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