The Pip
drorzel | March 20, 2014Since not all that long after he was born, I've been referring to The Pip as "Little Dude," which had become ingrained before I realized it was lifted from Otto the bus driver on The Simpsons. He's not as talkative as his sister yet, which is why she gets more press on the blog, but he's getting to be kind of chatty at times, and occasionally says really cute things.
Such as last night, when I read him his usual collection of bedtime stories-- a selection of Mother Goose rhymes, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. After the third story, he asked for…
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 9, 2014SteelyKid's gotten a bunch of press here recently, so it's time to give her brother his due. So here's a cute picture of The Pip from this afternoon (as the "featured image"-- if you read via RSS, you'll have to click through). He's wearing a "superhero cape" made from a fuzzy blanket, because SteelyKid was bouncing around in a cape made from an entire twin bed sheet.
Of course, the effect here is maybe less superheroic than monastic, especially with his hands folded like that. This could be a photo of Brother Pip of the Order of Little Green Frogs.
And yet another possibility would be that…
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…
drorzel | January 18, 2014Kate is off at Arisia this weekend, so I took the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's. Where we've had good fun sledding and playing with a variety of toys. I'll be driving home Sunday afternoon, and my parents will be bringing the kids back on Monday, which is the MLK holiday in the US, so a day off for people who aren't college faculty.
In honor of all this, I give you the unique musical stylings of SteelyKid and The Pip, performing their hit song "Oh My Gosh" live in Grandma and Grandpa's basement:
Hope your weekend was a tenth as much fun as theirs.
drorzel | January 17, 2014About five minutes into my class Wednesday, my cell phone rang. I silenced it right away, but recognized the number as the kids' day care. And I knew right away what it was: The Pip has had a bit of a cough for a while, and wasn't all that happy that morning. Sure enough, when I got back to my office there was a series of emails waiting for me between Kate and the director of the JCC pre-school program, about how The Pip was just feverish enough to need to be sent home.
Wednesday was a particularly inauspicious day for this, as Kate had a court argument in Rochester on Thursday, and I have a…
drorzel | January 16, 2014"Daddy, you know what? I bet you didn't know, but my school bus can fly."
"Really? I didn't know that."
"Yeah, there's a button up at the front with a picture of a flying bus, and if you press the button, the bus flies."
"That's amazing."
"Yeah, and guess what? The other day, the bus driver called me, and said '[SteelyKid] come up here, and press the button,' and I pressed the button, and the wings came out, and we went flying."
"Wow. Where did you fly to?"
"Um, to school. And then to the JCC."
"You didn't go anywhere else interesting in between, ith the flying bus?"
"Well, we flew to Grandma…
drorzel | January 11, 2014Friday night was a home game for Union's basketball teams, so I picked SteelyKid and the Pip up a little earlier than usual, and took them to the women's game (which starts right around the time day care ends and ends right around their usual bedtime). You might wonder what it's like taking the pair of them to a sporting event. Well, wonder no more:
It's pretty much that, for an hour and a half. There was also a stretch were they were throwing dice behind the elevator (the thing they run around in the video) like a couple of junior degenerates.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle…
drorzel | January 3, 2014I got a new camera for Christmas, not because there's anything wrong with my DSLR, but because I wanted something that could do high-speed video. So I now have a Casio point-and-shoot camera that will record up to 1000 frames per second, woo-hoo!
To break it in, I got the kids to help out by re-creating a classic slow-mo physics trick: the slinky drop:
Note that when SteelyKid lets it go, the bottom doesn't really move until after the entire length of the spring has relaxed. You can clearly see this in the still frame that's the "featured image" at the top of the post.
And since The Pip has…
drorzel | December 25, 2013Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, happy Wednesday if you don't. That's about all there is to say, isn't it?
Warm holiday wishes from Chateau Steelypips.
drorzel | December 6, 2013I'm giving my talk about blogs as a tool for science outreach again on Monday, and need an updated version of the cute-kid picture screenshot I use in that. So here's a composite of the two kid pictures I posted a week or two ago, because it should all fit on screen, even on my laptop.
I probably should do something more directly productive, but I drove down to NYC yesterday to do an interview and meet up with some folks from the TED@NYC event back in October, and got stuck there because the attendants at the lot where I parked my car didn't warn me that they would lock the place up before I…
drorzel | November 24, 2013Since SteelyKid got her own cute-photo post last night, it's only fair to give equal time to The Pip. This morning, for reasons that passeth adult understanding, the kids decided to balance teddy bears on their heads, SteelyKid using Bertha the Big Bear (who is just a little smaller than The Pip), while the Little Dude had a tiny neon green beanbag bear. Leading to the "featured image" above, which is my new favorite picture of Il Duderino.
"Yeah, I got a bear on my head. And I make it look good."
Lest you think his exceptional knowledge of forces in equlibrium is employed only for totally…
drorzel | November 20, 2013A couple of Mondays ago, I was at work and got the dreaded phone call from day care. "[The Pip]'s got conjunctivitis again. It's really bad, and he needs to go home right away."
Admittedly, this isn't the very worst phone call a parent could receive, but it's very much Not Good. Conjunctivitis means a trip to the doctor for antibiotics and eye drops (which The Pip HATES), and being sent home knocks out not only the rest of that day, but the entire next day, as he has to be on medication for at least 24 hours before he can return to day care.
The call came in around 10:00, and I had a class to…
drorzel | November 7, 2013Two years ago, as of 4:35 this morning, The Pip was born. And now he's a great big toddler, obsessed with pirates and dinosaurs, running everywhere and talking a LOT...
He's had a bit of a rough week, with another flare-up of conjunctivitis in his right eye, requiring eye ointment and antibiotics, the less said about the administration of which, the better. He's a remarkably cheerful Little Dude by nature, though, and is all smiles and giggles mere minutes after the screaming stops.
His main birthday gift is going to be a big-kid bed, just like his sister's, that's supposed to be delivered in…
drorzel | October 23, 2013The Pip has pinkeye. Again. This means he can't go to day care for at least one day, which means I'm home with him for the morning, and Kate will tag in at lunchtime so I can go teach my class. This, in turn, means that you don't get any substantive blogging today, because the second I start typing a real post, he'll demand... something. Hard to predict what.
Happily, this has done very little to dampen his mood-- he's fundamentally a very cheerful Little Dude, and we spent an hour or so at Panera chatting about birds and cars in the parking lot, and then ran some errands. And now, he's…
drorzel | October 4, 2013I almost killed the Pip last week. By accident, of course, but I do mean that literally. His day care was closed for the day, so I took him out to the store to avoid a freakout when Mommy left. I was heading into the store with him in one arm and a hot cup of tea in the other hand, chattering inanely to him as one does with a toddler, and tripped over the curb.
I took three huge stumbling steps that probably looked pretty comical on the security cameras, but somehow managed to avoid dropping him right on his head, falling on top of him, or scalding him with my hot caffeine. I went down really…
drorzel | August 31, 2013We won a family pass to the Empire State Aerosciences Museum just across the river in Glenville, and since soccer was canceled for the holiday weekend, I took the kids over there this morning. They had a couple of their collection of decommissioned military aircraft open, including the Huey helicopter SteelyKid is thinking about co-piloting in the "featured image" up above, and this Chinese-made MiG:
I think you push this button to get it started...
I didn't want August to slip away without one last set of cute-kid pictures, so there you go.
drorzel | August 18, 2013The "featured image" above shows SteelyKid and The Pip checking out a couple of books at The Open Door during our weekly trip to the Schenectady Greenmarket. As cute as this is, though, the image can't do justice to the full scenario.
We were in the toy section looking for a birthday present for SteelyKid's BFF, and after she found a couple of things, she announced her intention to look at books in the cheap paperback racks right next to the toys. The Pip, for his part, waddled off to poke around the store looking for books featuring Elmo, or things that look like Elmo, or just odd bits of…
drorzel | July 27, 2013A lot of heavy blogging this week, so here's a cute kid picture (as the featured image; click through if you're reading via RSS). This is SteelyKid and The Pip at play this morning, when they were back and forth across the yard a dozen times to pick up rocks from our gravel path and throw them into the pond (just behind them in this picture). They're such sad and solemn children.
SteelyKid seems to only get more social as time apsses-- at soccer this morning, her coach asked rhetorically why they stretch before playing, and got a five-minute spiel about getting hurt and being safe and this…