Melanie is more than 2 and half weeks old, and we all are doing great! Most of the relatives have now paid a visit, and it’s just Mom, Dad and Melanie now. And of course Ty the dog and Giga the cat. Ty is pretty protective already, and doesn’t like Giga coming close to Melanie. We have to keep an eye out when Melanie is on the floor, to make sure neither of the animals cause any problems. We’re trying to find a good daily routine, but Mom is still taking a few daytime naps here and there! Breastfeeding is going well – Melanie seems to be staying awake long enough to be satisfied. She frequently spits up, so we’re getting used to changing clothes and doing a lot of laundry! She doesn’t cry much except when changing her diaper and when she’s hungry. She also gets fussy when she’s trying to get to sleep and her pacifier falls out. We won’t let the pacifier become a habit after a few months though. Of course she likes to be held, where she falls asleep quickly. We try to put her on her tummy on an activity mat, but she usually just falls asleep. We ordered the birth announcement cards today, so look out for those soon!

In a swing

Our Family

Asleep on Activity Mat

Look at my muscles!

Pondering life's questions

Here’s some recent pictures of Melanie with her eyes open! She seemed pretty content in her chair and in Grandma’s arms.

Melanie in the Sun

Melanie and Grandma

Giving a Kiss

At her doctor appointment on Thursday she weighed 8lb 7oz, so she’s gained 4 oz since leaving the hospital! Last night she slept for 3-4 hour shifts, which was really nice. Angelo and I are wondering what color eyes she’ll have; probably brown since Angelo’s brown eyes are the dominant gene. I read that they change around 6 months to a year of age.

Thank you so much for all the congratulations, flowers, and gifts!! Here’s a picture of all the beautiful flowers and some of the gifts we received in the last few days.

Gifts Received

Stork Craft, the biggest brand of home assembled cribs and other baby furnishings has recalled all of their cribs made from May of 2000 through November of last year. The support bracket has a defect which can result in the crib floor falling out along the front of the crib. Details are available on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission web site.

To order the replacement brackets. send an email to recalls@storkcraft.com with your name, surname, shipping address, crib purchase date, country of manufacture and model number.

For those who are concerned, Melanie is not yet old enough to use the crib and we’ve already emailed our information to receive new brackets.

Melanie had her first photo shoot Sunday the 11th while in the hospital. The pictures can be found here at the OhioHealth Peekaboo Babies website or by going to http://www.our365.com/ and searching for babies by birthdate (Jan 10th), ‘man’ as first 3 letters of name, and OH for state. I don’t think we’ll be buying any since they seem really expensive. We’ll try to take some when her eyes are more open.

We are happy to announce the birth of our new baby daughter Melanie Gail. Early Friday morning I woke up with regular contractions and decided not to go into work. But the contractions went away for most of the day, and I did a little work fom home, and we had the piano tuned as scheduled. Then around 4:30pm the contractions started becoming regular again. I wasn’t sure if it was true labor or not, since they were short and different positions seemed to help alleviate them. Around 8:50pm I called the doctor to see if I should go in. The contractions were only about 30-40 seconds, but were about 2-3 minutes apart. They said to come on in! So we got there about 9:30pm and I went ahead with an epidural. After that we just had to wait. After some pushing, she was born at 12:42am on Saturday, January 10th, 2009! She’s a healthy 9 lb 0 oz. It might be a few more days before I feel a little more back to normal. The biggest problem or frustration right now is breastfeeding. Sometimes she seems hungry but isn’t getting anything. Sometimes it seems like she just wants to suck and then sleep. We have a class today so we’ll be able to ask questions and hopefully get some help. But I may just switch to bottle feeding to make things less stressful. Here’s some pictures, I’m sure we’ll have more later!

Mom timing contractions

Mom and Melanie

Dad and Melanie

We had a baby girl! Melanie Gail Mandato was born today, January 10, 2009 at 12:42 AM. She’s a healthy 9 pounds 0 ounces and 19 inches long. Here’s a picture at 12 hours.

Heather will be blogging more at our new family blog, www.mandato.com.

After reading the post on Johan Mares site about the PHP command line interface, I thought I would indulge in the details how I’ve been using the PHP cli for some of my web based applications.

First, some of my web apps have multiple configuration files which are determined by the $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] value. If (stricmp( $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],’compiledweekly’) ) { // then I load compiledweekly config file }. So with that in mind, I had to add to the top of my cli scripts the following line:

$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = ‘compiledweekly.com’;

This required me to have to edit the command line script every time i used it with another site. Here’s the trick: pass arguments to your command line so your script can parse them. Here’s how I did it to also include a verbose mode.

	if( count($argv) > 1 )
	{
		for( $x = 1; $x < count($argv); $x++ )
		{
			switch($argv[$x])
			{
				case '--verbose': { // Print results to std out
					$Verbose = true;
				}; break;
				case '--host': { // Print results to std out
					$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = trim($argv[$x+1]);
				}; break;
			}
		}
	}

	if( $Verbose ) echo "Starting script...nn";
	// Continue with your script below

So with the following example I can run my script for my compiledweekly.com site with verbose information. Example:

/path/to/script.php --verbose --host compiledweekly.com

Now if you use your php script in a cron task, don't include the --verbose and make sure you check the $Verbose flag before printing any results. Don't forget to add to the end of the command line " > /dev/null 2>&1" minus the quotes, this sends any std out and std error messages to a black hole.

If your command line script is saved in a web accessible folder, here's a line you should add to the top so no web browser can execute your script:

if( php_sapi_name() != 'cli' ) die('Access denied.');

This will take your command line apps to a new level while giving you the ability to use existing web code.

I wanted to quickly take a URL (e.g. http://www.compiledweekly.com/somefolder/somefile.ext) and translate it to the local path (e.g. /home/user/public_html/somefolder/somefile.ext) while inserting multiple records into a new table. My first thought was to select all the records, use PHP to trim off the path, then insert the new record in the new table. There’s a better answer, use SUBSTRING_INDEX() and CONCAT() with a INSERT INTO table SELECT statement.

INSERT INTO new_table
SELECT CONCAT(‘/home/user/public_html/somefolder/’, SUBSTRING_INDEX(s.url, ‘/’, -1)) AS local_path
FROM source_table AS s
WHERE …

It does the job with out having to write a single line of PHP code!

Initially we’ll probably have Melanie sleep in our room in a bassinet, but I’m sure she’ll love her room too! We now have a crib (with mobile), twin size bed (for guests when she’s sleeping in our room, late night feedings, or when we pass out after trying to get her to sleep), changing table, and dresser in the baby room. We went with a cherry finish on the furniture, a light green color on the walls, and a monkey/jungle theme. As you can see, we already have a lot of towels and blankets on the changing table, and some toys and a tv on the dresser.

I think the only piece of furniture we’re missing that would be nice is a rocking chair.