Steelykid!
drorzel | December 6, 2014We flew down to Florida Friday afternoon, on a Southwest flight to Tampa. While waiting to board, SteelyKid of course struck up a conversation with basically everybody in the vicinity, but mostly an older Asian woman who was behind us.
That woman also ended up in the seat directly behind SteelyKid. As this was a window seat, there was a good deal of space between the seat and the window, so while we waited to take off, SteelyKid carried on cheerful conversations with both The Pip iun the row ahead of us, and the woman from the boarding line in the seat behind. I didn't pay all that much…
drorzel | November 27, 2014SteelyKid's first-grade class has been doing a bunch of Thanksgiving stuff. A lot of this is the lies-to-children version of the first Thanksgiving, and some of that is a little dubious (they had a dress-up "feast" on Tuesday, where SteelyKid was an Indian with a construction-paper vest and feathered headband, and oh, the parental eye-rolling...). This has also included some reflection on gratitude, though-- as mentioned on Twitter, the list of non-human things she's thankful for includes "dogs, world, sun, moon, toys, games, trees, books, food, water, air, stars, beach." (There were other…
drorzel | October 18, 2014It's been a brutally busy couple of weeks here, what with reading folders for the job searches we have going on, trying to keep on top of my class, and multiple day-care closings for the Jewish holidays. But the kids are still very cute, as you can see from the above caricatures of The Pip as Pooh and SteelyKid as a Lego construction worker. These were done by Rich Conley who does caricatures at LT's Grill in Niskayuna on Tuesday nights, which probably explains what we're doing for dinner for Tuesdays in perpetuity...
We're off to Scenic Whitney Point for a bit (after kid soccer, that is),…
drorzel | August 2, 2014...if you're a first-grader in Niskayuna, anyway.
We've got 10-15 elementary school kids who are supposed to descend upon our house a bit before lunchtime. Morituri te salutamus...
SteelyKid's birthday party invitation.
Kidding aside, it's worth it, because SteelyKid is awesome, and she's super excited to have a whole mob of her friends over. I just hope the rain holds off, because I don't know where we'll put everybody if it doesn't...
(The photo is SteelyKid after taekwondo practice a month or so ago. She was demonstrating one of the forms, I think Taegeuk Il Jang, and I shot some…
drorzel | June 30, 2014For some reason, the topic of really big rocks came up at dinner the other night, and SteelyKid declared that she wanted to find "A rock as big as the solar system." We pointed out that that was pretty much impossible, more or less by definition, rocks being sub-parts of the solar system.
"OK, how about a rock as big as Jupiter?" That's a much harder question to answer, and required a trip to the Internet. Not during dinner, of course-- it's hard enough to get her to eat when we're all sitting at the table-- but a day or so later, which led to this blog post.
So, there are a couple of…
drorzel | June 15, 2014Today is Father's Day in the US, so I got a bunch of little gifts from the kids. The Pip's was just a construction-paper card mostly made by his teachers, with a bit of scribble on it. SteelyKid's, though, included a fill-in-the-blank booklet that she wrote on and drew pictures to go with.
Some of the pictures are extremely detailed and colorful, such as this one where she describes a conversation we have Every. Single. Night.:
SteelyKid's extremely detailed depiction of a conversation we have every night.
(SteelyKid is a terrible eater, and it's a struggle to get her to eat anything. She'…
drorzel | June 8, 2014Made it home Friday evening after another bout of airline nonsense-- they had replaced the plane for my flight into Albany with a smaller aircraft, so my email boarding pass assigned me to a nonexistent seat. Which had been corrected in their computer, but was never communicated to me, or to several other passengers who found themselves holding boarding passes from online that had the same seat assignments as passengers who had printed them at the airport. To be fair to Delta, this was the only glitch out of four flights, but it was a doozy.
Anyway, DAMOP was a lot of fun, but exhausting. So…
drorzel | May 19, 2014Kate's arguing a case in Connecticut today, so I was solo-parenting last night and this morning. which means that while I did manage to watch Cosmos last night, and have some thoughts about it, I don't have the time or energy to write them up this morning. As explanation, I offer this video from dinner last night, in which SteelyKid and The Pip explore subtle issues of plant biology:
As you might guess, it's very trying to deal with such sullen and mopey children all the time...
This was also on the heels of a classmate's birthday party with SteelyKid on Saturday, which was preceded by two…
drorzel | May 9, 2014Last weekend, the circus came to town, and Grandma and Grandpa came up to help us take the kids. We took SteelyKid a couple of years ago, and figured The Pip was old enough to go this time, too. Having bought tickets a couple of years ago, I got sent a pre-sale offer link, and followed that to get tickets in the front center section.
What I didn't realize was that these put us in the "Circus Celebrity" section-- when the show started, they came and gave us these ribbon things to wear, and a bit before the intermission some of the performers came over to our section, and led us out to the…
drorzel | April 29, 2014Before going to the playground Saturday to investigate non-intertial frames, SteelyKid and I went over to campus to do some experiments in relativity. Galileian relativity, that is:
What you see here is SteelyKid sitting on a rolling lab cart with a camera bolted to it. She throws a ball up in the air a couple of times with the cart at rest, then I start pushing it across the room, and she tosses the ball a few more times. You can see from the video that, other than the motion of the background, the two cases look very similar.
This is a demonstration of the principle of relativity, which…
drorzel | April 22, 2014"DAAAAADDDDDYYYYY!!!!"
"What's the matter, honey?"
"I don't like being alone."
"Well, I'm sorry, honey, but I have work to do, and it's time for you to go to sleep."
"But when I'm alone I get scared."
"Well, I can put on some music if you like. You can listen to that, and it might give you something else to think about."
"Yeah, put the music on."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but when I sleep, I always put music on, because it helps me feel less lonely."
"The music helps, but I still worry about things. Like bad guys. And the evil snakes from Lego Ninjago. I worry that they might be around…
drorzel | April 20, 2014The kids spent last week at Grandma and Grandpa's, as school was closed for Passover/Easter (best wishes for each of those holidays to those who celebrate them), and Kate and I went down there for the weekend. During which trip we went up on top of the flood control dam in town, and flew a kite, as you can see in the "featured image" above, or the copy of it below:
SteelyKid, flying a kite.
SteelyKid had a great time flying the kite, and played out so much string that you can barely make out the kite in the photo, even after a bit of image processing to enhance it.
And, for balance, here's…
drorzel | March 24, 2014This week is Union's spring break, and like basically everything associated with Union's academic calendar, it's too short. I have to turn in my Winter term grades today, and next Monday is the start of my Spring term class.
I also find myself in a place right now were every little thing is pissing me off, which is a terrible place to start the Spring term. And since social media functions largely as an aggravation engine right at the moment, that means I need to step back for a bit. So, don't expect much of anything here or on Twitter for the next week at least. We'll probably still do…
drorzel | March 19, 2014"Daddy? How do you make water?"
"You mean, what is it made of?"
"Yeah, what's water made of?"
"Hydrogen and oxygen."
"Oh. And what's hydrogen and oxygen?"
"They're chemical elements."
"So, when we drink water, we're drinking chemicals?"
"Well, yeah. In a sense, everything is chemicals. Water's a chemical, air is made of chemicals. "
"What about, like, wood?"
"Chemicals."
"What?!?! Is everything chemicals?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
"What about lights?"
"Light isn't a chemical, but the things that make light are made out of chemicals."
"Yeah, like, the Sun is fire, and it makes light, but is the…
drorzel | March 13, 2014"So, that's the science show with space pictures. What did you think of it, honey?"
"Science. Space pictures. Awesome!"
Our umpteenth winter storm of the season delayed school two hours this morning, which is kind of the worst of all possible worlds from a parenting perspective-- when the schools are closed, there's (usually) a snow-day day-care program, but they don't take kids during a mere delay. On the bright side, though, it gave me a chance to show SteelyKid the Cosmos reboot from Sunday night. Her capsule review is at the top.
In a little more detail:
-- I asked her if she wanted to…
drorzel | March 7, 2014Not that long ago, SteelyKid was doing something violent with toys (she's very tough, as you can see from the featured image above), and in the process made the canonical falling-bomb whistle noise. And it occurred to me to wonder, why that sound?
I mean, I've seen footage of falling bombs and the canonical sound seems like an accurate enough. But I'm not sure I understand it from a physics perspective. Specifically, when you do the falling-bomb whistle, you do a whistle that decreases in pitch. But the bomb is falling faster as it approaches the ground, so if anything, I would expect the…
drorzel | March 1, 2014Kate has been cutting The Pip's hair a little bit at a time, and this morning he demanded a trim. This is a somewhat fraught process, as he's two, and thus tends not to hold still very well. While Kate was trying to get him arranged, SteelyKid came bouncing into the bathroom to "watch," which is a sure route to disaster.
"C'mon, SteelyKid," I said. Let's go see what's in the bedroom, so The Pip doesn't get distracted."
"Distracted?"
"Well, Mommy's cutting his hair, so it's important that he not move. And if you're in there, he might want to move around to look at you."
"Oh, yeah. And he likes…
drorzel | February 7, 2014SteelyKid's class at her after-school day care has been learning about space for the last month or two (the program is very flexible-- the teachers ask the kids what they want to learn about, and then they spend however long on that topic the kids like), so we've been getting a lot of tidbits about astronomy related to us during car trips and dinner conversation. Last night, there was an open house at the Union College Observatory, so I picked her up a little early, and took her to campus to look through the big telescope (20-inch Cassegrain, for those who care about such things). This served…
drorzel | February 5, 2014Both SteelyKid's kindergarten and the snow-day day-care program that the kids go to were closed today, which kind of threw a wrench in things. But it's also kind of fun, as I got to spend some time playing outside with SteelyKid on her play set in the snow. The "featured image" above is a cell-phone snap from this, and I got three short video clips of her going down the slide.
Of course, it's kind of stupid for these to be three separate YouTube clips, but when I went to stick them together using Windows Movie Maker (which is what I've used for this sort of thing in the past), it turns out…
drorzel | February 1, 2014SteelyKid is one of the biggest fans of Union's women's basketball games. Not necessarily the team, just going to the games-- she rampages all around the lobby, and as the crowd is generally pretty sparse, everybody is cool with that. The Pip has started coming along this year, and the two of them chase each other all over the place.
This past week, the team scored a big upset over William Smith, the second half of which the kids spent climbing up and down the stands. This is a shot from floor level with my phone, after I got sick of following them up and down, and figured that any major…