puredanger.com Blog

Tidbits October 30, 2006

Just some random kid tidbits to share today.

We carved pumpkins on Sunday; we had a bunch of little ones and one bigger one. Truman kept asking about the big one but we were busy taking care of all the little ones first. Finally, I told him it was time and carried it over and he said seriously “That’s what I’m talking ’bout.”

Lately Ella has been obsessed with asking “what if ….” and then coming up with some strange scenario. We were out taking a walk tonight and she said “Daddy, what if we didn’t have beds?”. And right before bed she said “Boys are boys and girls and girls. What if I was a boy?” That was too big for me to handle before bed time.

There is a story the kids have been reading lately called Papagayo that’s about the moon eater (kind of a folk tale to explain the phases of the moon). So lately Truman has been noticing the moon when we’re out at night and saying the the moon is half full. He’s also been saying he wants to cut his sandwich in half, which seemed like a good transfer of concepts. He’s been wanting to go out for walks at night with me, which is always a lot of fun. There are some ghosts hanging in a tree around the corner and he always wants to walk up and see them.

Truman the photographer October 26, 2006

Mary and Ella were upstairs the other day and Mary realized Truman was very quiet downstairs. Mary came down and it seemed like Truman had been playing with the camera and the video camera. Couple days later, Mary downloaded the pictures from the camera and found he had been down here taking pictures. So, here without further adieu is Truman’s first picture. It’s some good footage.

He’s a clever boy. Another favorite hobby is playing with CD players. He has the boom boxes we have in the house down to a science. He knows how to take CDs in and out of the case, in and out of the CD player, turn it on and off, change the volume, stop and play, switch to radio, etc. He can play with a CD player for 10-20 minutes at a time.

Particle October 25, 2006

I ran across a band today called Particle. They’re a jam band, kind of on the electronic end of the scale and do mostly instrumental stuff. In all, they’ve got some good chops and I found a couple of the songs to be great background for writing code – just enough energy to keep my head nodding and the lack of vocals is actually good from a distraction point of view.

They have a bunch of free live tracks available but I would urge you to check out Ghetto Queen in particular. It’s kinda funky and it has vocals and beat-boxing. If you like Debra by Beck (and you should), then you’ll probably dig it.

6 word stories

Wired did a fun thing asking writers to write 6 word stories recently. You can check out the results here. Lots of science fiction writers and a definite tilt towards time travel plays.

Some of my favorites:

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
- Joss Whedon

Kirby had never eaten toes before.
- Kevin Smith

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.
- Orson Scott Card

Beck @ 4 months October 24, 2006

I thought it was time for an update on Beck as he is now 4 months old. He’s 16 pounds, which is about average I guess. We went back and looked up Truman’s stats and he was over 19 pounds at 4 months, as he was a super chunky baby.

Anyhow, he is a happy and very aware baby. He loves to be talked to and he particularly enjoys it when Ella talks to him. His favorite song is Itsy Bitsy Spider, which Mary sings to him. He used to make sounds and coo but that’s tapered off. He does still love to laugh – it’s usually kind of a “heh heh” sort of laugh. Sometimes he does it when I put him up in the air. It’s pretty easy to get him to break into his big old Beck grin.

He’s very into grabbing stuff and playing with it or bringing it to his mouth. He loves to touch your face or hair when you’re holding him. He’s rolled over a couple times although I haven’t seen it yet. He usually needs some help but I guess he’s starting to figure it out. He’s not quite ready to sit up yet but sometimes you can prop him up a bit.

Beck has so far been our champion sleeper. He’s always been really easy to get to sleep at night – pretty much put him down and he calms down and drops right off. He now sleeps about 11-12 hrs per night. He used to ferociously chomp on a binkie but a few weeks ago he suddenly didn’t want it. Now, he’s all about the thumb. He’s not too particular about which one but he seems to favor the right one a bit.

He’s old enough to start cereal but we haven’t done that yet. We were thinking we would wait a while but he is eating a lot in the last week or so and it doesn’t seem to be filling him up like it used to, so we may make the plunge pretty soon.

That’s the highlights. Here’s a couple pictures from recently.