the biggest news while we were gone was that the dude decided to become fully bipedal.  without his normal surroundings he found it to his advantage to stand up and walk rather than crawl everywhere.  it seems to have stuck with him.  he's marching around all over the place.  this is especially nice as he is far slower on two feet than on four.  i can take my eye off of him for 10 seconds and he'll be relatively close to where he was when i blinked versus the constant monitoring required when he was crawling.  all of this is also easier on mommy as he can walk holding her hand instead of being carried everywhere.  go team the dude!

holidays.  whatever.

we got the dude a sleeping bag for "x-mas" and gave it to him yesterday.  we're planning on doing some camping soon.  it was really cute, according to stacky.  as soon as he saw it he knew what to do:  lay down and pretend to sleep.  awesome stuff.  hopefully we'll do some backpacking in the coming weeks so he can see what it's all about.

work.  whatever.

i'm back to some instrument building.  i had to pause my guitar building this past summer when it got too hot for me to stand outside in the garage.  for my birthday last month i got a new drill press.  i threw together a quick ukulele from a kit that i've had since before i moved to texas and i plan to use it as practice for my french polish technique.  i'm also assembling a flat-backed lute kit i've had for years as well.  i will test my binding and polishing skills with that one.  the guitar is moving not at all while i put these others in place.  it's nice to have projects that can be worked on in parallel.  i don't get much time but i make the most of what i've got.  except when i don't.

i need to get back to my album.  6 or so songs have been sitting for a while and i'm glad that they did.  i'll rework a couple of them and get some more put down.  i have one outstanding musical debt to littlestar that i will hopefully pay tonight and then i can start stealing more time for my "main" project...whatever the hell that is.  i love doing stuff.  especially stuff that entertains me.

speaking of entertainment, stacky has started sewing clothes for the dude.  her first foray was a pair of pants.  they are both awesome and cute!  next up:  matching shirt.  i'm excited to see the results.  i'm glad that she has found something to use her brain power on as she was feeling a bit bored.  we're a busy household these days...

we're getting psyched up to decorate the tree and build our yearly "we're so much cooler than you are" gingerbread house.  i love making that stuff.  tasty engineering.  there are some cookies to bake i'm sure but i can't decide which.  mostly i'm looking forward to some quiet time with my tiny family.

some strange thoughts the other day. my entire life has been spent away from "home" and that's starting to ache a little bit.  i went from state to state learning about people and things, taking it all in, but doing so as an outsider.  for some reason, it's really easy to feel like an outsider in texas when you're a kid from a college town in northeast ohio.  people talk differently.  they watch weird football games.  they eat vegetables i'd never heard of.  they have entirely different life experiences based in a weird way on latitude.  the air and light are different.  none of this is bad, it's just not where i'm from.  what makes it tougher is the fact that i haven't lived in my state of birth for almost 20 years making me an outsider in my hometown.  the twist of late is that this is my son's home.  when he talks about where he was born and raised, this will be it.  this place that still feels foreign to me on some level will be the most comfortable on earth for him (maybe).  my wife and my son define home for me now.  but there's a part of me that is homesick for a place that simply isn't there anymore.  life's funny.