 |
|
Pixar wins not one, but TWO Oscar’s for, “The Incredibles”.
I am actually excited to go to work tomorrow, even though it’s a Monday.
February 27, 2005
February 26, 2005
Mama, finally!
At 15 months, Sara has finally called me by my name, “Mama”. Daddy has been prominent in her vocabulary for 2 months at least. It’s most often said in the context of joy or happiness like “Dahdeeeeee!”. I notice that my new moniker is used in the context of crying and upsetness like “Mamamamama” in a staccato, sobbing tone. Wayne tells me not to complain. Gotta love the cute girl!
What else about Sara? She’s been busy developmentally the past 2 months.
1. Gross motor skills-she’s cruising on 2 feet. Since 2 weeks ago, she’s been fully walking. She was cruising furniture and walking holding on to us with both hands around her birthday. By Xmas, she was solidly comfortable with one hand holding walking. As January began, she’d take a couple of steps on her own, like falling into Daddy’s arms to something. By early January, she was starting to stand on her own. Then she strung us along for awhile. Luckily, I got to see my friend Sarah watch her child be slow to walk. Indy is now a champion walker. So I’ve been trying not to be too impatient.
Ironically, she chose the weekend we went to Whistler to start walking across the house. We got home to this announcement from Shirley. It took 3 days before Wayne actually got to see her do it. She saved walking distances for command performances. Finally by mid Feb, she started walking like she was not one’s fool. At the Flower and Garden Show, she toddled among the flowers and ponds. See ultissimo.net for photos (2/10/05). So, the only milestone she hasn’t touched yet is running.
2. Fine motor – Sara seems to excel in this one. She seems very mechanically inclined (don’t know anyone like that, do I?). She likes to study a problem and futz with it. Currently she’s fascinated with socks and how to put them on. We’ve been working on our forking skills. She’s expert at putting divits in the table and working on spearing her food. She likes switches and buttons.
3. Verbal – This is a bit slower than everything else. She has several signs. Let me count them 
hat, monkey, dog, cat, bagel, milk, more, all done, up, down, change diaper, sleep, telephone, book, elephant.
Dog just got noticed this week. She loves dogs. Berkeley and Winny (our friends lab and beagle, respectively) love to lick her. Wayne noticed that when she see a photo of a dog she starts to lick her lips. I thought that was awfully cute.
Verbally, she says daddy, mama, yes (really yesh), baba for bottle. She clearly said doll-doll 3 times in front of Wayne and me when she was holding all 3 household doll-dolls. But she’s never said that again. I thought she said dirty once, but that could not be corroborated. I think she’s mostly holding onto the words out of stubborness. We’ll see. She’s able to communicate with pointing and grunting a lot. Maybe too well.
Her comprehension is spot on. She can point to a cow, sheep, dog, cat, flower, fish, etc in books when she’s in a good mood. I’ve found explaining things too her and including her in my tasks makes her much happier. We’ve thrown trash away, picked up things, and played with laundry together.
The nice thing about a blog is you don’t have to pay attention to this if you don’t want to. But it makes for a nice recording of these early years. All this stuff starts to blur together.
Comments Off
February 25, 2005
Zoo!
One of the best presents one can get on a birthday is the chance to take a kid to the zoo. Also one of the best parts of being a parent.
We saw a lot of neat things. Sara got to pet a goat, and she got to see a peacock and an elephant. She was very excited by the fish in the aquarium as the swam by. She was even more amazed by the beluga whales.
The image above is a link to a rather large movie (1Mbyte), but Quicktime Pro seems incapable of converting mpeg4’s to arbitrary aspect ratios, and this movie was taken in portrait, so I have linked it for those who want to wait.
Later that day we visted the Polar Bears. These guys are absolutely huge and the hit of the zoo, i.e. very crowded. The bears are amazing, and they can track prey from up to 20 miles away.
Click the pic above for the fun movie.
Sara also recently learned she can run away from her parents. This was somewhat of a shocking revelation to us, as we now have to make sure we don’t loose her in public places like the zoo.
Once again click the pic for a movie.
Comments Off
February 9, 2005
Whistler 2005
We went to Whistler for a long weekend. It was the first time for Jon and Claire, but it was something of a tradition for the rest of us.
We stayed in the same place (Sunpath condos), and started off each day with a nice hot cup of homebrew.
We went went up to Whistler the first day. It was a beautiful day, sunny, not too cold. The snow was not the best, as there was hardly any snow on the mountain below the mid-station.
After that first day there was a new addition to each breakfast.
Then we went up to Blackcomb the second day and had a blast. It snowed pretty hard most of the time and was white-out up on 7th Heaven (no suprise there!) but the snow was a blast, and we ran the lifts until we could run them no more.
I seem to get no complaints about the Sara video, so I have included a video of folks flying down the mid section of 7th heaven.
We went out on the town one night and had a nice big steak dinner. Nothing like a giant, fatty piece of red meat after a hard day of snow sports.
We headed up to Whistler for our last day, and the snow was even better. This time we had Kelly and Melina joining us, and we had a blast heading off piste in the Harmony bowl area.
Comments Off
February 7, 2005
Annual TiVO work
Well is seems about once a year I have to work on my TiVo. This time around the lame old Maxxtor (clunky, hot, loud and lasted JUST beyond the 1 yr warranty) finally died.
I went down to Frye’s as they had a sale on 160G Seagate drives for $59 (after rebate of course). Nice quiet drive. Gives me 175hrs of record time.
I applied the TiVo V4.0 software hacks to it and now can access it via a network controller just like my old 3.0 hack. I follow the nice little guide that was posted here.
Comments Off
February 6, 2005
First video!
I just installed a new ethernet card for wootens.net. Hopefully DOS attacks will no longer bring down the server. I was unlucky enough to obtain a $5 card at Fry’s that just happens to use the same driver as the old card though, so it may not help.
Given the new bandwidth and the new ethernet card, I have decided to put up a video of Sara chasing me around the house. It’s low-res and should be low bandwidth MPEG4. Anyone with a Mac should have no problem viewing it.
If you would like to see Sara check us out below:
Comments Off
February 5, 2005
Winter Events
Christmas is definitely over. We’re in the middle of Wooten birthday celebrations. It’s just now that I’m getting to blogging about it all.
1/5/05 Shirley (Grandma) arrived as did a new addition to my Mom’s side of the family, Aidan. Grandparents, Dad, Mom, and older brother are very proud.
1/8/05 We enjoyed a long deserved visit with Dave and Kay from our church. We used to be in a home group till they moved to Kirkland. We enjoyed a Kringle from Larsen’s, homemade scones, eggs, and wonderful hospitality. Steve and Abby entertained Sara very well.
Ironically, on the same day, we hung out with our current home group and gathered in Edmonds at Leslie’s house for chili and Denise’s cornbread (amazing) and key lime pie.
Childcare
We started looking in earnest for childcare to replace Cora who had a fall before Xmas and unfortunately can’t care for Sara anymore because of broken bones. Luckily, it had been less than a year, so the nanny agency Careworks was willing to help us find a replacement for free. I decided to look at all options and investigated in home daycare as well as regular daycare as well as nannies. The net result was not much. I was surprised with how hard it is to get childcare. I’m not talking about the “top” daycares, just any daycare to take a kid over one. Only one place had openings. For now we are going to continue to do the nanny dance. We were lucky enough to get a wonderful new nanny to care for Sara. Sara’s been enjoying doing lots of water play and adventures with Kathie.
Month with my Mother-in-law
What a fun time! Not what you expected me to say, huh? Besides the fact Shirley, who’s between jobs luckily for us, generously agreed to come for this month in order to take care of Sara while we found childcare, I had lots of fun. Shirley is a joyful, fun-loving woman. It was a nice opportunity for her to get to see the rhythms of our home life and for me to get to know her beyond holiday visits. We had Jon and Claire over several times for food and Mexican train. Mexican train? A game of luck and a little strategy played w/ multicolored dominos.
Shirley and Sara bonded as they were supposed to. Shirley was more adventurous with feeding then I was. While Shirley was here, Sara completely transitioned from bottle to sippy cup. Shirley taught her to say, “uh oh” and “shewww” for smelly diapers. She tried to get her to say, “mama” (the prelude to grandma), but Sara would (and still does) reply, “Dahdee” with a sly expression.
We didn’t do too many fancy outings while Shirley was here. She fulfilled her goal to have fish and chips 3 out of the 4 weeks. Lockspot is her favorite place in Ballard with Totem a close second and Coney Island a distant 3rd. We went to Chinooks in Fisherman’s Terminal for the last night of all you can eat tempura prawns. I enjoyed the cedar plank salmon. Sara behaved like an angel. One morning, we treated ourselves to pain au chocolate and fresh brioche with strawberry jam as well as capuccino and hot chocolate at Cafe Besalu on 24th. We haunted Fred Meyer and checked out Me&Moms, Too (a cool kids consignment store). We tried to buy Sara new hard soled shoes. She screamed the entire time I had her try them on. Later we took Sara to a different consignment shop and Shirley picked out a red purse with big handles Sara could play with. She loves putting toys in and out of that purse.
The last week she was here, we went to the zoo. Sara got to see giraffes up close and at her level. My favorite part was sitting and looking at the gorillas for 15 minutes. Sara kept pointing at the baby gorilla. Later we played with the bronze statues of the gorillas in a nearby garden. She was afraid of the lifesized statue of the silverback male gorilla. Around the jaguar exhibit, I lost Shirley. I lost her for over 25 minutes. It got my husband in a bit of a panic too. Eventually we got reunited after a cold, long wait.
Karen’s Whistler
Shirley’s best gift was a 4 day weekend caring for Sara while we went to Whistler. Check out Wayne’s cool photos before this entry. I did Whistler but without the skiing. I guess that was ok since there was essentially not snow. I was an adult for 4 days. I got a massage, saw 2 movies (Sideways and In Good Company-both excellent), ate sushi and crepes, hung out with Kellie and Melina, read 2 books (The Last Days of Summer by Margaret Maron and L.E. Modesitt’s lastest in the Coran? series), and slept late. We made chili for our night of dinner, enjoyed steak at the Key (again no silver cloud, but now I have the recipe!), and enjoyed soup with the Jenkins. We didn’t have our own hot tub, but Kellie and Melina let us use there’s after a hard day of movie watching. Wayne recaptured his childhood with multiple hours playing SoulCaliber, a fighting game with enhance anatomy on silly characters chattering corny lines (’can’t we all just get along?’). It was lots of fun and I was ready to return to Sara at the end. The little minx decided to start walking while we were gone. A treat for Shirley, though.
Comments Off