Steelykid!

The Age Math Game

drorzel — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 06:24:52 +0000

The Age Math Game

I keep falling down on my duty to provide cute-kid content, here; I also keep forgetting to post something about a nerdy bit of our morning routine. So, let's maximize the bird-to-stone ratio, and do them at the same time.

The Pip can be a Morning Dude at times, but SteelyKid is never very happy to get up. So on weekday mornings, we've developed a routine to ease the two of them into the day: SteelyKid has a radio alarm, and then I go in and gently shake her out of bed. I usually carry her downstairs to the couch, where she burrows into the cushions a bit; The Pip mostly comes downstairs under his own power, though occasionally he needs a lot of badgering to get him out of bed.

Once on the couch, we play one level of Candy Crush on my phone, often while SteelyKid has a small snack. At the end of this, if we beat the level, we get a leaderboard showing our place among my Facebook friends who play, and also Kate's ranking (she's something like a hundred levels ahead of us, so she always has a ranking...).

Once we get those two numbers, we play a math game with them: The kids have to figure out how to combine those two numbers to get their ages (currently five and nine). Allowed operations are all ordinary arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), and also operations between the digits of two-digit numbers. Extra pairs of the starting numbers can be brought in as needed

So, for example, if we're in eighth place and Kate's one spot ahead, the process of getting to 5 would be something like:

"Seven plus eight is fifteen, and one times five is five, then you're done."

And to get to nine would be:

"Eight minus seven is one, then add that to another eight, and you get nine."

SteelyKid learned about square roots at some point, and she's now a big fan of taking the square root of nine to get a three-- so if we end up in second and Kate was seventh, she'll go for:

"Two plus seven is nine, and the square root of nine is three, then three plus another two is five."

I have no recollection of how I started doing this with SteelyKid (it used to be just her, but The Pip decided a few months back that he wanted in on the game), but this works amazingly well to get them to wake up a bit. It's a nice introduction to math-as-a-game, too, which I hope will serve them well down the line.

And there's your cute-and-nerdy kid content. Also here's a bonus photo of the two of them wearing eclipse glasses in preparation for yesterday's solar spectacle:

Sillyheads modeling eclipse glasses. Photo by Kate Nepveu.

(They were duly impressed by the Sun looking like a crescent moon, up here in 60-odd-percent country. They saw it at day camp; I was waiting for an eye doctor appointment at a local mall, and shared around a set of eclipse glasses with random shoppers and retail workers.)

drorzel Tue, 08/22/2017 - 02:24

Tags

math

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

Good that you are getting the kids into math this way.

Every year my undergraduate alma mater's alumni magazine includes a puzzle to get as many numbers from 1 to 100 as you can out of the digits that comprise the current year. (There is no four-digit year for which all of those numbers are attainable.) You are allowed to combine digits into two-digit numbers, and use standard operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square roots, and exponentiation. The preferred solution uses as few operators as possible (parentheses used for grouping do not count), and for a given number of operators, solutions that use the digits in order are preferred. So, for instance, you can get 1 out of the digits in 2017 in several ways. 1 + (2 + 7) * 0 works, but 2 + 0 - 1 * 7 is better because it uses the digits in the correct order, and 217^0 is even better because it uses only one operator.

So, for instance, you can get 1 out of the digits in 2017 in several ways. 1 + (2 + 7) * 0 works, but 2 + 0 – 1 * 7 is better because it uses the digits in the correct order

I don't see how that's a better way to get 1, given that 2+0-1*7 = -5

Kid Art Update

drorzel — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 07:08:18 +0000

Kid Art Update

Our big home renovation has added a level of chaos to everything that's gotten in the way of my doing more regular cute-kid updates. And even more routine tasks, like photographing the giant pile of kid art that we had to move out of the dining room. Clearing stuff up for the next big stage of the renovation-- cabinets arrive tomorrow-- led me to this stuff, though, so I finally took pictures of a whole bunch of good stuff. (On the spiffy new tile floor in the kitchen, because the light was good there...)

The kids's school sends home portfolios of what they've done in art class for the year, and I collected those photos together into a Google Photos album for easy sharing, because they're pretty cool. My favorite piece of the lot is this polar bear by SteelyKid:

Polar bear by SteelyKid.

That's in pastel chalk on construction paper; you can see some preliminary sketches of the bear in the album. She drew the scene in pencil, colored it in chalk, then traced important lines with a marker. It's very cool.

The Pip has some neat stuff in his portfolio, too-- I especially like that they had the kids making Mondrians out of strips of construction paper-- but my favorite of his was a non-art-class drawing that was in the pile:

The Pigeon, by The Pip.

That's a very credible rendering of Mo Willems's Pigeon for a kindergartener...

Anyway, other than that, life continues in the usual whirl. I'm getting really tired of living out of a mini-fridge in the living room and a temporary sink in the kitchen that's at about knee level to me (when I have to wash dishes, I pull up a chair and sit down, which takes the stress on my back from "agonizing" down to "annoying"). But, cabinets this week, so we can see the oncoming train at the end of this tunnel...

drorzel Sun, 08/13/2017 - 03:08

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

Great stuff!

SteelyKid seems to have some talent for art. The bear's shadow is an impressive bit of detail for somebody her age.

Kitchen renovations are painful. I remember the one I went through, which was 13 years ago, and I didn't have kids around the house. I basically ate out for the better part of a month. And my kitchen job was quick, as those things go.

Really nice pictures!
In particular the shadow of the bear and the humor of the Pigeon ...

Vacation Update

drorzel — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 07:01:07 +0000

Vacation Update

So, when last I posted an update on kid stuff, we were about to embark for a week in Mexico with family. As you would expect, I have a huge pile of pictures from this, but most of the cute-kid shots feature the kids with their cousins from Illinois, and I try to avoid posting photos of other people's children.

We had a good time, for the most part. The highlight for the kids was probably a "Swim with Dolphins" excursion. SteelyKid did one of these on last year's Disney cruise, but now The Pip is both old enough, and enjoys swimming. Technically, he wasn't tall enough (by maybe an inch) to do the parts where the dolphin pulls or pushes you through the water, but the trainers were super nice, and one of them swam out with him to get him set up, so he got to go. And it was totally worth it for the grin when his boogie board ride started:

The sillyheads swimming with dolphins.

(Photos by the photographer at the Dolphin Discovery facility, purchased at somewhat exorbitant rates because there was nowhere to use our own camera from...)

We did get one adults-only trip in, an excursion to the Mayan ruins at Tulum, source of the artsy iguana photo in the "featured image" at the top, and also these more conventional pictures:

Our tour group at Tulum.

The big temple and beach at Tulum.

Tulum was pretty neat, though much less decorated than Chichen Itza (which I saw twenty-mumble years ago, on a different family vacation), reflecting its status as a trading port rather than a ceremonial center. The ruins are fascinating, if really hot, and the beach is spectacular. The excursion also included a bit of snorkeling in a cave, and in the Yal-Ku lagoon, neither of which I have photos of, because they weren't in places I could use my camera.

Unfortunately, as good as that excursion was, it also led to the absolute worst part of the trip. The excursion included a (not terribly impressive) buffet lunch at Xpu-Ha, where we were seated on an outdoor deck. At the end of lunch, Kate scooted her chair back to re-apply bug spray to her legs, and the chair went over backwards, past the totally inadequate rope "railing," taking her down to the beach below.

The drop was maybe a couple of meters, and when I got down to the beach a few seconds later, she was awake and moving around, so we helped her to a lounge chair and got her some water and a bag of ice for the lump on the back of her head.

"What happened?" she asked. I explained that she'd gone backwards off the edge of the deck, onto the beach. "That's so embarrassing," she said. About this time, the tour guide came by and asked if we needed to see a doctor.

"Give us a minute," I said. And then Kate said "What happened?" I explained again that the chair had gone over backwards, and then asked "Do you remember me telling you this sixty seconds ago?"

"No," she said. "What happened?" And I said "Yo! Tour guy! We'd like a doctor, please!"

So, Kate and I spent the rest of that day in the COSTAMED hospital in Playa del Carmen, which was not exactly an ideal vacation experience. They did a CT scan and some other tests, and confirmed there was no really serious damage, but it was probably three or four hours before Kate started reliably remembering anything about that day.

From a detached after-the-fact perspective, it was kind of fascinating to watch lights come back on-- right after the fall, she just kept asking "What happened?," then slowly added other questions ("Was it my fault?" first, then "Did the kids see?" then "Why weren't the kids with us?" then "Would you tell me even if it was my fault?" ("Honey, after answering this 57 times, yes, I would."), then "How many times have I asked you this?" ("Three hundred and twelve. And counting.") and a few more...). In the moment, it was absolutely h*ckin terrifying. Head injuries have very little to recommend them.

In the end, she's okay. they discharged us that night, after scheduling a follow-up with a neurologist the next day. That guy did a neck x-ray, and recommended a foam cervical collar for a few weeks, plus an appointment with an orthopedist back here in the US. By the next morning, Kate remembered everything about the day up to getting to the restaurant, but nothing between that and the last half-hour or so in the hospital. Which were the only worthwhile parts of that day, anyway, so it's all good...

The staff at the hospital were very professional, calm, and kind in dealing with a couple of scared Americans who spoke basically no Spanish. And the tour company, Cancun Adventures, was also great about the whole deal-- some of their people sat around the waiting room for several hours until we were discharged, then drove us back to the hotel, and they sent a car and driver the next morning for the follow-up appointment. The driver of that was invaluable in dealing with the hospital bureaucracy, and I believe they paid for everything. At least, I wasn't asked to give anybody any money (though I happily would've...).

(As I said on Twitter and Facebook when I mentioned this the next day, any attempt to use this as a jumping-off point to discuss the politics of US health care will get you blocked so hard that it'll crack the glass on your monitor. Don't even think about it.)

So, that cast a bit of a pall over the rest of the vacation. Not too much, though-- in fact, the dolphin swim was the day after the follow-up appointment, and on the last day in Mexico, we went to the Xel-Ha theme park for some snorkeling and other stuff. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the snorkeling was there, though a lot of that was timing-- it got super crowded later in the day. No pictures, though, because we were in the water for most of it.

Anyway, that's what we've been up to recently. And I'll leave you with this photo of Kate and SteelyKid showing off the stylish accessories they picked up on our trip. And also expressing their opinion of me taking this picture...

Kate and SteelyKid modeling stylish accessories from our Mexican vacation.

drorzel Sat, 07/08/2017 - 03:01

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

Two meters is enough to do serious damage in a bad landing. I think that if I had been in that situation the question would have been, does Kate go to the hospital in a taxi or in an ambulance.

Kids Update, Programming Note

drorzel — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 04:19:26 +0000

Kids Update, Programming Note

I've skipped a few weeks of cute-kid updates, largely because I was at DAMOP for a week, and then catching on stuff I missed while I was at DAMOP for a week. The principal activity during this stretch has been SteelyKid's softball, with a mad flurry of games at the end of the season to make up for all the rained-out games. This has been sort of stressful, but it also led to the greatest Google Photos animation ever, so...

Anyway, softball was fun, providing the opportunity for me to take no end of photos with my telephoto lens, some of which are pretty good. SteelyKid was way into running the bases, which ended up providing material for a blog post, so everybody wins. And I got a lot of photos like this one:

SteelyKid is pretty intense when she runs the bases.

Of course, while the intense running and dark helmet make her look a little intimidating in that, she's still a cheerful eight-year-old, which means there's really not a lot of killer instinct going on. For example, while she was playing first base, she high-fived every player on the other team who reached base safely:

Sportsmanlike!

Softball's kind of a slow game, so boredom is always a danger when you have an eight-year-old's attention span. She finds ways to pass the slower moments, though:

SteelyKid working on her fitness while her teammates bat.

(That's not the greatest photo because the sun is setting more or less directly behind that dugout, but GIMP makes it tolerably clear...)

Speaking of short attention spans, The Pip has also come to a lot of the games, though he mostly just runs around and pays no attention to softball. Here he is stalking Kate, who's watching SteelyKid play:

Stealthy Pip.

He's like a ninja. In safety orange.

Much of the time, though, he's pretty effective at keeping one or both of us from watching the game, frequently roping us into games of hide and seek or tag:

The Pip was It. Now Kate is.

(I also let him chase me around, but I'm the one who knows how to work the good camera. And more importantly, I'm the one who has editorial control over what pictures get posted here...)

And when all else fails, he can plop down on the ground and play in the grass:

"Dad, do I have grass in my hair?"

On the "programming note" side of things, I'm also aware that I haven't posted the Forbes blog recap from May. I'm planning to type that up and post it probably Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon, we're leaving on vacation for a while, going to Mexico with family, so you can expect a lot of photos of the kids doing tropical things in a few weeks...

drorzel Mon, 06/19/2017 - 00:19

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

"He’s like a ninja. In safety orange."

You think this is a joke, but an RPG adventure from a while back pointed something out. (The setup was a real ninja clan using a "become a ninja" version of a dude ranch as cover.)

The need to hide in their brightly coloured 'ninja suits' resulted in the one thing that the fake ninjas were good at was stealth.

So beware today's safety orange ninja, tomorrow he will be wearing a dull green and you won't see him coming.

“He’s like a ninja. In safety orange.”

It reminds me of my cats. One was a orange spotted or mackerel tabby; she could be 3 feet away moving/making noise in the leaf litter and you'd have a hard time seeing her. The all black cat was a bit easier to spot but hid surprisingly well in leaf litter. The all white cat on the other hand was at a signifiant disadvantage except for the rare central Alabama snows. One day I looked across the pond (about 50 yards) and saw her stalking something in the woods; she was trying to be stealthy.

Nerd Parenting Update

drorzel — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 06:05:47 +0000

Nerd Parenting Update

We took a rare long weekend to go to a family party for Memorial Day at my parents' (Kate and the kids always get the day off, but I usually have to teach; this year, I'm doing a team-taught class, and the other person was willing to cover my Monday spot), thus the lack of a weekly update post. The delay, however, allows for some quality nerd-parenting content, so it's a win all around...

SteelyKid's third-grade class has been doing long-ish projects approximately monthly through the year, and the May project was to design and make a board game based on a book. SteelyKid picked the Bone graphic novels, which she and a bunch of her classmates tore through earlier in the year, and she finished the game early this week. She's very proud of how it came out:

SteelyKid mugging with her board game.

This is not without justification, as she put a lot of thought into it, and it came out really nicely:

SteelyKid's board game based on the Bone graphic novels.

(Obviously, she had a bit of help from us in finding and printing out images from the books, but the concept and general design are all her...)

We play-tested it last night, and The Pip won the first game, with SteelyKid coming in second. She's taking it in to school today, and very excited to show it to her friends.

And so the Little Dude isn't left out, he has also provided some quality nerd-parenting moments. SteelyKid's work on the game pushed well past bedtime on Tuesday night, and The Pip was getting restless, so I offered to go upstairs and read with him. To my surprise, he accepted enthusiastically, mostly because we've started reading the Dragonbreath series by Ursula Vernon.

SteelyKid read these a while back, and I've been jokingly calling the kids "Cousin Spencer" whenever they critique my playing of video games. The Pip is old enough now to get the books, so we started the series, and he was very fired up for it. I have him read the dialogue bubbles on the comic-style pages that are scattered through the books, and I read the regular prose sections. We finished the first book last night, and he asked me to go get the second volume from SteelyKid's room, even though we weren't going to start it right away, just so he could see it and have it in his room for tonight.

The Pip started kindergarten at a lower reading level than SteelyKid did for a variety of reasons, chiefly that his birthday is three months later in the year than hers, so he was starting younger. He's made remarkable progress, though, and is very smug about being a couple of reading levels past the goal for the end of the year. This has largely been driven by reading guidebooks about Pokemon and, more recently, Skylanders, which has done wonders for his reading but is not a real thrill for whichever parent has to read lists of character attacks to him at bedtime. Broadening his literary interests to some quality books with actual plot is a huge win.

So, it's been a good week for nerd parenting. And now, I have page proofs of a couple of forthcoming things to review, so I need to go somewhere with no wi-fi for a while...

drorzel Thu, 06/01/2017 - 02:05

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

Vernon has a new series out as well, Hamster Princess, if the Pip wants to have his own set of books.

I remember insisting that we take turns picking the read-aloud during the Pokemon craze. It did mean that my children could count by tens at a very young age because they played the card game a lot.

Kids and Construction Update

drorzel — Sun, 21 May 2017 06:40:22 +0000

Kids and Construction Update

The big development of this week is that construction started on the Great Chateau Steelypips Renovation of 2017. We're extending one part of the back of the house about ten feet to gain a bedroom on the second floor, and gut-renovating the kitchen, dining room, and mud room. This is a massive undertaking, with a massive price tag (more than we paid for the house in 2002), and is going to be massively disruptive later this summer. Right now, it's very exciting, because we have an excavator and giant piles of dirt in our back yard:

The Pip looking at the excavator used to dig the foundation for our new addition.

SteelyKid is Queen of the Dirt Pile.

In the first week of work, they've dug the hole, poured the concrete footer, built the reinforced cinderblock wall, and sealed and insulated what will be the crawl space under the new addition. Next week, they should start framing the exterior. The part where they rip out the entire kitchen won't be for a good while yet, but I'm already kind of dreading it...

While out exploring the yard, I also got a good Kate-and-kids shot:

Kate and the sillyheads.

(When I saw this pose, I immediately said, "We are but poor, lost circus performers..." which is probably the only time in her life Kate has been compared to Andre the Giant... )

And to close this out, a couple of action shots, which also indicate the importance of the background in photography. This shot of Kate pushing The Pip on a tire swing, for example:

Kate pushing The Pip on a tire swing.

There's a lot I like about this, but it would be immeasurably improved without the bored teenager checking his phone in the background. There are other shots from this sequence that would be even better, but Bored Teen Boy is even more disruptive. Alas, my photo-editing skills don't really extend to clipping this dude out of the photo.

On the other hand, there's this shot of SteelyKid running to home during a softball game:

In this case, the reactions of the other people in the background kind of make the shot. I have another sequence of these, without those people, and while they're great for showing motion and the intensity of her run, they're lacking an indefinable something that this one has thanks in part to Young Rick Astley in the background, there.

So, you know, with candid action photos, sometimes you win or lose depending on random people who have nothing to do with the shot you're trying to get. Not the most profound lesson, maybe, but that's what I've got for you this week.

drorzel Sun, 05/21/2017 - 02:40

Tags

A kitchen renovation alone would be quite disruptive. Plan on eating out regularly for a month or so. If there are restaurants in the area you have been meaning to check out, this would be a good time to check them out.

An addition is, thankfully, one of the kinds of renovations I haven't had to do. It's just me in the house, and there is plenty of room for one here.

Are you acting as your own general contractor, or have you hired that out?

How to avoid constantly eating out during a full kitchen reno:

A good camp stove that you know how to use.[1]
Knowing how to cook more than meat on a grill.
Knowing how to make best use of a microwave.

[1] Also useful for when an ice storm knocks out power for a week.

Kid Growth Update

drorzel — Sat, 13 May 2017 14:02:51 +0000

Kid Growth Update

At SteelyKid's softball game today, the Pip provided an ideal cute-kid photo to use as a springboard to some SCIENCE! Or at least, a graph... Anyway, here's the Little Dude showing off how tall he's gotten:

The Pip under Kate's coat.

OK, really he's hiding under Kate's raincoat (after two beautiful sunny days in a row, we're back to dreary rain today), but as a side effect of that process he's demonstrating that he's pretty tall. But exactly how tall?

We're having an addition put on the back of Chateau Steelypips, and our kitchen gutted and rebuilt, so we've been moving a lot of stuff around to get ready. During this process, it occurred to me that this might threaten the door frame where we've been marking the kids' heights at irregular intervals. So, I copied down all the values, and like any self-respecting nerd with a table of numbers, I turned them into a scatter plot:

Height measurements for SteelyKid and The Pip.

There's a good deal of scatter in these, because their idea of what "stand up straight" means is... flexible. It's interesting to see that they're on basically the same trend-- he's more or less exactly the same height she was at the same age, though she usually seems taller. We tend to forget how big he is, both because SteelyKid is always around, and also because when I see him with his kindergarten class he doesn't seem that large compared to other kids. That's mostly because his birthday is in November, so he has a lot of classmates who are nearly a full year older than him, and one or two kids with birthdays in the same part of the year are a full year older, as they waited a year to start kindergarten.

I attempted to add a line to this for median height among the US population, but that didn't work very well, because getting the data synched up was a little awkward. I may give it another run later; in general, though, they're a bit above the median height. I have no idea how that happened, he said, struggling to remain deadpan.

I was a little surprised by how linear that graph looks-- a linear fit to SteelyKid's height has an R² of 0.988. Taken literally, this would lead you to conclude that she'll pass me in height a few months shy of her 18th birthday. Of course, this fit also has her height at birth as 30 inches rather than the actual 20, so maybe we shouldn't run too far with the linear extrapolation... The Pip's graph hints at a bit of curve, mostly because of that first point when he was really little; a linear fit to his height (which is still pretty good-- R² = 0.96) would have him passing me at 15.

Anyway, the real action of the morning was a softball game, where SteelyKid demonstrated fielding prowess beyond her usual idle twirling and announcing "I'm BORED!!!" (when she's in the outfield):

(That's her after stopping a ground ball, getting up and starting to throw to first...)

And since The Pip should get a photo where you can actually see his face, I present the author photo from his forthcoming novel:

The Pip, posing for his author photo.

drorzel Sat, 05/13/2017 - 10:02

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

OK they are very CUTE... I have an adopted Korean daughter (now c. 25 y.o., still cute but fighting the angst of a young-adult. Enjoy today---prepare for tomorrow. FAIR WARNING.

Kid Reading Update

drorzel — Sun, 07 May 2017 16:46:23 +0000

Kid Reading Update

For a long time now, I've had a Sunday routine with the kids, where we go to the Schenectady Greenmarket and then to the Open Door (which is right next to the outdoor market, and a couple blocks from the indoor location), then to lunch at Panera, and usually grocery shopping. We have a standing deal that they get one book per week free, but if they want toys or a second book, it comes out of their allowance.

SteelyKid very consistently finds something to read, but The Pip was recently in a mode where he only wanted to read Pokemon books, and the Open Door doesn't carry those, so he would sulk. The last couple of weeks, though, he's gotten into random other books again, and started grabbing things from the kids-book section. This is, of course, very gratifying to a bookish parent, which is also why there's the standing book-a-week deal...

This week, SteelyKid got and devoured a new graphic novel, 5 Worlds: The Sand Warrior (I handed it to her to look at, and she just sat down and started reading. After ten minutes or so, I had to decree that we weren't just reading the entire book there in the store...). The Pip got a book about a tech-obsessed cave boy.

In the car on the way to lunch, they were so engrossed in their books that the quiet was actually a little alarming. So I got selfie-mode photos of the two of them, to document their reading:

SteelyKid (r) and The Pip in the car, reading.

SteelyKid actually corrected me to say that she wasn't reading her book in this, but doing kenken puzzles on her tablet. Which is another quiet activity I'm very happy to encourage...

So, there's your cute-kid content for the week. They were even more entertaining on Saturday, when both of them had friends over for the afternoon, but the photos I got from that necessarily include other peoples' kids, and I try to avoid posting those.

drorzel Sun, 05/07/2017 - 12:46

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

Chad, I'm glad to see you posting here a little more regularly. Fun to see the kid updates, too. My daughter is about half a year younger than the Pip, so it gives me a chance to steal ideas.

Kid Writing Update

drorzel — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 06:31:28 +0000

Kid Writing Update

One of the things parents of multiple kids often talk about is how they don't end up doing the same things with second children that they did with their first. For example, I carried the weekly Appa-for-scale photos on with SteelyKid for a couple of years, but didn't last anywhere near that long with The Pip. Another thing I did with SteelyKid was to report fairly regularly here on cute stories she told me, and that kind of thing, which I've largely been failing to do with The Pip. the fact that I've fallen out of doing any kind of kid-blogging at all doesn't really make this any better...

But the absence of cute-schoolwork stories doesn't mean there hasn't bee cute schoolwork from our Little Dude. He's considerably younger compared to his classmates than SteelyKid was when she entered kindergarten (his birthday is in November, and kids need to be 5 by December 1 in order to start kindergarten), but he's working really hard, and has come a long, long way this year. Here's an excerpt from his April writing journal, on Earth Day:

The Pip on Earth Day.

(Transcribed literally, save for fixing a couple of letters, including the continuation on the next page:)

Earth day is a day war you taek care of the earth. You can reasikle. You can reidus. You can reyus. I like earth day. Do you?

(With spelling corrected, that's "Earth Day is a day where you take care of the Earth. You can recycle. You can reduce. You can reuse. I like Earth Day. Do You?")

He's also gotten really good at reading, thanks in part to his obsessive study of Pokemon cards.

His big sister also continues to have a fertile imagination; I particularly liked the story that she wrote to go with this cute-animal coloring page (which is on the back; the photo is a composite):

Coloring page and SteelyKid's story that accompanies it.

The story (3rd-grade spelling transcribed as is):

Once Opon a time... there was a dog and two mice. One was riding a skateboard at the playground while the other was doing the jumprope, on the same play ground. Then they went to a witch's place, got turned into stew, and the stew got eaten by the witch's black cat! the end! And... the cat got eaten by a dog wich got eaten by a bear wich got eaten by a wolf wich got shot by a hunter and eaten for dinner.

THE END (for real!)!

"Wow, honey, that got a little dark," I remarked. "Oh, everybody in the class got dark like that..." she replied airily. I'm not sure what to make of that...

Anyway, there's your cute-kid update. I'm going to try to carve out a little time for more regular kid updates, probably on weekend mornings, because it'll probably be a good exercise mental-health-wise.

And, for those reading by RSS, here's the "featured image" from up top, a composite of our "cautious daredevils" (a self-description from a hike we took at the Christman Sanctuary down in Duanesburg) on the climber at the middle school playground in Whitney Point, when we were at my parents' over Easter. These are cell-phone pictures because like an idiot I forgot my good camera, but I like having the climber as a standard reference object so you can judge their relative sizes.

Cautious daredevils posing atop the climber.

drorzel Sun, 04/30/2017 - 02:31

Tags

personal

Steelykid!

The Pip

362-366/366: Sillyhead-Centric Closing

drorzel — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:30:10 +0000

362-366/366: Sillyhead-Centric Closing

And now, the photo-a-day project straggles in to the finish line, with a final five photos dominated by the kids:

362/366: Kid Art I

A set of figures drawn by The Pip at day care over the summer.

363/366: Kid Art II

Awesome owl drawing by SteelyKid.

One of the official end of summer activities is cleaning off the "art shelf" in the bookcase in the dining room, where we pile the various projects the kids bring home from school and day care. I sort these, and take photos of the best, for historical documentation purposes, and these are two of my favorites from the lot. The four round-bodied figures all came home on the same day, from The Pip. The owl was in SteelyKid's backpack the last week of second grade, which shows just how long we've gone without cleaning that shelf off. And also how good she's gotten at drawing...

Also, here's some bonus kid art: a fan decorated by SteelyKid:

A fan decorated by SteelyKid.

I'm not sure exactly how she did this-- whether the paper was pre-stretched on the fan, or whether she painted on a flat paper that somebody then attached to the frame. I should ask, as I bet the explanation will be entertainingly detailed.

364/366: Farewell to the Pool I

SteelyKid going off the diving board at the Niskayuna town pool.

365/366: Farewell to the Pool II

The Pip swimming with a noodle at the Niskayuna town pool.

These are from the next-to-last day of our summer membership at the Niskayuna town pool, when we all went over as a family (which is why there are good photos-- Kate was in the pool with The Pip, just out of frame). It's been really remarkable to see The Pip's development in terms of swimming. At the start of last summer, he wouldn't even dip his feet into the pool, and now, he's an eager swimmer. He's using a noodle here to help him float, which lets him really motor around, but he can furiously dog-paddle short distances all by himself. And will, in fact, angrily insist on being allowed to dog-paddle freely over short distances even in the wave pool at Great Escape (which we also visited last weekend, to catch the water park before it closed), which is utterly terrifying.

He's extremely proud of this too, and asked for this to be the picture we printed out to send in for inclusion in his kindergarten class book. And commemorated it with a self-portrait, which I'll throw in here as mor bonus kid art:

The Pip's drawing of himself swimming with a green pool noodle.

And we'll close this out with the thing that's making me close this out: the return of the school year.

366/366: Workspace

My new office on campus.

After three years in the department chair's office (which is much bigger), I'm back in a standard-size office. Not the same office I was in before I was Chair, but one a couple doors further down the hall. A colleague wanted to be in the office I used to have, though, and moved the giant desk I ordered when I arrived to make room. So I moved into the office where my good desk was, and have, for the moment, organized things in a sensible and reasonably aesthetic way. This will be covered in random stacks of books and papers within three weeks, but it looks nice and professional right now, so we'll give it the final spot, to mark the closing of my sabbatical with a picture of the workspace I'm returning to.

And that's it for that. I may or may not have some wrap-up thoughts in a day or two, but for right now, I have classes to teach, and need to go get ready.

drorzel Mon, 09/12/2016 - 04:30

Tags