Steelykid!
drorzel | March 18, 2012Captain's Log, Stardate 031812
USS BabyPod
Lieutenant Commander The Pip reporting:
Hey, this space pod thing is pretty neat:
Wait, what? You mean I get to be in charge of this. All by myself?
That's so awesome!!! Woo-hoo!
I can fly it however I want! Look, Ma, no hands!
Whee!!!! This is the most awesome thing ever!
Thanks, big sister Space Commander SteelyKid!
drorzel | March 16, 2012While I was editing and posting the pictures for last night's family blogging, SteelyKid came in and said "Daddy, we watched [indistinct name] today, and they created their own story on the show. But I don't know how to do that."
"Sure you do, honey," I said. "You create stories all the time. You were telling me a story last night, something about bears in a cave. You can create stories if you want to."
That cheered her up, and after a little bit of negotiation about who was going to write on what, she created the following story:
That's a SpongeBob activity book that she got from I-don't-…
drorzel | March 15, 2012Yesterday was "Pi Day" (3-14, in the American style of writing dates), and while I personally find it kind of silly, The Pip took it to heart, using it as the occasion for his first rotation of π radians about his long axis. That is, he rolled from his back onto his stomach. Which is both good and bad: good, because it's a milestone, bad because now we can't leave him unattended on any flat, elevated surfaces.
Anyway, to mark the occasion, here's a picture of the two kids. With Appa for scale, even.
He's not in the porta-crib very often-- he prefers to be held so that he can "stand" on his…
drorzel | February 16, 2012One of SteelyKid's favorite bedtimes reads is Good Night, Gorilla, which is very short and mostly pictures. We've read it about a million times, so to mix things up (and further my goal of convincing her that I'm a blithering idiot), I'll give it different titles when I hold it up before reading it. She giggles and correct me, and it's all very heartwarming and cute.
Tonight, I held it up and declared "This is... Konnichiwa, Kangaroo."
"No, Daddy, it's Good Night, Gorilla."
"Oh, my mistake. It's Bonsoir, Baboon."
"No, Daddy," she said, "Bonsoir Baboon is a movie. With a baboon, and the…
drorzel | February 12, 2012We send SteelyKid to preschool at the Jewish Community Center in Schenectady, because when we looked at day care programs back in the day, they had the one we liked best. This is a mixed blessing in a number of ways-- they close for a lot of religious holidays when nothing else closes, creating some awkwardness with child care and our jobs. On the plus side, though, it's a chance to learn about another culture, and as an extra bonus, most of what we learn is filtered through SteelyKid, making it extra cute.
For example, on the way home Friday, she was chattering quietly to herself in the back…
drorzel | February 1, 2012It's apparently a good day for asking questions of the readership, so here's another one: as SteelyKid has gotten older and more active, she's become a real drain on productivity, especially at bedtime. Bedtime is now a process rather like a certain spoof book, extending well over an hour, and involving repeated requests to come back into her room for some silly reason or another. If I don't respond quickly enough, she'll work herself up into a real tantrum, so I pretty much need to stay upstairs in our bedroom until she's asleep. Which means either I can't get any work done, or I have to…
drorzel | January 8, 2012Lots of people ask how SteelyKid is taking to having a younger sibling. Well, judge for yourself:
This is during the Giants-Falcons playoff game this afternoon, but it's pretty typical. When both SteelyKid and The Pip are home, she's always running over to give him kisses and hugs and chatter at him. She's super excited to be a big sister, and that hasn't changed.
Better yet, a few minutes after that first picture, she looked like this:
And, in fact, she's still snoring cutely. We'll wake her up soonish, but for now, we're enjoying the break from constant, exhausting motion.
Hope you and…
drorzel | December 27, 2011One of The Pip's Christmas presents simply demands to be shown off here:
This is a baby blanket knitted by his awesome Aunt Anastasia, with three physics equations on it. They're subtle, but if you look closely, you can read them: E=mc2, V=IR, and F=ma.
All the other babies will be jealous of his knowledge of physics (once he starts day care in March, anyway). For now, here's a show of appreciation from the little dude himself:
He's waving his little fist in the air, saying "Rock on, Aunt 'Stasia!"
(The actual rocking in this case was being done by big sister SteelyKid:
Check out the…
drorzel | December 15, 2011We got a good group photo this week, showing everybody, with Appa for scale, even:
Here, SteelyKid is opening a bag of small presents that Aunt Norma and Uncle Dan sent, while the Pip engages in the traditional five-week-old-infant pursuit of sleeping a whole lot.
When she's not opening early Christmas gifts, SteelyKid too engages in traditional three-and-a-third-year-old pursuits, such as bouncing balls:
And playing with great big cardboard boxes:
The photo quality of that last one isn't great, because I was sternly ordered to put down the camera and help her by closing the box. We then…
drorzel | December 8, 2011The Pip turned one month old yesterday, so to celebrate, here's a picture of the whole family:
OK, it's not a photograph, but look! SteelyKid drew that all by herself! (The labels on the drawing were done by one of her preschool teachers; the printed text was added by me when I obscured the given names of SteelyKid and The Pip.) This one's going to be on the fridge for a while.
For those who insist on photos, there are a couple below the fold:
First, a traditional Appa-for-scale shot:
(Picture by Kate, with my camera.)
And while it's hard to take pictures of SteelyKid these days, she really…
drorzel | November 17, 2011I haven't sorted out yet how I plan to handle Thursday Toddler Blogging given that the original reason for it being on Thursday was because SteelyKid was born on a Thursday. The Pip, on the other hand, was born on a Monday. Should I do two cute-kid photos a week? Move it to Friday Family Blogging and try to get pictures of both of them? It's all just so complicated...
... it just wears me out.
We're almost done with this term from Hell, though-- I gave the final exam for one of my two classes this morning, and the other will be on Monday, so I'll make a final decision next week. In the…
drorzel | November 12, 2011"Seriously, Daddy, I'm awake for like one hour a day, and you're going to spend it taking my picture?"
"You're going to post this on the Internet, aren't you?"
"Then again... If I play this right, I can use this technology to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
(Those two shots are taken with my cell phone, while he was propped up on my knees after his afternoon feeding. For reference, here's a picture of SteelyKid propped up on my knees in more or less the same manner:
(Oh my God, she's huge!)
drorzel | November 9, 2011How awesome is The Pip? So awesome he glows:
OK, that's really just a phototherapy light because he's a little jaundiced (SteelyKid had the same thing when she was just born, though I don't remember the light being brought to the room with her). It makes him look like he glows in the dark, though. Possibly because he acquired superpowers through unwise experiments with comic-book radiation.
All is basically well, here. Both SteelyKid and The Pip have thoroughly charmed all the nurses at the hospital-- her through cute chatter and general bounciness, him through eating like a champ and…
drorzel | November 7, 2011As of 4:35 this morning, Chateau Steelypips has a new member (though not yet resident, for a couple more days):
This photo, with the traditional sky-bison for scale is our new baby boy, David Nepveu Orzel, henceforth to be referred to on the blog as "The Pip." Because "SteelyKid and The Pip" sounds like a crime-fighting duo to be reckoned with, it fits with the old domain-name scheme, and it's obviously a nickname, unlike the two other contenders, both of which were based on real-ish names suggested by SteelyKid ("Porter," short for "Transporter," which was SteelyKid's first suggestion of a…
drorzel | November 3, 2011This weekend, we did a little more furniture-moving to prepare for the imminent arrival of FutureSibling!, which included moving SteelyKid's black chair upstairs into her room, and putting the portable crib back in front of the fireplace in the living room. Unsurprisingly, she wanted to get in it; surprisingly, she allowed me to take a picture of her lying down in it:
(Not the best shot, but she didn't hold still for long. Check out the spiffy Halloween shirt, too...)
For reference, here is more or less the same pose, 161 weeks ago. Good Lord, she's gotten huge.
drorzel | October 27, 2011A couple of cell-phone pictures from last weekend, on an early-evening run to one of the local playgrounds. The sun was pretty well down when SteelyKid decided she wanted to climb on the giant rope climbing structure they have. she's gone on this before, but it's never lasted long, so we figured, why not?
(It's blurry because of the low light-- I brightened it massively in GIMP.)
She's gotten considerably bolder and more agile since the last time she went on this. And it got even better:
That's right, at one point she was over my head. And about five feet away horizontally, with a network…
drorzel | October 20, 2011SteelyKid was in an exceptionally happy mood the other night, and so I not only got the silly face shot from the previous post, but also this more traditional Toddler Blogging picture, with Appa, no less:
All together now: Awwwwwww....
Appa, you may or may not recall, has served as our standard length reference for our weekly series of SteelyKid photos. Only not so much with the weekly, for the last little while, and not so much with Appa for a longer while...
We got this one, though, and oh my God, she's gigantic. This, for reference, is the very first Appa-for-scale picture, from 2008. We…
drorzel | October 20, 2011I've been too busy to really work on the DonorsChoose fundraiser this year, but it's worth taking a little time to mention this opportunity: Starting today and running through Saturday midnight, the DonorsChoose board will match donations to the Science Bloggers for Students fundraiser. thus, a $5 donation becomes $10, $10 becomes $20, and, well, you know how to multiply by two.
So, since you're quick with arithmetic, why not throw a couple of bucks to DonorsChoose, to help the next generation learn to do addition and multiplication, and eventually multivariable calculus? Such as, say, this…
drorzel | October 15, 2011Because it's been a while since I posted a cute toddler picture, and because SteelyKid actually let me shoot some pictures of her yesterday for the first time in a while. Here she is, playing with Legos:
Of course, building giant towers is only half the fun of playing with Legos:
What goes up, must come down...
drorzel | September 29, 2011The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to preschool, is closed for Rosh Hashanah, so she's off at Grandma and Grandpa's for the weekend. They start doing a little more religious instruction at the preschool level, so we got to hear about Jewish theology, SteelyKid style:
It's the birthday of the world, so I'm going to Grandma and Grandpa's tomorrow. The world's going to be closed, because it's the birthday of the world!
With big wide eyes for the last sentence, to drive home the importance of the world's birthday. And later, when I said the words "Rosh Hashanah,"
Yeah! Rosh Hashanah! God created the…