Letter from Internal Blogging Office

I recently received the following communication:

Dear Sir,
The Internal Blogging Office has noted that you maintain a blog, and are a parent of a young child. We would like to draw your attention to blogging regulation 34(d), which states that updated pictures of said child should be posted on a timely basis. There are some concerns that it has been a while since such a picture has appeared on your blog. We trust this is merely an oversight from the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Miranda P. Wallacespooner
Internal Blogging Office
Cute Child Pictures Division

The letter was a bit of a surprise - I didn't even know there *was* an Internal Blogging Office. Anyway, if it's anything like the IRS it would be best not to mess with them. Here's a couple of pictures that should satisfy the requirements.

New Van Air Freshener

The van started to develop a little smell, so we got a new air freshener.

I'm not sure how we'll hang it from the dash.

Notes on intelligence

Links to some articles, so I can find them later.

How to be a genius

The secret to raising smart kids

Short answer: Effort, not innate talent, is the key.

Hiking in the redwoods

We visited a redwood forest during a trip to California this weekend.

This was a good hike for Maria. Her position in the baby carrier means Sue's back is the only scenery looking forward, and the straps limit the side view somewhat. If she wants a clear view she has to look up. Fortunately for her, much of the scenery is 'up' in a redwood forest.

One of the potential dangers of all the scenery being 'up', is that one might not look forward enough. A scenario depicting this peril is modeled below.

California - even the plants are in rehab

California - home of the stars - many of them in rehab. Even the plants there are getting in on the act.

Sunset with vibrant colors

On Tuesday night, there was a gorgeous sunset with plenty of rich, vibrant colors. Pictures are available at my Flickr photo stream. There's also some of Sue and Maria using the sunset as a background.

A small taste:

Thoughtful Marinas

It was nice of the marina in Sutton's Bay to consider the needs of sleeping babies.

In which we travel to Michigan and get lost in the desert

Sue, Maria, and I were on vacation in Michigan last week. We went for a hike and promptly found ourselves lost in the desert.

Golf pants for babies?

At least I think they look like golf pants

And some bonus pictures, just because I have a camera, and she's so cute.

Note the two bottom teeth. We are eagerly awaiting more (poor Maria's been have teething pain on the top ones for quite some time).

Look at that upper body strength!

Rapture or not?

I read the first book in the Left Behind series a while back, just to see what all the fuss was about. It struck me as very similar to the DaVinci Code. (Not in terms of plot details, but in terms of writing style, writing quality and the ruckus surrounding them. And it greatly amuses me to lump these two books together.)

So the Left Behind series focuses on the rapture. Here's a couple of posts analyzing the support for the rapture in the Bible: Why i will not be raptured and Why i will not be raptured, part ii. (Executive summary: Not finding it.)

Walking with Maria

We finally got around to taking Maria for a walk over at Homer Lake. Sue is excited about her new ergo baby carrier. She says it works better than the other baby-carrying contraptions she's tried.

Maria fell asleep during the walk - here you can see the hood in place to support her head a little better while she sleeps.

Maria got a little warm near the end - it was getting hot outside by that time.

Flash tricks

Inspired by a post at Cheapshooter, I tried putting a (clean, unused) tissue over the flash.

Here are two pictures of Leo in a box - the top photo is with the bare flash, and the bottom photo is with the tissue diffuser.

I love peas

Maria seems to like peas.

Maria's View

I took this picture of Maria in her bouncy seat this morning.

Often parents (and others) try very hard to make babies smile and react. I wondered what that looked like from Maria's point of view. I put the camera down by her head, and this is what she sees.

And all this time I thought she was laughing with me ...

(Alternately: All this time I thought she was smiling - now I know it's actually an expression of abject terror)

Evolution and Creation, and/or Intelligent Design

Sometimes I want to express opinions about evolution, creation, and intelligent design. But I often wonder how to best put it into words. Being lazy, I'll take a short-cut and just link to these posts by Henry Neufeld (who can write better than I can): Why talk about evolution in church? and Evolutionary vs. Scientific Thinking.

Also check out his FAQ about evolution and theology.

Okay, I can't resist adding my own little rantlet: In all the debates, there seems to be an implication that accepting evolution automatically implies an atheist world-view. But this doesn't have to be the case. Evolution and Christianity can co-exist.

One social difficulty with believing in both evolution and Christianity: the voices stating that "accepting evolution implies atheism" are pretty vocal (not sure how numerous) - both on the conservation Christian side and with several prominent atheists. And if those two camps actually agree on something - it really makes one feel like you're swimming upstream to believe something different.

Grout, grout, grout

The sunroom floor is getting much closer to completion!

I put down the tile a couple weeks ago, and we finally got all the grout done last week. (Thanks to Sue's mom, who watched Maria a couple of evenings so both Sue and I could work on the grout). The whole grout thing was much harder than it seemed (and the tiles are textured - I imagine it would be much easier cleaning the grout off of smooth tile.) There's still a film of grout on the tile that needs to be cleaned off (The directions on the cleaner said to let fresh grout cure for 10 days before using the cleaner).

Then it's just sealing the grout, and we will have full use of the sunroom.

Oh, and we need to get some chess or checkers pieces of the appropriate size...

Drying tile

The hot tub in the sunroom has been removed, and now it's time to put in tile. Finding the right tile took time, but Sue persevered and finally found some with a matching pattern. The only problem was it didn't come in 6 inch sizes, so I had to cut a number of 12 inch tiles down to size. The wet saw left a lot of residue on the tiles, so I washed them yesterday and hung them out to dry.

Okay, so I didn't actually dry all the tiles this way. It seemed like it would make a good picture.

Get a long little baby

Many people seeing Maria have commented on how long she is. She had her two month checkup last week, and she was 25.5 inches long, which puts her in the 99th percentile. I see now she really is a long baby.

Sleep books

So I've been reading a book about sleeping babies (Sue asked me to read it - and speaking of her - Sue has a blog now. She has an entry about Maria sleeping). The particular book is Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. The main problem is I keep falling asleep while reading it.

Things found in the yard

A sampling of things found in our yard:

Pea plants

Diapers drying on the line

Bird's nest in the satellite dish

Eeek!!!

Leaves of three,
spray it with Round-up

Not as catchy as the original saying, but effective.

Mark on his new Dixon zero-turn mower. (well, new to us. It's a used mower)
Mowing the lawn has never been so much fun.

Grow, Baby, Grow

Here's a picture of Maria at a little over six weeks, next to the manual for a size reference.

For comparison, the picture from first post with a manual is also included below

Brand Awareness Training for Infants

While holding Maria the other night, I decided to try a little Brand Awareness Training for Infants (BATI). I had no logos to show her, so I did what I could and started reciting names of fast food restaurants: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, ... At this point Sue overheard what was going on and quickly put stop to it. I guess I'll have to come up with other ways to train up our little girl to be the brand aware consumer necessary to to survive in today's modern society.

Mass-Energy equivalence lullaby

I've been singing to Maria lately - she's a captive audience, and I'm taking advantage of her being too young to know that Daddy can't sing.

One of the songs I made up was the "Mass-energy Equivalence Lullaby", to the tune of "Mary had a little lamb" (more or less)

E E E equals m c squared
m c squared
m c squared
E E E equals m c squared
Just like Einstein wrote

Dad: The Superior Napping Platform

Okay, so she's not actually sleeping in this picture, but she seems to really like sleeping on Dad's chest.

Two weeks

Maria survived two whole weeks! (And, her parents also made it through two weeks!!)

Only 17 years and 50 weeks to go.

Why babies don't come with instruction manuals

Imagine what it would be like if babies came with instruction manuals. After pushing out the cute baby on the left, the manual on the right would have to come out as well, and it's just too big (and the wrong shape) to fit. That's why babies don't come with manuals.

Child process forked

My wife successfully forked a child process last Tuesday (March 20, 2007) at 11:01 PM! The child process id is 3345. The executable exec'ed immediately following the fork is 'Maria'. Profiling indicates the child process spends significant amounts of time in the sleep(3) system call. Ironically, it appears the child process is interfering with the parent process's use of that same system call.

Waiting for baby

Okay, so it's not even the due date yet, but we're still waiting.
Here's a funny comic by Muncher (full blog post). Maybe it's only funny to expectant dads, but I really liked it.

Panoramic photos

I've been on a panoramic photo kick lately. Here's some pictures of the field across the road, some at sunset, some others after all the snow that came last week. Click on the pictures for a larger version.

Some of the panels get excessively dark. I probably need to set the exposure manually to be the same for all the photos involved, or adjust the brightness before stitching them together.

On blocks in the yard

I wondered what was worse: a car on blocks in the yard, or a broken hot tub? A friend pointed out that the car-on-blocks was so iconic that it's really hard to get past that image. This, of course, led directly to the idea of a hot tub in the yard, up on blocks.
Here it is

There's a hole in my sunroom where a hot tub used to be

See the previous entry for the remains of the hot tub. Here is where it used to reside:
Sue's uncle came down for a few days helped in removing the hot tub, and in installing the new joints and subfloor. (And on a side note, I did get to test hauling 4x8 sheets in the new minivan, and it worked well.)

The most tedious part of the whole process was removing the partial tiles from around the hole. When it gets warmer, we're going to install tile.

Hot tub for sale - cheap!

Some assembly required.

Minivan

As part of the preparations for the baby, we bought a minivan on Saturday. It's a used 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan. Sadly, we traded in the truck - it was a good truck and I had bought it with the intention of keeping it for a long time. However, the minivan should be a capable replacment vehicle for hauling stuff. All the back seats fold into the floor, and it can hold 4'x8' sheets.

So now we have a video camera and a minivan. I think we're pretty much set for the baby to arrive.