Pictures
drorzel | August 18, 2011For this week's Toddler Blogging, here's a dad's eye view of one of today's playground activities: walking the 4x4 border on the sand playground as if it was a balance beam.
She doesn't actually need to hold my hand to walk this, but it makes her happier.
I snapped that with my phone, expecting her to still be in "No Pictures" mode at home. Surprisingly, though, she agreed to have her picture taking reading books with Mommy:
That's the sea turtle book that Grandma and Grandpa gave her (after a trip to the Virgin Islands where they saw turtles while snorkeling, I believe). She spread a huge…
drorzel | August 11, 2011It was another "no pictures" day today, so this shot is from earlier in the week, when SteelyKid got some birthday presents from my Aunt Norma and Uncle Dan:
This shows her playing with the I Spy Preschool Game, which involves matching cards containing pictures of complicated collections of objects with other cards containing objects to be found in those pictures.
I like this because she's sporting the "Future Physicist" shirt I bought her at DAMOP, which is kind of appropriate, really. After all, physics is all about finding and matching patterns in the universe around us.
You can see Emmy…
drorzel | August 7, 2011Well, you're right. The cutest toddler in the universe turns three today:
Happy birthday, SteelyKid!
drorzel | August 4, 2011As she never tires of telling us, SteelyKid keeps getting bigger and bigger. How big? She can touch the ceiling!
OK, she has to be on my shoulders to do it, but the distance between her head and the ceiling has gotten really small. She's huge!
the picture above was taken by Kate standing a few steps up on the stairs. For the ground-level effect (more or less), click through below the fold.
She wouldn't allow a picture tonight, which is a shame, because we spent at least half an hour playing the world's most ridiculous game of hide-and-seek. But these, from last night, were too good not to…
drorzel | July 28, 2011Shhh! There's an Artist at work:
That's SteelyKid hard at work on something. I think she was writing my name, though it might've been writing Emmy's name. It's a little tough to tell from the photographs.
Of course, the real purpose of making art is to be able to discuss it:
This led to my new favorite SteelyKid conversation:
SteelyKid: That's a car.
Kate: Is the car going somewhere?
SteelyKid: No. It just stays on the paper.
She went on to explain that the car had been inside the marker, but then she took the top off the marker, and put it on the paper, and the car came out. Which is…
drorzel | July 25, 2011Here is a very significant picture:
"What's significant about that?" you ask. "It's slightly out of focus and oddly framed. Why should I care?"
You should care because of the photographer:
That's right, SteelyKid has a camera now-- we gave her my old Canon A95. She was playing with Kate's smaller point-and-shoot camera (I forget the model) yesterday, and having a little trouble because it's so small her fingers kept getting in the way. The A95 is a little bigger, and while it's on the heavy side, it fits her hand reasonably well. And she took right to using it.
And, because the laws of the…
drorzel | July 25, 2011I've got a ton of stuff to do this morning that will keep me from more substantive blogging, so here's a cute toddler picture:
This is SteelyKid playing with the giant magnet in the MRI exhibit at the Schenectady Museum, trying to see how big a tower she could make out of steel washers and hex nuts (answer: 11 hex nuts before it fell over). She also greatly enjoyed tossing washers at the magnet and seeing them snap to it (I was more interested in tossing them so they got deflected but missed the magnet body, and shot off into the wider room. I doubt the other patrons would've guessed…
drorzel | July 21, 2011SteelyKid's "no pictures" phase continues, meaning that I have to do things like snapping low-light pictures of her after she falls asleep:
I used a really wide aperture lens for this-- waking her up with the flash would be the end of the world-- and had to process the hell out of it to get the colors to look remotely right. I could probably do a little better with more work, but we'll leave it like this as a reminder of how difficult it was to get any pictures for Toddler Blogging
sastyk | July 20, 2011I thought y'all might want to see as well as hear what's going on around here.
First, there's the baby goats:
(Asher with Midori)
(Isaiah holding Margarita)
(Poppy nurses little Grog. Stout is in the background waiting his turn.)
The baby goats aren't the only baby things we have in profusion:
(Marigold gave us 8 baby Cinnamon Rabbits, while Rosemary followed with another five.)
(Mama hen and her babies)
Meanwhile, the harvest is coming apace!
Everything is growing like weeds (including the weeds!). Check out the boys in the raspberry patch. They don't leave us much!
(Lavatera in…
drorzel | July 15, 2011Yesterday's foray into procrastination by mathematical modeling forced me to shift some actual work into the evening hours, which meant that I completely forgot about Toddler Blogging. Which is fine, because lately SteelyKid has been reacting to cameras in approximately the same way as the reclusive celebrity of your choice, so all my pictures of he tend to look like this:
Just after this shot, she heard the shutter sound, turned around, and fled crying. So, you know, I feel like a wonderful person.
anyway, sorry for the delay, but at least it gave me something to post this morning. We're…
drorzel | July 7, 2011This week's Toddler Blogging is a cell-phone picture in slightly dim light, but it's too cute not to use:
This is particularly noteworthy because the fire truck was bought by Grandma and Grandpa last year, while the fire hat was bought by Grandma and Grandpa before they were grandparents. In 1974 or thereabouts, I would guess, because it was originally mine, when I was little.
And that's really all I've got today, as I'm still tired from travel.
drorzel | July 3, 2011Between the holiday weekend and finally getting to concentrate on book edits, there hasn't been much time for blogging recently. So here's another SteelyKid-at-the-Bronx-Zoo picture for filler:
As I said when I posted this to google+, this practically demands a caption. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with anything better than "...same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the ZOO!" But I'm sure somebody reading this can do better in the comments. (Please keep in mind, though, that this is my daughter we're talking about. Anything excessively crass is subject to summary deletion.)
drorzel | June 30, 2011SteelyKid's away at Grammy and Grampy's this week, so I can't take a Toddler Blogging photo for this week. I do, however, have this random artsy shot from last Saturday's trip to the Bronx Zoo:
This is from the Children's Zoo section. She's going up the stairs to the upper platform, where there's a twisty slide inside a fake tree trunk. As you can tell, this is Serious Business.
And there's your cute toddler fix for the week. Enjoy.
drorzel | June 27, 2011On Saturday, we took SteelyKid to the Bronx Zoo. It was kind of hot, and she got a little over-tired by the end, but it had a lot of amazingly cute moments, too. And, unlike Sunday's trip to the beach, I brought my camera and shot a couple hundred pictures of various things. Including this shot of SteelyKid on Grandpa's shoulders at the start of the day:
That's a keeper, all right. What was she looking at? Well, this happy couple:
Hello, large predatory cat.
And hello to you, too, Aslan.
(These could probably be improved further with some slightly more sophisticated image processing-- the…
drorzel | June 25, 2011"Hey, Dude, what'cha doin'?"
"I'm checking out the dog drawings I commissioned for the book-in-progress. Here, take a look:"
"Hey, wait just one minute. That looks like me!"
"That's the idea. Since you're in the book, I thought it would be nice to have some pictures that look like you, rather than just a clip-art German Shepherd from Office."
"I look kind of worried, dude."
"Yeah, well, you get that look a lot when we're talking about physics."
"Good point. So, was there a point to this, other than showing off the spiffy drawings an art student did for you?"
"Sure. It's a reminder that I'm…
drorzel | June 23, 2011SteelyKid is in a bit of a "no pictures" phase at the moment, which makes it kind of difficult to get weekly shots. Hence the run of Toddler Blogging pictures without Appa in them-- when we pick Appa up, she runs away.
Thus, this shot with the color balance all wonky (I could do a better job of cleaning it up, but I'm lazy), because the flash hadn't warmed up yet, and she started freaking out before I could get a better shot. It does, however, show the finest balloon animal you can get from "Mr. Twisty," who does his act at the Greenmarket every now and then:
That's a monkey climbing a tree…
sastyk | June 21, 2011I came home last Monday night after three days spent in Washington working on business for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, and it was one of the most glorious homecomings I could imagine. Not only was there the joy of coming home to my boys and Eric, but also my home is more like paradise in June than at any moment.
(Mac the Marshmallow waiting to welcome me home)
We're headed into the transition point from spring to summer, and you can feel it. The spring bulbs are behind us, the peonies are in bloom, the animals are fat and happy on lush growth, and there are jars of…
drorzel | June 16, 2011Kate here while Chad is at DAMOP, with this week's Toddler Blogging.
What, you may ask, is SteelyKid counting on her fingers?
In fact, she is counting down to . . .
Takeoff!
drorzel | June 9, 2011SteelyKid is in an intermittently shy phase right at the moment. Sometimes, she's really outgoing and shamelessly mugs for the camera, other times, well...
Of course, two minutes after hiding behind Appa and insisting that I not take pictures of her, she marched over and demanded to see the pictures on the camera.
We've had an extremely busy couple of days-- her day care was closed yesterday and today for a Jewish holiday-- so that's all I've got the mental energy for tonight. I almost forgot to past anything at all, but Kate reminded me, and I thought I had better head off the angry/…
drorzel | June 8, 2011
Relevant data: Due date in early November, blood tests for Bad Things came back clear, and while we haven't gotten Official Word from the doctor, everything looked fine to the ultrasound tech yesterday. Gender is going to be a surprise, as it was with SteelyKid.
We told SteelyKid about it last night, and to the limited degree that she understands, I think she's excited. Last night at bedtime, I mentioned that she would need to give up her pacifier soon so the baby can have it, leading to the following conversation (more or less):
SteelyKid: "Mommy has a baby in her tummy, and it's going to…