Marc goes out!

Tuesday was Marc's two-weeks birthday, how about that, huh? After a rainy weekend the good sunny days came back to Chicago and we could finally take Marc out for a stroll. His pediatrician had recommended us to wait a couple of weeks, so we did.

It was a short walk around the block, but Marc seemed to enjoy the fresh air and so did mom. After 10 minutes walking Lily was really tired, she's doing great with the recovery after the long labor and cesarean, but still needs to take it easy, relax and not push the envelope.

Also, after we've had time to settle down, friends started stopping by. Last Friday Danna and Rami came home for a late coffee and some candy, it was nice to chill out, chat and catch up. A couple of days later Lily's friends stop by to meet Marc as well!

Otherwise, no news good news, days keep passing by fairly quietly. I can't believe that Monday will be time to go back to work, aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I will miss spending time home and seeing Marc meet slowly, but surely the small milestones. There go a few pictures of Marc napping (his favorite sport :)):

Prioridades

La mayoría de la gente con la que he trabajado seguramente coincidiría en que en el trabajo siempre lo doy todo, por una u otra razón siempre acabo implicándome personalmente en mis proyectos, muy a menudo mas allá de mi rol y responsabilidades para ayudar a compañeros que están soportando clientes alrededor del mundo.

Periódicamente, atravieso momentos en los que me pregunto el porque, a veces ocurre al darme cuenta de que el tiempo pasa y el crecimiento profesional no es siempre acorde con la cantidad de trabajo y esfuerzo que uno pone, otras veces es simplemente al sentir que debería ser capaz de separar la vidas profesional y personal mejor. Durante un tiempo, al regresar de Pekín, conseguí controlar las horas que estaba trabajando, en buena medida al involucrarme en otras actividades: clases de fotografía, disfrutando muchísima música en directo, ejerciendo de profesor voluntario para alumnos de 1er y 2o curso...

Este año no tome ningunas vacaciones hasta ahora. Descubrimos que Lily estaba embarazada el día de Año Nuevo y, por lo tanto, decidimos usar los dias después del nacimiento de Marc y durante nuestro viaje a España en Navidades. Sin duda, esta fue la decisión correcta, pero según pasaba el verano me encontraba más y más cansado, especialmente en el plano mental; la presión que nunca acaba en el trabajo al desarrollar, optimizar y llevar una nueva tecnología al mercado, las constantes visitas a clientes...

Tomar 2 semanas de vacaciones para desconectar totalmente no es sencillo y tener una Moto Q conectada a mi servidor de correo electrónico constantemente no ayuda gran cosa, es casi imposible evitar echar un vistazo de vez en cuando a los correos y todavía mas difícil no reacciona...

Es entonces cuando me planteo mis prioridades, la llegada de Marc es un evento que cambiara nuestras vidas para siempre, un evento que nunca volverá a ocurrir. Quizás o quizás no tengamos más niños, pero Marc es irrepetible y se merece mi atención por completo. Cuando estamos tendidos en la cama jugando, cada vez que llora cuando le cambio el pañal, la primera vez que le bañamos en su bañera nueva, etc... Sinceramente, durante esos momentos me planteo si todos esos problemas urgentes en el trabajo son realmente TAN importantes comparado con ver a tu hijo crecer feliz y saludable.

Ahi van unas cuantas fotos divertidas que tomamos ayer cuando Marc y yo estábamos jugueteando (mas como siempre en nuestra Web en Picasa)

Priorities

Most people I've worked with would tell you that I'm a dedicated engineer, for one reason or another I always end up personally involved in my projects and more often than not I go the extra mile to help folks that are struggling in the field supporting customers around the world. Periodically, I go through periods of time in which I question this behavior, sometimes it's triggered by the realization that time keeps passing by and the professional growth doesn't always match the amount of work and effort, other times it's just the feeling that I should be able to separate professional and personal aspects better. For a period of time, after my return from Beijing, I did manage to control the amount of working hours and to get involved in other activities: photography classes, lots of live music, volunteering as a teacher for 1st and 2nd graders....

This year I did not take any time off at all until now. We found out about the pregnancy on New Years Day and, therefore, decided to save all the vacation days for Marc's arrival and for our trip to Spain for Christmas. Although this was the right thing to do, I was mentally exhausted as the summer passed by, the never ending stress level at work creating, optimizing and deploying a brand new technology, trips to visit customers... Taking 2 weeks off is not an easy one, having a Moto Q connected to my work email server doesn't help either, it's impossible to refrain yourself from checking out what's going on and even more difficult not to react...

That's when I think about priorities, Marc's arrival is a life changing event, once that will never occur again, we may or may not have more kids, but Marc is unique and he deserves my undivided attention. Every time we lay down on the bed just playing around, every time he cries during a diaper change, his first full bath, etc... And quite frankly, during these moments I wonder whether all these work high priority issues are really SO important when compared with seeing your son grows healthy and happy....

There go a few fun pictures that we took yesterday when Marc and I were having fun (more as usual at our Picasa gallery).

More pictures...

I still get amazed on how much you get for free from the Google folks, obviously Picasa is one of the tools I started using more often recently and I have to say it's a pretty cool and easy to use tool that allows you to perform basic tuning on your pictures quickly.

This morning I spent a few hours glancing through all the pictures we've taken since Marc's birth as well as some from the pregnancy, it's kind of difficult to settle on just 25 of them, but I finally did and created this collage using Picasa:


Days keep passing by pretty uneventfully, which is a good thing, baby and mom are getting a good amount of rest. Dad, on the other hand, can get by with just 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night, so I'm killing the rest of the time running errands, reading as much as possible (about to finish "A thousand splendid suns" by Khaled Hosseini; and about to start "Delirio" by Laura Restrepo), going for long runs by the lake, catching up on movies ("City of men" was the last one a couple of nights ago) and just chilling out and enjoying the dolce far niente.

All that changes when Marc is awake, then it's action time :)

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Todavia me sorprende la cantidad de cosas que la gente de Google pone a nuestra disposicion de forma gratuita, obviamente Picassa es una de las herramientas que empece a usar mas a menudo ultimamente. Sinceramente me parece una herramienta muy interesante y facil de usar que te permite editar fotos de forma simple y rapida.


Esta manana pase un par de horas mirando las fotos que tomamos desde que nacio Marc y tambien las del embarazo, fue dificil selecionar solo 25, pero al final lo consequi y cree este collage en Picassa.


Los dias siguen pasando sin grandes novedades, lo cual es, en si mismo una buena noticia. Baobao y mama descansan y dormitan frecuentemente. Yo, por mi parte, no necesito mas de 4 o 5 horas de sueno, asi que estoy dedicando el resto del tiempo a tareas varias en el piso, leyendo tanto como puedo (estoy a punto de acabar “A thousand splendid suns” de Khaled Hosseini y a punto de empezar “Delirio” de Laura Restrepo), saliendo a correr por el lago Michigan, viendo peliculas en DVD (la ultima resanable fue “Ciudad de hombres” brasilena de la misma gente que hizo “Ciudad de Dios”) y simplemente disfrutando del dolce far niente.


Todo esto cambia cuando Marc esta despierto, esos son momentos para la accion :)

Family photos...

Lily is feeling much better and slowly but surely going back to her old size. Face, legs and hands are no longer swollen.... on top of that yesterday, finally, there was a moment in which we were all 3 awake at the same time, so it was family photo time, the first one with all 3 of us since we got out of the hospital.



Additionally, there goes a short clip we took a couple of days ago when Marc had hiccups :)