The other day, I had a pleasant webcam conversation with M, who is now 3 years old. She has graciously decided that Baby Chicken could have one of her toys. However, she emphasized that this donation be restricted to a single item. M also explained that she had feet. Two of them, in fact.
In other news, we finished laundering Baby Chicken's initial supply of clothes, and I am left wondering how one is supposed to maintain control over baby socks. Normal socks are hard enough to keep paired up, but baby socks refuse to be corralled or kept in order. They slip through the cracks in the laundry basket, they pop out of your hand like Mexican jumping beans, and they easily scurry away and hide themselves with just a hint of static.
When pictures of Baby Chicken start appearing on this site, and you notice horribly mismatched socks on her tiny feet, you will know why.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Sunday, November 08, 2009
We Found Post-It Notes Around the House for Weeks
The Wife and I lived a quiet life back in NC, rock banding notwithstanding. And when my sister visited with her two girls, that quiet life had been gloriously disrupted for a week. But that didn't hold a candle to having my parents come visit with my sister and the nieces about a year and a half ago. Having them all together is a special form of chaos, one which is suitably contained at their respective homes, which have specialized far off rooms where one can retreat for some relative silence. One that is not suitably contained in our modest former home. And so it was that we found ourselves swimming in coolers, frozen Filipino food, juicy juice boxes, dolls, markers, camera bags, shoes, post-it-note art, pacifiers, Hannah Montana DVDs, and an exponential increase in garbage output.
My parents had been idly talking about visiting for 3 years, actually. Except, I think they feared that there would be so little to do in NC that they would end up doing manual labor around the house for entertainment. Not to say there's really anything at all to do where they live in rural Alabama.
So, I think they were surprised that we managed to keep them busy the whole time, taking them out to Brazilian food, a local garden, the children's science discovery museum, and have an Easter egg hunt at the house with plenty of time to torment the Booger and fall asleep while L watched/danced to/sang to her Hannah Montana shows.
M continued to display her ability to become completely absorbed in mechanically-oriented tasks, like watering flowers, playing with blocks (or just transporting blocks from one child's play area to another's), sweeping the floor (a favorite activity of hers), raking sand, or just scribbling on post-it notes. At the children's museum, we watched for almost an hour while she played at a station of small cubbyhole-like doors, each with different types of locks. Nothing but putting a block in one cubbyhole, closing the door, and then moving it to another. For an hour. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when we finally had to pry her away for fear of growing roots into the bench nearby. She also had a curious habit of hugging random children at the butterfly house, who apparently were not appreciate of said hugging. Strange children.
L, meanwhile, continued to display her abilities of mugging for the camera and being best friends with the Booger.
Overall, it was a fun, exhausting weekend of adults watching children play. And eating. Lots of eating. Because eating is synonymous with family get-togethers.
My parents had been idly talking about visiting for 3 years, actually. Except, I think they feared that there would be so little to do in NC that they would end up doing manual labor around the house for entertainment. Not to say there's really anything at all to do where they live in rural Alabama.
So, I think they were surprised that we managed to keep them busy the whole time, taking them out to Brazilian food, a local garden, the children's science discovery museum, and have an Easter egg hunt at the house with plenty of time to torment the Booger and fall asleep while L watched/danced to/sang to her Hannah Montana shows.
M continued to display her ability to become completely absorbed in mechanically-oriented tasks, like watering flowers, playing with blocks (or just transporting blocks from one child's play area to another's), sweeping the floor (a favorite activity of hers), raking sand, or just scribbling on post-it notes. At the children's museum, we watched for almost an hour while she played at a station of small cubbyhole-like doors, each with different types of locks. Nothing but putting a block in one cubbyhole, closing the door, and then moving it to another. For an hour. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when we finally had to pry her away for fear of growing roots into the bench nearby. She also had a curious habit of hugging random children at the butterfly house, who apparently were not appreciate of said hugging. Strange children.
L, meanwhile, continued to display her abilities of mugging for the camera and being best friends with the Booger.
Overall, it was a fun, exhausting weekend of adults watching children play. And eating. Lots of eating. Because eating is synonymous with family get-togethers.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Not As Cool As My Aquariums
Back in June, the Wife and I went drove down to Monterrey to see the aquarium. It was a bit of a birthday trip, to celebrate the last day that I would ever get to be the center of attention. Weep a monsoon for me.
So, yeah, we divided our attentions between the impressive displays and all the various shenanigans of the young children we saw. Like the boy on his push car ramming the bottom of the steps repeatedly, looking up at each descending person for approval. Or the little girl who would furtively slap her even littler brother, who would only stare back with a confused look, as if to say, "Was that supposed to mean something?" Reminds me of back when my parents laid down the law against sibling-on-sibling violence. And so my sister resorted to taking the heads off my LEGO people, putting them in her mouth, and then spitting them back out across the room. Which, in my 5-year-old mind, was akin to torturing kittens and puppies.
We cannot wait to have kids.
Anyways, it was a fun trip. Here are pictures with very little in terms of accompanying anecdotes or captions. Sometimes, pictures of fish are just pictures of fish.
I only post this blurry picture because I've never seen an octopus so active and out in the open. Although, judging by the way it would repeatedly back up against the rocks (there was a raw spot on the back of its "head"), I'd be tempted to say that it was high or something.
So, yeah, we divided our attentions between the impressive displays and all the various shenanigans of the young children we saw. Like the boy on his push car ramming the bottom of the steps repeatedly, looking up at each descending person for approval. Or the little girl who would furtively slap her even littler brother, who would only stare back with a confused look, as if to say, "Was that supposed to mean something?" Reminds me of back when my parents laid down the law against sibling-on-sibling violence. And so my sister resorted to taking the heads off my LEGO people, putting them in her mouth, and then spitting them back out across the room. Which, in my 5-year-old mind, was akin to torturing kittens and puppies.
We cannot wait to have kids.
Anyways, it was a fun trip. Here are pictures with very little in terms of accompanying anecdotes or captions. Sometimes, pictures of fish are just pictures of fish.
I only post this blurry picture because I've never seen an octopus so active and out in the open. Although, judging by the way it would repeatedly back up against the rocks (there was a raw spot on the back of its "head"), I'd be tempted to say that it was high or something.
I think this one's really just a Muppet.
Friday, November 06, 2009
I Almost Forgot
So, we got four votes on the poll about Baby Chicken's blog. Honestly, that was about 2 more than I was expecting; so, chalk it up in the win column!
I'm still finishing up all these "flashback" posts, but pretty soon, it'll likely be all Baby Chicken, all the time. Are you ready for an overload of baby-ness?
In any case, thanks for the comments, and keep 'em coming! Otherwise I mostly just sound like I'm talking to myself, and that's kind of sad.
Yes, that's two exclamation points in the same blog post! (Now 3!...cue: infinite loop)
I'm still finishing up all these "flashback" posts, but pretty soon, it'll likely be all Baby Chicken, all the time. Are you ready for an overload of baby-ness?
In any case, thanks for the comments, and keep 'em coming! Otherwise I mostly just sound like I'm talking to myself, and that's kind of sad.
Yes, that's two exclamation points in the same blog post! (Now 3!...cue: infinite loop)
In Memory of Fish I Have Bought and Sold
Towards the end of my first year in grad school, many decades ago (0.8), I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would spend all my free time over the summer. Although I'd still be working in the lab, the absence of classes and homework would leave me with a lot of idle time that I was determined not to spend bettering myself in an academic/intellectual fashion. So, I decided to build my own aquarium. As one typically does in such a situation. If you're a loser.
Luckily, the Wife (The Girlfriend, at the time) did not find this decision to be repellent in any way.
So, yes, I built an aquarium. I would give more details about its construction and its particular specifications, referring to things like total volume, flow rate, filtration mechanism, and number of inhabitant species, but let's be honest. Just mentioning the term "flow rate" puts me in an elite class of nerd, and you'd probably just nod off anyway. For simplicity's sake, I will just say that it had fish and water in it. And coral. And crabs and shrimp and snails.
When all was said and done, the result was a living-room-dominating, eery-blue-glow-out-the-front-windows-creating monstrosity with a slight, barely perceptible slantedness to it. But I was a proud of it, and I enjoyed its presence (and usually, its maintenance) for 5 years. And our friends enjoyed cleaning the algae off the front glass with the magnetic scrubber. In truth, I was lucky that the whole system managed to establish a freakish biological equilibrium that permitted me to be increasingly neglectful of its upkeep without any significant consequences. Oftentimes, while the Wife and I were busy not deciding what to make for dinner, we would just sit and watch all the various goings-on in each tank. Like our flamboyant goby Armand grabbing food and spitting it into his burrow for his shrimp-partner Albert to eat in between shifts of clearing out new tunnels. Or the flame angel Fiona going about her usual business of biting chunks of tail off her tankmates.
However, as time passed and my favorite fish all died off from old-ish age (not really knowing the fish years conversion rate), I slowly lost interest in decided that it was time to break it all down.
Over a couple weeks in the fall of '07, I sold everything off piece-meal. And, let me tell you, it is very strange to take a fish that you had named and maintained for 4 or 5 years, and then haggle with a stranger over its price. And then to throw in the proverbial runt-of-the-litter fish into a deal because you knew nobody would buy it on its own. But I managed to sell of everything, recouping a significant amount of my investment in the process.
It was sad, but it was time to move on. So, the Wife and I used the money to buy kayaks. As one typically does in such a situation. The Wife loved the kayaks as much as I loved the aquariums. Sometimes she would make paddling motions in her sleep. We would often meet up with a couple of friends who had their own kayaks and venture to far off regions of eastern North Carolina to enjoy a couple hours of exploring and waterside picnicking and being bullied by fishing boats. Our kayaks even went with us on a vacation up to the Finger Lakes, where they mostly just attracted slugs and rain. Still, we felt like those outdoorsy people in the commercials as we drove around with those kayaks strapped to the top of the car.
Unfortunately, they, too, had a limited life with us. Bringing them with us to California proved to be impractical; so, the kayaks had to be sold. We managed a separate deal with our home-buyers over them and pocketed a significant amount of our investment.
And then we got to California and used the money to pay for half a month's rent.
Luckily, the Wife (The Girlfriend, at the time) did not find this decision to be repellent in any way.
So, yes, I built an aquarium. I would give more details about its construction and its particular specifications, referring to things like total volume, flow rate, filtration mechanism, and number of inhabitant species, but let's be honest. Just mentioning the term "flow rate" puts me in an elite class of nerd, and you'd probably just nod off anyway. For simplicity's sake, I will just say that it had fish and water in it. And coral. And crabs and shrimp and snails.
When all was said and done, the result was a living-room-dominating, eery-blue-glow-out-the-front-windows-creating monstrosity with a slight, barely perceptible slantedness to it. But I was a proud of it, and I enjoyed its presence (and usually, its maintenance) for 5 years. And our friends enjoyed cleaning the algae off the front glass with the magnetic scrubber. In truth, I was lucky that the whole system managed to establish a freakish biological equilibrium that permitted me to be increasingly neglectful of its upkeep without any significant consequences. Oftentimes, while the Wife and I were busy not deciding what to make for dinner, we would just sit and watch all the various goings-on in each tank. Like our flamboyant goby Armand grabbing food and spitting it into his burrow for his shrimp-partner Albert to eat in between shifts of clearing out new tunnels. Or the flame angel Fiona going about her usual business of biting chunks of tail off her tankmates.
Over a couple weeks in the fall of '07, I sold everything off piece-meal. And, let me tell you, it is very strange to take a fish that you had named and maintained for 4 or 5 years, and then haggle with a stranger over its price. And then to throw in the proverbial runt-of-the-litter fish into a deal because you knew nobody would buy it on its own. But I managed to sell of everything, recouping a significant amount of my investment in the process.
It was sad, but it was time to move on. So, the Wife and I used the money to buy kayaks. As one typically does in such a situation. The Wife loved the kayaks as much as I loved the aquariums. Sometimes she would make paddling motions in her sleep. We would often meet up with a couple of friends who had their own kayaks and venture to far off regions of eastern North Carolina to enjoy a couple hours of exploring and waterside picnicking and being bullied by fishing boats. Our kayaks even went with us on a vacation up to the Finger Lakes, where they mostly just attracted slugs and rain. Still, we felt like those outdoorsy people in the commercials as we drove around with those kayaks strapped to the top of the car.
And then we got to California and used the money to pay for half a month's rent.
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