purchased two of our competitors UC and MM. I won't bore you with the details of the industry, but EW, UC and MM each have their strengths, with EW being known for our high touch service team (the team I ran up until I moved to Seattle). DG can leverage their client relationships (which are the same as ours) to bring in business for their online business and hopefully integrate all three organizations to bring out the strengths in each (BTW, the biggest competition in the market is a Google owned company, DC).

Great for DG, but there were a few problems for me. First, I'd left the Operations team (where our value was) and had moved to the product team (where MM was by far the strongest). As soon as the acquisition happened my team was told to stop all work since our product would not be used going forward. Second, the majority of my LL ownership was options with the strike price being higher than the current price and so that went away. I was pretty sure for the past few weeks that I would be let go and was doing some preliminary job searching. Sara and I were also talking about if we could make it work if I were a stay-at-home dad.

Two weeks ago I was asked to help with the integration of the Operations team and invited to NY to participate in the Operations Integration task force (I know what your thinking, but that is not the name of a legion of super-heroes like the Avengers or the X-Men). So last week I went to NY. My mom, the angel that she is, flew out to Seattle on three days notice to help Sara with Sam). Last Thursday in NY I was asked to be the Operations Integration Project Manager (seriously, at what point did I enter a world where you can put those four words together in a completely unironic way?). On Friday I got told that my current role, (also unironic) Product Management Program Manager, would be eliminated as of January 16th and, unless I found a new role, I would be out of work. There it was. In the language of the times I had been "synergized."

Now, it could be worse. I've got at least 3 months of employment and I'm in a role where I will have good visibility into the combined operations team and be able to identify where I can add the most value. I'm also very excited about this opportunity. I greatly enjoy change management and creating processes and structure (I know, you keep reading this and thinking to yourself "Is this all satire?" But it's not. Somehow, at 32 this is my life and I think it's interesting).

And if something doesn't work out with DG, I'm confident that things will work out for us. Sara's turned the corner on the whole MD career and is now generating a positive cash flow - so that division of Gravelin-Weisbrod Inc is heading up (although, unless we can generate some revenue out of cuteness, projections for the Sam A division look to be in red for the foreseeable future) . And, despite the continued lousy economy, most of the time I feel like I'm pretty employable (or at least my Mom says so). And, even if not, we've been fortunate enough over the past couple of years that I could have some flexibility on whether or not I go back to work immediately.

So, we're hanging in there through the changes. I think Sam has made a difference for me and my emotional stability through these tough times. He's added purpose. And he's a constant reminder to be present. And he's just so darn adorable. So, on that note, here's your Sam cuteness for the week:

He's becoming a fairly stable walker:

He likes to climb in things and up things. Here's the pots and pans drawer under the oven:

Here's his box of toys:

Sam getting fierce on the whisk:
Sam (and apparently Abba and Sara) learning new colors:

Talking and Walking

So Sam has started to use sounds that are discernable as words. He's got a few ("Ba" for "Ball", "Pa" for Park, "Bup" for "Up", and "Ta" for "Cat"). He'll also make a few animal noises ("Aw" for the "Caw" sound crows make and "Mmm" for the "Moo" sound of the Cow). It is just awesome to watch his language develop - particularly when he makes a new sound.

He's also started to take his very first, wobbly steps. He's gotten pretty comfortable with letting go and trying to walk and he's at times linked together five, six or more little, baby steps together usually ending with his feet getting too far ahead or behind. Here's a shot of it:

And lest you think this is standard fare for him, it took several days of filming to catch this many steps together. It was a bit like those BBC Life videos where the videographers had to shoot for 37 days in the jungle or in the Himalayas to get 30 seconds of some crazy birds mating or a really rare mountain cat. Below are a few outtakes (no babies were harmed in the making of these videos):