Despite everything Jeff has said, I still affirm that they are sitting around all day eating Bon Bons. Now, since I’m at work, I don’t have any proof, but I do know that there are NO Bon Bon’s in the house now.

I was able to get William into his car seat without having to get out a hacksaw. Britax has JUST enough strapping on the seat to make it work, but it wasn’t going to until the car seat was out of the car. The attachment plate on the back stays inside a plastic cover normally, but there is enough play in it and the tightening strap that I could make it work at it’s furtherest limits.

Of course, I had already figured out how to do this using my rappelling webbing, had already cut it and was trying to figure how much to attach to each side. We put William in the seat, and started to work the straps back through. He was extremely helpful to this process. Let me wiggle around, let me buckle this, unbuckle that. He was having a good time. In the end, I was able to get him strapped on down.

Today will be the real test, however, as that was with the seat out and able to be moved around. I think I’ve got it set now as long as no one pulls the adjustment strap when he’s not in the seat.

Setting up the house lighting has been both fun and frustrating. Each switch talks to the main controller via RF, but they are supposed to route through each other to form a mesh network. That actually works pretty well, but for some reason, a few of the switches don’t always respond back well. It gets them, but it takes a couple of tries.

The Nice things about the new system is that you don’t have to run additional wiring to make this happen. It’s also nice in that the computer controller polls the switches to see if you turned the light on without using the computer controls. So you can use the switches normally, and within a minute or two, the computer knows about it, and can adjust.

We’ve also got a PIR (Passive InfraRed) sensor in the garage, so when it sees motion, I’ve got it programmed to automatically turn on the Garage and Laundry room lights. 2 minutes after the motion goes away, the lights turn off. Because the whole system is RF, I can drop those PIR’s anywhere, and have them control just about anything.

I originally got some of the switches for the lighting in the Bonus room, but I was able to pick up a lot of these switches at Compusa’s going out of business sales for half price or better. Once I did that, it was a done deal that the rest of the house happened.

Some of the other nice things about this is that the computer control can react based on all sorts of inputs. So once everything is wired, I can have it set so that the lights in the bathroom only come on at half brightness after 10pm, and they come on automatically at 20% when you walk in, and ramp up to 50% after a few minutes.

The Holiday lighting is already tied in and comes on at sunset, and turns off later in the evening. I’ve got outside modules, so Halloween and Christmas this year are going to be interesting on what happens.

The big work has actually been in the programming of the system. I’ve got a web page that is formatted for our iphones, so that we can turn on or off any of the lights or groups of lights from our phones. No more running back to the house to make sure we turned off everything! And once I get more PIR’s installed, we’ve got the beginnings of a security system that is more flexible than most of the installed ones.

The kids enjoy the dimming effects. They don’t enjoy when I flip the wrong breaker doing the installs and turn off the TV they were watching. Strangely enough, they both cried out immediately for me when it went out. I don’t know if they knew I did it, or if it was just one of those things that they knew Daddy had to fix!

Jeff finalized FMLA today. So, it appears that she’ll be home with William (and Mary for the majority of the time) for the 6 weeks. Spoke with HR, disability only works if I’m injured so just straight fmla. Worked for 3 hrs and visited with co-workers. Will be working some from home but care of William is primary so we’ll just have to see what I can do.

Searched for Car seat strap extenders. Turns out, Britax teamed up with a company called snugseat.com, and they produce a spica cast compatible car seat. $500. This is truly an example of highway robbery. The Normal Britax’s are expensive, but this is ridiculous, especially when we have a usage life time of a few weeks. And of course, with that product on the market, there are no extenders or longer straps available.

It’d be one thing if this was a hugely different product, but based on the illustration, they take a Boulevard seat, add longer straps, cut away the leg wings, and add a back pillow. I’m not even certain they cut away the wings. Annoying. I don’t know what we’re going to do.

William had another medical appointment setup for the 17th of March on an unrelated matter. We’ll see if that goes forward or not. It should be interesting if we keep the appointment. We also have got to call Daycare’s insurance tomorrow. The apt on the 17th is canceled so one less thing to worry about it.

Kids went down pretty well tonight. No screaming meanies, and only a little fussing during the move. I think the nap made a difference. He woke several times during the night with Grandmomma. He needs to be reassured that someone is there. He didn’t take any pain medicine, even otc and I think we will be giving him some Weds. night (hindsight the following morning).

– © MARY VIC, 2008.

All of my teaching is starting to bear fruits. MV grabbed the camera from Grandma, and started to snap away!