Neglected Blog.

Hi blog, we are sorry we have neglected you.  It is fun to look back and see all the changes from the past couple of years.  Stupid Facebook and stupid iPhones have ruined everything (we love you iPhone, kind of sort of like you too Facebook).  Anyway here is a picture of Eliza and her favorite ice cream just so we feel like we are kind of paying attention to you, blog.

Our last post was in March?!?!

So much has happened with Eliza in the past several months. She's walking all over the place and her vocabulary has absolutely exploded. She says just about everything we say which has, on occasion, proven dangerous. Here are a few videos to catch you up on all things Eliza.

Fig newtons are her faves.

Eliza and Abby's moms have known each other for a looooong time. Over 25 years, in fact. And though we didn't know each other when we were this young, it's great that our girls can be buds from the start.

After what can only be described as a complete meltdown, Eliza relented when she made it clear that she wanted to put butter on her own roll by HERSELF, thankyouverymuch. The evidence:

We had a great summer!

There's Something About Eliza

Eliza has not yet had a haircut. 16 months without a trip to a stylist? Wow! That's a long time! Her current style is au natural. No product, no conditioner, no gel. Just straight up California Baby shampoo. And some self-applied yogurt once in awhile. Her bangs are kind of getting a little out of control maybe. Wait, are bangs the part of your hair that's in the front of your head, or do bangs only mean a certain type of haircut? Anyway, the hair in the front of her head is getting out of hand. We've tried clips, but Eliza enjoys removing and hiding them.

So imagine our surprise when I picked up Eliza disguised as Cindy-Lou Who! Form follows function, we guess. That Frank Lloyd Wright definitely had this in mind when he coined that phrase.

Oh, and when we removed the hairtie thing Eliza looked like an extra on a Farrelly Brothers comedy. The one with Brett Favre.

What's so funny?

We don't know, but Eliza sure enjoyed it!

Fine Motor Skills > Gross Motor Skills

Some wise parent told us to be prepared for an onslaught of colds this winter. Eliza got a few last year, but we were entirely unprepared for this epidemic. She's nice enough to share some of them (sorry, grandparents). This latest one has her on some antibiotics that make for some rather, er, messy side effects. So we have instituted a diet based on the well-known BRAT method that we are calling the BRA diet: bananas, rice and applesauce. Eliza doesn't really seem to dig white toast at the moment. But that isn't the reason for this update. Beginning yesterday, we gave her a spoon to use with her applesauce/rice cereal/banana mixture and she picked it right up. We still have to work on the proper handling of the spoon, though.

Fun in the Snow

Parenthood would have been nothing like we thought it would be, had we had any idea (accurate or otherwise) what parenthood would be like in the first place. Some stuff makes more sense. Some stuff has more or different meaning. We could get into some deep, philosophical/meta examples, but instead, let's turn to the old reliable cultural satire, The Simpsons.

Now, from time to time on The Simpsons (which, by the way, we haven't watched in several seasons for no particular reason whatsoever) there would be an episode set in winter and Maggie donned her snowsuit. The suit, which looks like a starfish with a baby face poking out of one of the arms, looked stiff, immovable and not entirely comfortable. I always thought it was a cute little depiction of a baby's snowsuit. NOPE. It's pretty much dead on, which I should have realized earlier, given the frequency that The Simpsons nails pretty much everything. I give you exhibit A, and exhibit B.

Maggie Simpson's snowsuit:

Eliza in her snowsuit (with friend Kelsey):


So while that doesn't look too comfortable, we assure you, Eliza is very much at ease in her new toboggan. While this next shot is from a more recent tobogganing expedition, Eliza is obviously perfectly happy being immobile in her toasty warm snowsuit. Not pictured - when the toboggan tipped over and Eliza found herself face-down in the snow. She did not like that. At all.

Birthday Slideshow!

Just head on over to housechapin.blogspot.com and see the slideshow we premiered at Eliza's First Birthday Partay! Just about, oh, 250 carefully selected photographs from the thousands that have been taken over this past year. Just click the pumpkinhead below to see the pics!

Uh-oh

It's a funny thing about video cameras. If you shoot video after video, but fail to move the videos from the magical disc inside the camera to the even more wondrous computer, you might as well have not taken them at all. It would seem that we are falling into the habit of letting these videos lie dormant on that little disc. Well, that ends today!!! We are breaking this habit! Now we need to break the habit of meticulously packing up the point-and-shoot, SLR (with 3 lenses) and HD video camera for events, happenings and outings, only to leave them in their tidy little LowePro case.

This first video is actually a twofer. That's like two videos and one. Oh, we could have shown you a video of Eliza saying, "Uh-oh." And we could have shown you another video of her using a spoon. But you're busy, right? You don't have time for that. We understand. And so we are going to show you both of those things....in one video! (editor's note: the first "uh-oh" is, in fact, Deacon).



Now, that first clip was a terrible example of keeping videos on the camera for too long. It just happened this morning. But this next video...this one makes that point a little better. It happened a week ago, and I have no excuse for burying this clip of Eliza riding a tricycle for the first time. If she knew about this...she'd be pretty mad, because she seems exceedingly proud of her tricycle riding skills.

Packing

Eliza loves getting ready to go on "trips" by completely unpacking her bottom dresser drawer. You can imagine how much fun this is on laundry days...

FB friends, there's a video at housechapin.blogspot.com.

Car Talk

Eliza seems right at home in her new car seat and new car. She has quite a bit to say on the matter. But before we get to her brief diatribe, let's rewind to about 5 minutes before loading up into the car. After a quick walk up to the peak of New Haven that is the East Rock monument Eliza realized she had the luxury of nodding off for the last mile or so. So she did:




You'd think this kid would load up into the car and return to sweet sleep. Nope. Instead she had an in-depth conversation with her mom. I'm not sure what about. I'm sure Todd and I are having a deep talk in the front seat about the relative merits of taking Cleveland's #3 WR as a sleeper.




I don't think I've mentioned that we are preparing Eliza for a position with the Spanish embassy so she has to practice early! FB folks - vids at housechapin.blogspot.com.

Eliza's First Swing

It has come to our attention that the bulk of our updates of Eliza are related to her eating. While Eliza does spend a good part of her waking hours filled with the anticipation of eating, actually eating, or upset that she is no longer eating, we do other things with her, too. We've been hitting the Madison beaches pretty hard these last couple of weeks: playing in the sand or splashing around in the water during the day, firing up one of the beachside grills for dinner. The Surf Club has a little playground that we noticed had some swings that may or may not be appropriate for an 8+ month old. But we thought that Eliza would enjoy the ride and risk, so away she went on her first swing. Here is the video evidence - housechapin.blogspot.com if you're reading this on Facebook.

Also if a member of the Madison Public Works reads this blog - and I'm pretty confident at least 3 of them do - if you could shoot some WD-40 on the swings at The Surf Club that'd be swell.

We Never Did Get The Picture

I didn't get the exchange between Michael and I where we agreed that this photo op would never happen, so you'll just have to take my word for it. But no one listens to ol' Deacon and Michael. Personally, I think the attempt of getting 3 kids under 2 years old to remain still for the 1/30th of a second it takes to snap a photo is asking a lot. Now, the ultimate result - that is, the attempt of getting these three bundles of unbridled kinetic energy to remain still for a moment while singing "Tomorrow" - was a noble attempt, to be sure. I'm just glad I got it on film.

Video @ housechapin.blogspot.com.

John Stewart Says, "Eat Quinoa"

Up until the day before we shot this video (6/24) Eliza had eaten puree of a variety of fruits and vegetables. They all shared one commonality: the consistency of, well, baby food. Making her food amounted to (sometimes) peeling, chopping, steaming and using the handy dandy immersion blender that The Other Chapins gave us for Christmas last year. As I used the blender I might hear in the background the suggestion that Eliza "could use a little more texture."

This video is Eliza's first foray into the world of textured food. Quinoa. Delicious, nutritious quinoa. Doesn't every family feed their child a South American pseudocereal (thanks, Wikipedia!) as one of her first foods? We thought so!

Dining al fresco

We doubt that Eliza really has a preference as to where she takes her meals. Who knows, though, maybe she appreciates the view while she eats her puree of cauliflower. Either way, here's a short video of Eliza noshing on some of that aforementioned cauliflower. Or was it parsnips? It really doesn't matter; she's eaten everything we've put in front of her, including some bits of paper plate when we weren't paying close enough attention.

Mornings

Don't call her a cat person, but Eliza loves Bella.

For the FB viewers, check out a new video at housechapin.blogspot.com.

If only she were happier

This is how our evenings have been lately.

If you're reading this on Facebook, head on over to housechapin.blogspot.com. There's a video.

First Rice Cereal And Now THIS?

You're feeding me what?

I guess when we stop and think about it, avocado is kind of a weird first food. We sort of both independently thought about it, and when we suggested it to each other, naturally we thought it was a capital idea. As an added bonus, you don't have to do anything to it other than mash it with a fork to get it ready to feed to a 6 month old. As a second added bonus (this is where you can make up your own Goldman-Sachs joke), we happen to love avocado and will happily eat any of the leftovers that Eliza chooses to kick down to us. I don't think this will be true with, say, puree of pea.

Further, avocados have a ton of good fat, potassium, a couple of those B vitamins with the numbers after them, vitamin E, vitamin K, and, also important: fiber.

She seemed pretty excited to be eating - which is not unusual. She didn't seem to recognize the difference in color from her usual dinner of oatmeal to this bright green paste and took her bites quite readily. The end result: she finished an entire half of an avocado in about 10 minutes (a good part of which ended up on her face/bib/floor). She would, intermittently, seem to shudder as if surprised by what she was eating. Which makes sense, seeing as how everything she's eaten until this point had been devoid of texture and, mostly, taste. Round 2 vs. the avocado is tomorrow. Maybe a video (horizontally shot) is in order?

Hmmm...interesting.

Hey! Not too bad!

Your avocado. Give it to me.

We Are Hilarious

Yep, we are hilarious. Obviously. This isn't news to anyone. Except Eliza. She's just discovering that her parents are the second coming of George Carlin (but without those "seven words" - at least, not in Eliza's presence. No, no, never). Forgive us if we're still getting the video thing down and you have to kind of tilt your head for the first half of the clip. You might also notice we're still using the point-and-shoot for video purposes. So we suspect when Eliza is all grown up and all she has is standard definition video of most of her infant life she'll assuredly think we didn't love her enough to invest in an HD camera. Anyway, enough with the words. People want to see videos.

Oh, and if you're reading this on Facebook, well, you'll just have to trudge on over to housechapin.blogspot.com to see the video. Apparently they haven't figured out how to import clips from blogs to Bookface.

Weebles wobble...

...and they DO fall down. Here's Eliza working on her latest trick: sitting.

Don't adjust your screens, but do plan to turn your head to the side for the next minute.

Happy rolling

And here's Eliza showing her latest and greatest version of rolling over. Much happier this time.