Elena and the Terminator

This is actually a story from January... but I've only now realized that I forgot to post it back then!

Two weeks after we came home, I had to introduce Governor Schwarzenegger at the monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club. I've been the president of the club now for three years, and every January "Ahnuld" pays us a visit.

Needless to say, I wasn't working at the time... still home full-time with Elena... and was pretty jumbled as I put on a suit and headed in to town.



So I'm waiting backstage for the Terminator to arrive. Once he does, he walks up and smiles and says, "John, how ah you doing?" (That's written a little in Arnold-speak). One of his staffers then congratulates me on Elena... and he whips around and says, "Oh, thaht eez wunderfuhl."



Later, after his speech, he took questions from the audience. I was running around the room with a wireless microphone so the questions could be heard (there were about 250 people there).

Well, I apparently didn't get to someone fast enough... and Arnold made the following comments, found in the official state transcript of the event (the "Q" is me):

GOVERNOR: You're very slow today, since you have a new baby.

Q: I know.

GOVERNOR: You don't get enough sleep. Let's give a hand for the new baby. Come on, now. He's doing a great job. (Applause)

Q: She'll be very pleased.

What I wanted to say in response was "actually, Governor, I'm accepting donations to her scholarship fund today... would you like to make one?"

But I didn't. By the way, my mom was in the audience (she was here helping us with Elena) and loved the whole thing.

If you want to see the video, click here, then click on "Video" in the top right hand corner and it's at 33:33 in the video where Elena's big moment happens!

Behold... The Flickering Giant!

As Elena marks week 14 of her little journey today, I thought you'd want to know that she's discovered the center of the couch potato's universe...

The television.

Now I'm not sure exactly when she realized it was there, but in the past week it's been THE thing to look at while she's in the family room. For those of you who don't know, I broke down last December and bought a high definition TV; I'm now a junkie for the small number of HD channels we get, watching every NFL , NBA and NCAA hoops game I can.

But Elena's nowhere near as picky. Regardless of what's on, she'll now stop moving around and I'll notice that her gaze has drifted toward it. And it'll placate her for a good 10 minutes or so... even longer, I think, than the ceiling fan.

My favorite moment was yesterday. She'd had a midday bottle and was sitting in her new little chair-thingy...

and I started to notice that after about five minutes, she was dozing off. You know, that head-drops-and-jerks-back-up kind of dozing off we all do. Actually, Kristi will tell you that Elena and I now share something in common: we both fall alseep watching the TV.

Last evening, we took Elena along for dinner at a nearby restaurant. After our drinks came, we noticed Elena was staring intently just over my shoulder. What's she looking at, we wondered.

It was a plasma TV hanging on the wall.

Wow!

We hope to have more photos and stories up soon, but for now a quick update on the biggest thing going on with Elena these days...

Sleep!

You may remember that she struggled, as I guess all babies do, with real sleep for several weeks. But about 2 weeks ago, it all changed -- almost overnight. Now, Elena is going to bed around midnight and sleeping through the night until 6:30am or 7:00am.

In fact as I write this... at 7:26 a.m. ... she's still asleep!

Needless to say, Kristi and I are thrilled to get some zzz's. Elena also has developed another pretty amazing habit: if she's properly swaddled and can lie in her crib watching her "rainforest friends," she'll often fall asleep on her own! (See video of the rainforest friends on her website here.)

This is all big news! More soon, we hope.