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.