Steelykid!
drorzel | December 16, 2010I'm very pleased to announce that the Uncertain Principles Person of the Year for 2010 is... SteelyKid:
Why do I say this? Well...
First, as lots of people will tell you, we're all citizen journalists now. Which means that I'm every bit as entitled to declare a person of the year as Time magazine is.
Second, everything in Chateau Steelypips revolves around her, so she is clearly the most important and influential person here.
Third, she's way cuter than Mark Zuckerberg. Granted, I don't have a picture of Mark Zuckerberg wearing a napkin as a hat for direct comparison, but I like my odds on…
drorzel | December 9, 2010SteelyKid is off spending a weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's, so this week's picture was actually taken early Wednesday morning:
The early hour accounts for both the pacifier (she wasn't willing to give it up yet) and the frizzy hair (bed-head toddler!). I'm pretty sure she hasn't grown measurably since yesterday, though.
This photo is in honor of SteelyKid's sporting activities, as part of the SoccerTots program. Several weeks ago, before the time change, I was lamenting the fact that cold weather and early sunsets were going to make it harder to tire SteelyKid out by letting her run around…
drorzel | December 2, 2010SteelyKid decided she needed to put on her Christmas outfit earlier tonight, and her day care class at the Jewish Community Center has begun celebrating Chanukah, so it seemed like a good night for a festive holiday Toddler Blogging picture, with some bonus Feats of Strength:
Look! SteelyKid can lift a sky-bison all by herself!
A second photo, with a slightly clearer view of her Christmas outfit:
Joking aside, happy holidays to everybody who's celebrating some sort of holiday at this time of year. And, you know, the rest of you just have a nice day.
drorzel | December 1, 2010The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to day care, is having a book sale, so the lobby has been full of books for sale the last few days as we've headed out. Getting SteelyKid away from the books is pretty difficult, as you would expect from our daughter.
We've mostly avoided getting anything, but yesterday, I caved and bought the Curious George board book with pull-out flaps that she latched onto. Why? This page:
The book is a collection of pages showing various places George goes to be curious, and has pull-out tabs showing a person associated with the place, and a thing associated with the place…
drorzel | November 25, 2010Today is Thanksgiving, and while we're not doing the full glutton thing until Saturday (it's more convenient for family members to travel up here then), it's still a good time to reflect on the things we're thankful for. Right at the top of the list, of course, is SteelyKid, who is bright, curious, generally cheerful, and speaking in more or less complete sentences these days, as seen here:
She's sternly instructing Kate is not to knock over the Lego blocks on the desk shelf. Emmy is saying "Dude, I can't believe you guys let this puppy boss you around like this."
Of course, after a busy…
drorzel | November 20, 2010Here's the clip from my live-via-Skype appearance on tv in Sacramento this morning. Unfortunately, the Chateau Steelypips Internet connection slowed way down for some reason, and Skype froze up then dropped the call. But we did get a few minutes of me talking about Goodnight Moon and SteelyKid.
The field of view is oddly cropped, so I keep disappearing behind their chyron, but it was still fun to talk to them. And they did show the cover of the book after we got cut off, so that's all to the good...
drorzel | November 18, 2010Fashion's been on our minds this week, what with the whole Rock Stars of Science thing rolling out yesterday, so this week we have SteelyKid modeling the latest in toddler headgear:
This was the culmination of a game that started with her putting her napkin on her head, and declaring it a hat. We moved on to me having to wear a towel on my head, and then her getting the towel. I really like the way this one turned out.
Of course, it wouldn't be Toddler Blogging without Appa for scale:
Here, we have SteelyKid kicking back with Appa and, um, a can of tomato paste that she found in the kitchen…
drorzel | November 15, 2010The other night at dinner, SteelyKid kept demanding that we sing. As there's only so many times you can sing the alphabet in a row, I decided to mix it up a little, and sang her the first verse and the chorus of "The Wild Rover" (these lyrics are close to the ones I know, and here's a YouTube version).
After I finished, she smiled and started babbling, and it quickly became clear that she thought it was about Grover the Muppet. We've got a bunch of old Sesame Street clips that we play for her on the computer, in which Grover waits on an angry blue Muppet.
Thanks to that, I got this idea stuck…
drorzel | November 14, 2010We had freakishly good weather today, so I went outside to get some raking done. SteelyKid came out with me to help:
We also got some video of the Dinosaur Leaf Attack game we were playing, but YouTube is struggling with the file for some reason or another, so I can't post that. The important bits are in this picture, anyway: leaves, SteelyKid, big smiles and laughing.
I'm going to focus on this, and try to pretend that football didn't happen today.
drorzel | November 13, 2010SteelyKid and I are currently on our second pass through the Winnie-the-Pooh book my parents got her (which is identical to the one I had as a kid). We read one story every time she goes to bed, so that's one every night, and one at weekend nap times. She only sort of pays attention to the details of the stories, but she likes pointing to the occasional pictures, and waving her stuffed Pooh and Piglet around.
I wouldn't mind some more variety, though I'm not entirely sure what the options are for read-aloud books at the appropriate level (she's two-and-a-quarter). But that's what the Internet…
drorzel | November 11, 2010Here we see SteelyKid kicking back with Appa, among some of her many, many toys:
Navigating the living room is getting to be kind of difficult, what with all the blocks and cups and balls and other things strewn all over the place...
In other news, SteelyKid is in training to be a genius. Don't believe me? She's been practicing:
She still needs to work on the hair. And, you know, a comppletely revolutionary theory of space and time. But cut her some slack-- she's only two and a quarter...
(I couldn't resist...)
drorzel | November 4, 2010Welcome to this very-carefully-posed edition of Thursday Toddler Blogging:
That's Kate and SteelyKid reading The Cat in the Hat,shot from a slightly odd angle so as to hide the wicked shiner that SteelyKid is sporting, thanks to a tumble down the stairs on Tuesday morning (while I was getting ready to take her to the doctor, no less-- Tuesday was Not A Good Day). She's doing just fine, but it's really a terrible look.
This also continues the playing-with-the-camera trend of the last week or two, as this was shot without the flash. The angle is also chosen to put the lamp on the end table out…
drorzel | November 4, 2010I'm spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I'm avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don't want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here's a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid's continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon:
How does a cow jump over the moon?
The father of one of SteelyKid's classmates, who is not originally from the US, asked why there's a cow jumping over the moon in that (or, as SteelyKid puts it: "Cow jumping MOON!!"), and I don't have a good answer. I'm aware of the nursery rhyme and the Tolkien joke, but why…
drorzel | November 2, 2010If you're in the US, go vote. Preferably for a candidate who isn't barking mad, but ultimately that's between you and your conscience.
If you're not in the US, or you've already voted, enjoy some cute, as SteelyKid is first skeptical about the idea of lots of kids in masks visiting the house:
Then happier once she heard about the candy:
(She's home sick today, and thus somewhat less cute than these pictures from Sunday. But, you know, even when sick, she's pretty cute.)
These are also another flash/no-flash pair, which is a slightly better comparison than the previous round, given that they…
drorzel | November 1, 2010In last weekend's post about arguments from innate differences, I suggested that I might be willing to illustrate my position with adorable toddler pictures. On thinking more about it, I'm a little hesitant to write about this at length, because it could easily topple over into arrogant-physicist territory. But then, it's an excuse to post adorable toddler pictures, so...
So, let me put a short disclaimer up front: I'm not attempting to claim that I have suddenly uncovered a unique and obvious flaw in innate-difference arguments, by virtue of my Big Physicist Brain. I am well aware that the…
drorzel | October 21, 2010This week, we see Appa and SteelyKid with all the essential elements of bedtime:
From right to left, we have: Goodnight Moon, the Winnie-the-Pooh collection I've started reading to her after her bottle, and the brown-and-white doggie she has adopted as her essential comfort animal. This was apparently a Valentine's Day promotion from some chain store a few years back, as Kate learned while finding a backup doggie on EBay-- we can't do bedtime without it, and don't want to think about what would happen if it got lost.
Despite the giggling and laughing that accompanied the picture-taking, she…
drorzel | October 17, 2010I'm always taking pictures of SteelyKid going about her business, so a little turnabout is fair play:
The "camera" she's using is actually a small calculator that my mom gave her. She also uses this like a phone, to carry on lengthy conversations with her great-grandmother and sometimes friends from day care. She'll also sometimes just punch the buttons to watch the numbers change on the display.
Basically, it's a toddler iPhone. A whole lot cheaper than a real one, though...
drorzel | October 14, 2010I didn't think I'd make it back in time for this week's Toddler Blogging, but things wrapped up earlier than expected in Buffalo, so I made it home in time for dinner. And a celebratory reading of Moo, Baa, La La La:
That's really about all I have the energy for. In case you didn't know already, New York is a rather big state to drive across. It's good to be home, now I'm going to fall over.
drorzel | October 12, 2010SteelyKid is a big fan of the classic children's book Goodnight Moon, which, if you haven't spent the last sixty-odd years in a cave, you probably know features a bunny saying goodnight to a variety of objects in a great, green room. The attentive toddler will find a lot to look at in the pictures-- there's a mouse in every one that SteelyKid delights in pointing out-- but an inquiring adult might well ask "Just how long does it take this bunny to say goodnight to all this stuff, anyway?"
Well, we can answer this question with SCIENCE! You see, there are six pictures in the book showing the…
drorzel | October 9, 2010This is a couple weeks old, but I only just got around to uploading it. It should give you some idea of what it's like reading books with SteelyKid, though:
That's Kate and SteelyKid going through some of Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. SteelyKid is big into pointing things out in the art of whatever book we happen to be reading. This has a slight tendency to undermine the effectiveness of Goodnight Moon as a bedtime ritual, as there's a lot of "Mouse right there!" and "Cow jumping over moon!", but it's really, really cute, so I roll with it.