"May: That lawn isn't going to mow itself."

"April: Even wooden mannequins have to pay taxes."

"March: Uh, time to march?"

"February: Valentine's Day is the perfect time to let your crush know how you feel."

As is my way, I made Christina a calendar for Christmas again this year. This year's theme was one of those little wooden people that artists use to help them sketch poses of the human body. (Christina doesn't have any special attachment to it; I just thought it would be funny.)

I'll be sharing the pages of the calendar here over the next 12 days, so by January 13, you can make this calendar yourself if you are so inclined. (Full-size versions of the pages are available by clicking on the thumbnails below.)

"2010: Spend the year with your favorite wooden mannequin. ("Just where is that supposed to go?")"

"January: Time to take your lights down before they take you down.""

(Here's last year's letter for some context.)

Why hello there. I didn't hear you come in.

You may have heard that we had some excitement around here in late March, when we were finally able to experience the fruits of our "labor," so to speak. That's right, we re-financed our mortgage! We reset the 30-year clock that counts down our indentured servitude to Bank of America.

Also, we had a baby. Christina gave birth to a 7-pound, 11-ounce man named Henry, but we call him Gabriel for short. Now that I think about it, "Gabriel" isn't any shorter than "Henry." Why did Christina come up with that nickname in the first place?

In preparation for Gabriel's arrival, we took a 12-week birthing class. Week #1 was all about pregnancy, labor, and placenta, and the rest of the course focused on the new vocabulary we would need as parents. Just this week, I've used several of the key phrases we learned: "That is not a toy", "Take that out of your mouth", and my personal favorite, "I'm begging you, please go to sleep."

To quickly bring you up to speed on Gabriel's development, here's a handy timeline of his life. The "X" shows his current location:

|===========X===================================================>
    ^     ^     ^     ^      ^      ^       ^      ^      ^
 crawls talks reads writes cures  ends   retires  buys  age 15
              first first  cancer world           the
              novel novel         hunger         Bahamas

As you can see, he has already completed 2 out of these 9 steps and is well on his way to fame and fortune. If you'd like day-to-day updates on Gabriel's incredible progress, check out our family blog at family.efinke.com.

Our dog Pedro has had a banner year: In June, he smashed through the same screen door twice in one week. That is all.

We went camping again with Christina's family this summer; Christina and Gabriel seemed to enjoy it, but next year, I'm making a few changes: a bigger tent, softer beds, and not going camping.

Much like how the geese fly south every winter, I migrated to a new job again this year. Now, instead of working on websites from home, I work on AOL websites from home.

Not content with both my job and my hobbies involving copious amounts of time on the computer, I decided to digitize my meals as well: I started a website called FoodIRL.com. ("IRL" means "In Real Life" for those of you who are not hip like me and Christina and our BFF Jill.) I take pictures of the food I eat and then compare those pictures to the food's packaging wow this sounds lame when I type it out.

In October, Christina switched jobs too, from a full-time job working with numbers to a part-time job where she gets to work with the other numbers. This has allowed her to spend more time at home with Gabriel; Gabriel was really happy about this, because his diaper was getting awfully full since Daddy last changed him in early September.

Christina wanted to add a paragraph here in her own words: "I don't know why Chris can't write a nice normal Christmas letter like everybody else. If anything he wrote sounds like it might not be true, he's probably trying to be funny. I'm sorry."

Merry Christmas,

Chris, Christina, and Henry

Just a note that I'll be at the 2nd annual Add-On-Con this week in Mountain View, CA. Add-on Con is a gathering of browser add-on developers and representatives from the browser vendors (Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft).

I'll be participating in the opening keynote discussion, which will address the question, "Do Add-ons Need a Marketplace?" The other keynote participants will be representatives from Mozilla, Microsoft, XMarks, and FoxyProxy, so I'm obviously there to even out the low end of the curve. Anyone know any good knock-knock jokes I can use?

I'll also be sitting on a Mozilla panel as a token add-on developer, talking and answering questions about how to develop a successful add-on. (On an unrelated note, if you know how to develop a successful add-on, please contact me ASAP.)

Will you be at the conference? Let me know!

Three years ago, I blogged about a new resume-hosting site called Emurse.com that got me an interview (and a job) at AOL-owned Netscape. Well, things have a funny way of working out, and after leaving AOL to work with an incredible development team at Mahalo, I've left Mahalo to lead development of now AOL-owned Emurse.

It's great to be working with Andy Fraley again, who designed the look and feel of the Netscape Navigator 9 browser, and is now in the designer's seat at Emurse. We've got some exciting new features planned for the next generation of online resumes, all of which will, of course, be documented here.

Note: This birth story is accompanied by the messages that I posted to Twitter during the course of the day in order to keep my friends and family up-to-date on what was happening.

We had no idea that we'd end up in Labor & Delivery on Thursday, March 26. Gabriel's due-date was the 20th, so Christina's doctor had scheduled an induction for Friday, the 27th. We wanted to wait until Monday the 30th, in hopes that labor would begin naturally over the weekend, so we agreed to have Christina and Gabriel undergo a non-stress test on Thursday, the 26th, thinking that if Gabriel failed, we'd agree to a Friday induction. In fact, the biggest thing we thought would happen that day was our mortgage refinance, scheduled for noon:

Today's the big day... we're refinancing our mortgage! Exciting! Full of thrills and chills!

7:30 AM Mar 26th

Long story short, Gabriel didn't respond during the non-stress test. Christina chugged some Orange Crush and a few Capri-Suns, hoping to stimulate him with the sugar (or possibly give him brain freeze), but he was less active than the 30% of Americans who don't get the recommended amount of vigorous exercise every week.

This was around 11am, and the doctor told us that we needed to head to the hospital as soon as possible. Considering that we had expected a Friday induction, not a Thursday one, we hadn't packed yet, aside from a few towels in the trunk of our car in case Christina's water broke. Additionally, our mortgage refinance was scheduled for noon, but for some reason, Christina's doctor didn't think that waiting an hour at the broker's office for our refinance was acceptable.

Since we were less than a few miles away from the broker's office, we called them and they were able to rush us through the refinance ahead of schedule. (The extra $280/month we have after refinancing definitely comes in handy with this little diaper-vortex around.) We drove home to pack up some clothes for the hospital, and then took off for Fairview-Southdale. And no matter what you hear, especially if you are Christina's doctor, we did not stop for pizza on the way.

IT'S HAPPENING. We're going to the hospital; Christina is going to be induced. I'm going to be a dad TODAY!

11:51 AM Mar 26th

We got checked into Labor & Delivery, and they started Christina on a pitocin drip. At the same time, they manually broke her water. (At the request of Christina, I am omitting some details here regarding the water-breaking and subsequent flooding of our hospital room.)

I found the fetal monitor interesting, as I could tell Christina when she was about to feel a contraction. She did not appreciate the help.

Clever http://twitpic.com/2gzd0

3:18 PM Mar 26th

Christina did well for the first few hours, enduring the contractions without any pain medication:

having a baby brb http://twitpic.com/2h1g0

4:04 PM Mar 26th

Soon enough though, she decided to get an epidural. Intense back pain combined with strong contractions every two minutes made it impossible for a normal human being to endure the pain without any "liquid courage."

The anesthesiologist arrived and started administering the epidural. Christina had been worried about getting an epidural because of the possibility of getting a spinal headache. She asked the anesthesiologist what the chances were, and he literally said "Zero." Christina asked him if he'd sign something to that effect, and he seriously agreed. (She didn't hold him to it.) She never did have any complications from the epidural, so here's to you, Overly Confident Anesthesiologist.

After she got the epidural, Christina was all smiles. We joked around, and she couldn't feel her legs, which made for an interesting moment when she almost kicked a nurse in the face.

Later, we watched 30 Rock and The Office, killing time, waiting for something to happen. Christina was dilating about a centimeter every hour. (This sentence makes me realize that pregnancy and childbirth changes how comfortable people are with talking about bodily functions.)

7cm dilated; the nurse says he's got a full head of hair.

9:13 PM Mar 26th

The contractions never slowed down or sped up - they were about 2 minutes apart from the time her water broke until the birth. Christina was mostly oblivious to them, thanks to the epidural (she recalls feeling "floaty"), but at this point, she requested that they turn down her epidural drip so that she would have some feeling and control when the time came for pushing. The previous face-kicking incident did not inspire confidence for the time when she would have to push a human being out of her body.

Strong contractions every 2 minutes, but Christina's in epidural heaven.

9:15 PM Mar 26th

We enjoyed a delicious meal, courtesy of Fairview-Southdale. (She was warned not to eat anything else, since it might come back up due to the medication she was on. I, having declined an epidural, had a Big Mac and fries. And I think also some granola bars. Maybe a Mountain Dew too.

Christina's supper http://twitpic.com/2hfuo

9:24 PM Mar 26th

This being Minnesota, the hospital provides some accoutrement that you might not get down south. (This picture doesn't show the snow pants or the scarf, but they were darling.)

Baby's first ski cap http://twitpic.com/2hg6c

9:32 PM Mar 26th

Christina was surprisingly calm throughout the entire delivery. She never panicked, and seemed to know exactly what to do at all times.

9cm, getting close. Christina's so collected you'd swear she has done this before.

10:35 PM Mar 26th

At 11:30 pm, the nurse told us that it was time for Christina to start "practice pushing." Apparently, it takes some women a couple of hours before they learn which muscles to use, so they need to start practicing before it's actually time.

Time to push!

11:34 PM Mar 26th

Christina was so good at pushing, she apparently didn't need any practice. An hour later, we had seen the head, and Christina's doctor was on the way to deliver Gabriel for real.

I have seen the head, and it is awesome!

12:36 AM Mar 27th

Half an hour later, after a total of two hours of active labor, Gabriel was born. There was a bit of a scare towards the end: Gabriel had turned face-up (not ideal), and Christina had started to bleed from an internal tear, so her doctor recommended the use of a vacuum in order to speed things up. (The vacuum in this case is not to suck up the extra blood, but rather to "suck" the baby out. I use "suck" in quotes because I'm sure there is a technical medical term for what is happening, but hey, when you say "vacuum," I think "suck." To be honest though, it was more like the doctor was playing tug-of-war with Gabriel's head.) We agreed, and maybe 30 seconds after Dr. Princ started using the vacuum, Gabriel popped out, and started doing everything he was supposed to do: crying. (That's all babies are supposed to do, FYI.) They weighed (7 lb. 13 oz.), measured (22 inches), and tagged him (20 pointer), and by 2am, it was all over.

Introducing Gabriel Finke: 7 lbs 13 oz, 22 inches. He is perfect. http://twitpic.com/2hmxw

1:53 AM Mar 27th

Gabriel less than a minute after birth http://twitpic.com/2hnb5

2:18 AM Mar 27th

I'm going to use this occasion to test Mahalo's new embeddable pages: