Pictures
drorzel | September 6, 2009"Dude, we need to talk."
"About what?"
"Your priorities are all out of whack. I mean, everything is about your puppy these days-- puppy blogging, taking the puppy on trips, buying the puppy toys. You need to get back to basics."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Well, more me, obviously. Don't get me wrong, I like the puppy and all, especially when she feeds me Cheerios. But ask yourself, who pays the bills around here, hmm? Me or the puppy?"
"So, you're saying you'd like to be more in the foreground?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"OK."
"That's maybe a little more literal than I was talking about. But…
drorzel | September 5, 2009We're headed out for a last road trip before the start of classes, taking SteelyKid to visit her great-grandmother and great-great-aunts. Why? Because she's this cute:
If you had a baby that cute, wouldn't you take her on the road? I thought so.
Normal-ish blogging will resume Tuesday. I'm scheduling a few other pictures to pass the time, though, just so you won't have to suffer an entire three-day weekend without this blog. Because I care.
drorzel | September 3, 2009I thought we'd go with a change of scene for this week's baby blogging, so we took Appa out into the back yard. Trouble is, it's a little hard to get a good Baby Blogging photo there because there are so many other things to catch SteelyKid's attention:
We haven't been outside much this summer, thanks to all the rain. The moss on the patio is an excellent indicator of what kind of summer it's been. Of course, we're getting nice summer-y weather now, when I have to be inside prepping classes all day...
drorzel | August 31, 2009One of the nice things about being a parent is getting to introduce SteelyKid to my own obsessions. Like, for example, the great game of basketball:
"You want me to throw this how high?"
Maybe we'll stick with something a little smaller for now:
(Hey to Todd Clark, who gave us the toy hoop...)
drorzel | August 30, 2009Here's some cute to get your Sunday off to a good start: the first 55 weeks of Thursday Baby Blogging pictures strung together into a movie showing the growth of SteelyKid:
(Thursday of week 20 was Christmas Day, and there are limits to even my geekery. I don't know what happened to Week 41.)
It's really pretty amazing to watch them all together like that...
drorzel | August 29, 2009SteelyKid shows off the latest in clothes for geeky toddlers:
It's not really the official Twitter logo bird, but it's pretty close.
After this was taken, we spent a good half hour playing a rousing game of "Clueless Mail Carrier":
She picked up the padded shipping envelope that the memory card for my camera came in, and walked around and around the house with it, setting it down, picking it back up, and occasionally stopping to squint at the label like she was trying to read the address. It was great fun.
(Whatever works, man...)
drorzel | August 27, 2009SteelyKid says "Pose with Appa? No way! I'm a baby on the go!"
I actually did get a couple of reasonable Appa-for-scale shots (one is below the fold), but I like the action quality of this one. It's an accurate representation of what she's like at the moment, too.
I'm already up to 178 pictures on the new camera, and while many of those are just repeated shots of the same objects with different camera settings, to see what the new camera can do, you can bet there will be a bunch of baby pictures turning up here in the next week or two...
drorzel | August 26, 2009I've caught the intestinal thing that was making Kate's life miserable the last couple days, and the less said about that the better. Happily, my new camera arrived (Canon Rebel XSi/ 450D), giving me something to play with while I try to remain hydrated. And I have to say, it's a nice new toy:
I didn't do anything to that other than cropping and scaling it (4272x2848 pixels being a bit much for the Web), and that turned out nice. I like this toy.
Emmy is being remarkably patient with me, as I play with the various settings (of which there are many). The continuous-drive shots will wait until…
drorzel | August 20, 2009This week's Baby Blogging breaks new ground: Outdoor Baby Blogging!
SteelyKid says "Stop mugging for the camera, Daddy! This is about me!"
This picture also serves to show off her new stroller. It's less collapsible than the previous one, but more maneuverable, and has a larger carrying capacity in the bottom bin, which is nice when we take an evening stroll over to the store to get staple foods that are running low. As we did tonight.
drorzel | August 16, 2009As a parent of a newly mobile one-year-old, I have a can't-fail suggestion for a toy product that would fuse two popular technologies: realistic infant simulators (baby dolls that cry, wet themselve, etc.) and vacuum-cleaning robots.
All you need to do is mount a baby doll on a Roomba chassis, and use the same random-walk algorithm they use for the vacuum cleaners. Have the doll wander around completely at random, occasionally bumping into things. Anything small on the floor gets picked up, and stuck in the doll's mouth. For bonus realism points, have it stop at random intervals for no…
drorzel | August 14, 2009This wooden box sits on top of my dresser, and every afternoon when I come home, I dump the change from my pockets into it. It's getting close to full, as you can see:
I've got a couple of extra galley proofs kicking around, so here's a contest:
Guess the total dollar value of the change in this box.
Leave your guess in the comments. I will take the box to the bank next Monday, and have the change converted to folding money. At that time, the commenter whose guess is the closest to the actual dollar value of the change in the box (above or below) will receive a galley proof copy of How to…
drorzel | August 13, 2009It's getting harder and harder to get good SteelyKid pictures, because she's always in motion (see digital camera complaints in the previous post). So, we have to resort to tricks like putting her in her babypod and holding Appa up next to her:
Fortunately, she doesn't mind too much...
Actually, she sits in the babypod for dinner every night, where she gets Cheerios and banana puffs to distrct her while Kate and I eat. And, lately, she also gets water in a sippy cup, which allows her to demonstrate that she is her father's daughter:
People who knew me at Williams will recognize the…
drorzel | August 13, 2009The vast majority of the SteelyKid pictures posted here have been taken with our Canon PowerShot A95 camera, which is around five years old at this point. It's served us well, but is getting old, and has a few sub-optimal features, in particular the lag time between pushing the button and actually taking the picture-- I can't tell you how many incredibly cute baby pictures have been missed because she moved or changed expression during the shutter lag.
I've got a little disposable cash at the moment, and I'm toying with the idea of getting a new camera. I'd probably look at something a little…
drorzel | August 6, 2009Even though Kate and I are en route to Montreal, dodging Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, through the miracle of post scheduling, you get your Thursday Baby Blogging. To get around the problems posed by her new mobility, we'll fall back on a classic: the sleeping-baby picture:
If you look at the file name, you'll see that this is Week 52 of Thursday Baby Blogging. And, indeed, Friday is SteelyKid's first birthday, hooray! The year has gone by really quickly, except when it dragged horribly (usually in the wee hours, with Shrieky Baby).
For perspective, here's a flashback to the very first…
drorzel | July 30, 2009It's really getting difficult to get good Baby Blogging pictures, now that SteelyKid is mobile. We've had to resort to trying to sneak Appa into the background when she pauses to regroup by chewing on an outgrown outfit:
That's not the best Appa-for-scale picture, I know, but it's tough. This one is better, but you can't see her face:
Of course, you can see Kate, which makes up for a lot...
drorzel | July 26, 2009Kind of a lazy, sleepy day around Chateau Steelypips, hence the lack of blogging, but we did find time to try out a new baby diversion:
This is going to be an outside-only game henceforth, given the low height of the door frames in this house, but it was a hit while it lasted.
drorzel | July 23, 2009It's been a really busy week, so I'm too fried to do anything but a really basic Baby Blogging picture. So here's SteelyKid with Appa and some of her many other toys:
The biggest recent milestone is that she's started eating actual food-- pieces of cereal, little dried banana puffs, and that sort of thing. It gives me hope that someday we will be done with stinky formula...
drorzel | July 17, 2009After a long service outage, our home Internet is back, and I can post Baby Blogging pictures. Of course, it's not as easy to get those as it used to be, because SteelyKid is always on the move these days:
You pretty much have to hold her in place to keep her in the frame:
(This picture also shows off her "Snugglesaurus: Ferociously Cute" dinosaur outfit. Which I think was technically in the boys' clothes section, but we're all about subverting paradigms, here at Chateau Steelypips. Especially ones involving frilly pink ribbons.)
Of course, there are also times when she just goes fwump:…
drorzel | July 9, 2009This is an action shot, but you can't really tell.
An instant after this was taken, SteelyKid succeeded in getting Appa off the couch, and thumped down hard on her butt.
This is also "Late-Wednesday Baby Blogging," as Kate and SteelyKid left for Readercon early this morning (well, Kate is bound for Readercon. SteelyKid is spending the weekend with her grandmother). It's awfully quiet in Chateau Steelypips right now. Almost... too quiet...
No, wait, Emmy's barking at a dog outside. Not too quiet after all. That's a relief.
drorzel | July 4, 2009SteelyKid shows off her recently expanded climbing ability:
I could attempt to make a strained connection to the Fourth of July by making some analogy between a baby climbing stairs and the need for constant slow improvement in the national character, or some such. But really, it's just a cute baby picture being posted as filler.
Enjoy the day. I hope you have better weather than we do.