Been a while, huh?

Jen is in Madison with her mom right now, taking the Wisconsin Bar Exam (kick its ass, sweetie!). That means I'm here at home with Gabriel from Sunday until Wednesday. A little father-son bonding time.

Gabe's gotten quite skilled at scaling the walls of his play area, so I've been letting him just walk around the house while I'm getting some cleaning done. Sometimes, it works nicely, like when he plopped down on the dining room floor and watched me in the kitchen while playing with a stuffed monkey for about half an hour. And sometimes, it doesn't - like when I turned my back for a second and he was splashing around in the cat's water bowl. Ah, kids.

I can tell that Gabe misses Jen. He wanders from room to room, poking his head in and going "Mama?" When she was leaving yesterday afternoon, he squirmed out of my arms out front and tried to follow the car up the driveway. He was all smiles when she was talking to him on the phone earlier. The little guy loves his mom.

Tomorrow, we're driving out to Madison to go see Jen for a little bit before she heads back here after her exams on Wednesday (actually, I'm driving - Gabriel just navigates). Should be a nice drive - Madison's only about 65 miles west of here, so it's maybe a little over an hour to get there.

On a personal note, I got the official notification in the mail today that I passed the test for my Professional in Human Resources certification. Got a nice certificate and a lapel pin - I'll probably frame the certificate. Now I just need someone to hire me and take advantage of all my newly acquired human resources braininess.

And now for something completely different - the reason I'm going to be about 20 pounds heavier now that I live in a place where they have at least one festival or fair every weekend over the summer. They don't call Milwaukee the "City of Festivals" for nothing. Yum. This one was about a mile from our apartment.