I don’t have any major changes planned for Earth Day this year. I’d love to say that we are putting in solar panels and a wind turbine, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

The most important thing that I plan on doing this year is to keep teaching Ian about the outdoors. He loves going outside. It’s fun to keep track of how many things we can find in just our yard when we go out exploring. Green grass. Blue sky. Yellow sun. Brown trees. Yellow dandelions. Purple flowers on the ground. Red flowers in a bush. Bunny rabbit. Puppy dog. Kitty cat. Squirrel. Red bird (cardinal). Brown bird (sparrow, mourning dove). Black bird (starling, robin, grackle, woodpecker). Tiny leaves (honey locust). Prickly needles (pine). Big leaves (maple).

Now we just need to make sure he doesn’t try to put everything he finds in his mouth…

Mallory and I got this washer and dryer from my grandfather’s house when we got married. I don’t have the old manuals in front of me, but I think these appliances are around 15 years old. We can’t complain, though… they worked and the price was right (free).

The pump motor went out on the washer last week, putting a bunch of water out on the kitchen floor. The service man I spoke with said it would cost almost as much to replace the part on this model than to buy a new one. That wasn’t really the answer I wanted to hear, but didn’t surprise me too much.

I had to take a few loads of clothes to the laundromat down the street over the weekend. Normally not the worst thing in the world, but the creepy guy in the corner was paying a little too much attention to me while I was folding Mallory’s clothes. It was odd.

While doing research on new models we became pretty excited about the energy and water efficiency on this combo… I actually think I’m more excited about the new washer and dryer than I really should be.

The delivery guys just left, and this is our new set… not only are they energy efficient, but they play a little song at the end of their cycles. I think I’m going to install a countertop above the set to help with folding, organization, etc.

Who am I kidding? I think I’m going to write “INSTALL LAUNDRY COUNTERTOP” on my to-do list. I’ll get to it eventually.

When I was a little kid I used to love riding along with my Grandpa Darrell, or Grampy, on his business trips to Chicago. He would pick me up at home and we’d drive north to several businesses in the suburbs and in the city. His business card claimed he worked for a printing company, but for a while I’d always imagined that he was a spy delivering secret documents to other undercover agents. Who would suspect a quiet-mannered Midwestern grandfather in a Ford Probe?

As I was driving to one of my assignments for work I realized I was slowly turning into Grampy. Not in a deeply profound way, just a “wow, this is a little weird” kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories come from riding shotgun with Grampy, so it only makes sense that I see some of his patterns in my own daily routines.

Despite the fact that neither of our job descriptions include the words taxi driver or chauffeur, most of our time for work is spent on the road. We both put more miles on our cars in a year than most people do in three or four. Almost all of that time is spent listening to talk radio or the occasional ball game. My cupholder is always stocked with a fresh Diet Coke. My chap stick, change, gum and toothpicks are all in their own particular spots in my car. I keep a detailed log when I fill up my tank and track my mileage religiously. I know the best places to eat along almost any stretch of road in Illinois.

Of course a few things are a little different… I can make a phone call without having to pull over and stick the giant magnetic antenna from my bag phone on the roof of my car. Grampy’s music was a little more Southern Gospel and mine leans more toward alternative rock. His atlas is my GPS…

Some family members are the kind of people that tell hundreds of stories and try to load your head with advice on any subject under the sun. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention (which is a huge possibility), but I don’t remember Grampy as that kind of person. He was more of a “lead-by-example” kind of guy.

Hopefully I’m following along in those footsteps too. Even if he wasn’t a spy.

Mal is away for the weekend on a business trip, but we’re using Skype so she can still see her boys. Ian seemed very confused about Mommy being in the computer, but he’s starting to get the hang of it now.

Hopefully it’s not something we have to use very often for us, but I’m hoping we can use it whenever we can so Ian can see grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, mistresses, etc. The added bonus of using the computer? You can see the baby without fear of being spit-up on…

Actually, in the middle of writing this post Ian and I had a little video-chat with Nathan and Jaci up in the suburbs… here’s their dog, Chief, taking a closer look at the baby in the computer.

Are any of you already on Skype? Look us up… Mal’s screen name is malloryhaas, and I went out on a limb with stephenhaas. If you aren’t already on, it’s free… so you just need a webcam on your computer to chat. Hopefully we’ll be seeing some of you soon.

Ian will turn six months later this week and he is growing up so fast on his way there… in the past couple of weeks he’s started sitting up on his own, drinking from a sippy-cup and now he’s started this big boy laughter. He giggled and smiled a lot, but never this kind of laughing. I honestly can’t stop watching it… even when the flu had me feeling miserable this clip would make me smile.

(I recommend clicking the little arrows and the HD symbol in the bottom right of the video above to watch it full screen.)

A few people have asked what made him laugh so hard… so here’s a little glimpse of his Daddy with a Diet Mt. Dew box on his head.

Apparently I’m pretty funny looking…

Sorry that I haven’t posted anything for more than four months… Ian keeps hogging the computer to check his Twitter feed.

Here’s a quick picture of the Haas men hunting for the perfect Christmas tree. I’m not sure if his method was spitting up on the ones he liked or didn’t like, so we just let Mal choose for us.

Ian waits on a bed while dressed in his "going home" outfit Thursday, July 16, 2009, at Provena Covenant Medical Center in Urbana, Ill.

Ian Paul Haas is seen in the warmer of our room at Provena Covenant Medical Center Wednesday, July 15, 2009, in Urbana, Ill.

Once we were all checked in and she got hooked up to the machines and they watched her contractions and baby MacGyver’s heartbeat for a while. We had nothing to do but sit around and stare at each for a while, so we got the computer out to check Facebook and email and stuff. Apparently Catholics hate photographs, because their network blocks access to Flickr. Oh well…

Things slowed down a bit, so they let Mal sleep for a few hours. Her rash feels better with cold air, so she cranked the air conditioning down to about 50 degrees… which wasn’t fun for me with no blanket.

She woke up around 5:00 this morning and the nurses gave her some drugs that sped her contractions up. She’s been doing great through everything… just like I knew she would. After going for about 10 hours through what I’m going to guess are “mild” contractions she definitely went into frowny-face territory. I go into frowny-face mode if I stub my toe, but I can’t imagine what she was going through during this whole thing. After some good backrubs and giving her a hand to squeeze she fought through the harder ones until the doctor came to put her epidural in.

Mal’s been enjoying a “delicious” liquid diet of broth and tea and ice-chips… I feel bad for her there.

Thanks to everybody for the support and messages and encouragement on Facebook and Twitter… Mal and I appreciate it more than we’ll ever be able to show. It was nice to see her smile for a second, or almost smile during hard contractions, when a new message would pop up on my phone or computer.

She’s definitely back in the land of smiley-faces for a while so I’m going to try to enjoy it before the crazy lady starts yelling profanities at me… will update after MacGyver makes his debut.

Baby MacGyver is still just hanging out for a little while… actually three days late now, which seems like an eternity. I can’t imagine what it feels like for Mal since she’s actually carrying him around.

We went to the doctor for another checkup this morning. The nurse hooked Mal up to the monitor for a while so they could make sure baby was OK. MacGyver seems to be perfect right where he’s at… and with the exception of a nasty rash, Mal is doing great too.

Nothing else to do right now but wait. I’ve tried pushing him out, we’ve taken walks, I’ve tried luring him out with toys and candy… nothing seems to work.

If he still hasn’t come by Thursday morning we have an appointment for Mal to be induced at 6 a.m., but for her sake I hope we don’t have to wait that long…

I’ll update if anything changes…