Many thanks to Pat and Tam Holzhauer over at ambient expressions for doing an ad hoc photo session for Xander when he was down in SoCal last week. For those of you who don’t know, they were the ones who did an amazing job capturing our wedding a few years back. So get your clicking finger warmed up and check the photos out!

Yes, I’ve been highly delinquent in providing updates. In my defense, I’ve had an atypical amount of traveling in the past two weeks and haven’t had much of a chance to see the little tough guy. That and he was in SoCal with mom and grandma.

Xander survived his 2 month checkup earlier this week and measured in at 14 pounds 8 ounces and 24.5 inches long. According to the pediatrician, that’s in the 95th percentile for weight and the 75th percentile for length. Nice.

He didn’t like his first three shots at all. I wasn’t there but there was maximum screaming action. And then he ran a fever trying to deal with the immunizations. Poor kid takes after his old man…hates needles.

He’s getting stronger too. Here he is holding his head up and using his arms to prop himself up.

It wasn’t enough to have the close call with my bike tire last week. This time, it was for real. In my car. I was driving to work yesterday after picking up a pair of casual carpoolers and just before the 80/580 split, a horrendous noise erupts from the right side of my car. I was doing about 65 in the fast lane and didn’t see any debris on the road. Apparently there was because the horrendous noise was my right rear tire being taken out. The next thing I know, I’m flat and the guy driving next to me was wildly gesturing that I had a flat.

Wonderful. I didn’t have anywhere to pull over because there is no shoulder there so I flipped on the hazards and eased it back to about 35 with cars coming up on my tail much too quickly. I rolled into the Bay Bridge toll plaza and decided to try to make it up to the toll plaza parking lot because Caltrans trucks usually camp out there. I figured they’d have a real car jack and tire iron that would make the job of swapping wheels much faster. As luck would have it, I got there and they’re nowhere to be found. One of my passengers asks a toll plaza employee to send help and they tell me someone will be on the way. That wasn’t fast enough for me so I haul out the tools.

About 15 minutes later, I had the spare on and was ready to roll. I didn’t want to delay my carpoolers any more than they already had been so I only took a cursory look at my tire.

I figured my front tire kicked up a piece of metal and ripped through the tread. Oh well. Time for new tires anyway.

After I got home, I took a much closer look at the tire to see if it’s patchable and what do I spot?

Holy handgrenade! Whatever I hit, it ripped through the tire and blasted through my rims! That explained why the sound I heard hit 10 on the thisisgoingtobefuckingexpensive-O-meter.

So at the moment, the EP3 is rolling all sexy like.

And I need to figure out if this is the perfect excuse to graduate to 16″ rims.

There are plenty of places for Xander to sleep: his crib, his bouncy chair, his play area in the living room, the Boppy. But noooooooooo. Where does he want to stake out some real estate?

Yeah, our bed. Not a good sign for the future!

And to ring in his first Independence Day, here he is red, white, and passed out.

After rolling in from a ride, I glance over at my front tire in the garage and spot what looks like debris stuck on. So I go to brush it off but it doesn’t come off. What the hell? I take a closer look and guess what? It’s tire casing!

Oops, I guess it’s high time to toss these guys and put some new rubber on the hoops.

It looked even worse after deflating them and pulling them off. Kinda looks like the casing was about to give. Good thing I wasn’t flying down Joaquin Miller Road doing 50mph or anything in the past few days. Cuz that wouldn’t have been intelligent.

Since his mom is a Physical Therapist, Xander is getting all buffed out from the workouts. He’s starting to hold his head up for good stretches of time now. Here he is having fun working out on the Boppy pillow.