Pictures
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 | December 2, 2011Both Monday and Thursday were too hectic this week to get good family pictures. I got this one today, though, that I think is probably worth the wait:
The great thing about taking pictures of really little babies is that they sleep soundly enough for you to futz around changing lenses and apertures and all that sort of thing.
And so SteelyKid doesn't feel left out, here's a group shot from last week:
The Pip is a little unhappy in this, but it's the best of the shots on my camera. I think my parents might've gotten a better one on their camera.
Anyway, there's your weekly dose of cute.
drorzel | November 21, 2011SteelyKid's away at Grandma and Grandpa's for a few days, to give us a little more time to acclimate to The Pip, which means you get a very traditional baby blogging picture:
It's not the greatest angle for comparing his size to Appa, but you get the idea.
The Pip is settling in nicely. His rate of growth met with medical approval last week, and he won't need to be checked again until his one-month birthday, which is nice. He's settling into a fairly reasonable routine of eating, sleeping, and excreting, with occasional periods of cute-and-awake. And he's much calmer about the small…
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 11, 2011Actually, The Pip came home last night, but the whole process was too hectic to take any decent pictures, let alone blog about it. We got some quiet time this afternoon, though, when SteelyKid had been packed off to day care, which let me take some good shots of The Pip chillin' in his crib:
This is the same porta-crib, by the way, that big sister SteelyKid posed in last week, so you can fairly directly compare the two. And, of course, Appa is there as a reference.
It's probably an illusion, given that he doesn't exactly have complete control of his movements, but he certainly gave the…
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 26, 2011
"I work around the clock-- 1043 Planck times per second-- providing the gravitational attraction to hold this galaxy cluster together. And some baryonic cosmologist wants to explain me away as a modification of Newtonian gravity?
"I have been silent for 13.7 billion years, but no more.
"I AM THE 96%"
(Original Pandora Cluster image from NASA)
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…
drorzel | September 15, 2011The current quasi-hiatus has the goal of preserving my sanity through reducing stress. Somewhat surprisingly, Thursday Toddler Blogging has actually been fairly stressful lately, because SteelyKid is mostly in a "no pictures" phase, which makes getting a usable shot of her a huge hassle. Which is why there was no toddler blogging photo last week.
This week, though, I got this shot which is well worth sharing:
The notable thing here is not just the cute toddler, but the figure in the sand at her feet, which you can just make out. This is a self-portrait of sorts, drawn on the sand playground…
drorzel | September 1, 2011Our next-door neighbors are awesomely nice, and helped Kate move all the breakable stuff in the back yard out of harm's way before the big storm this past weekend (since I left town before it was clear that Albany would get hit). as a thank-you, Kate and SteelyKid baked cookies for them. But you don't have to just watch-- you can help, too:
(Seriously, that's what she's saying, here: "You can help, too, Daddy.")
A couple more pictures showing the mixing process are below the fold. Kate measured everything out, and controlled the mixer, but SteelyKid was in charge of carefully adding…
drorzel | August 25, 2011SteelyKid has recently discovered the game hide-and-seek. Shhh! She's hiding right now. Can you guess where she is?
You can't tell from the picture, of course, but just in case it wasn't obvious where she's hiding, she usually calls out when you get kind of close. Or even jumps out of her hiding place yelling "Ta-da!"
She's got a ways to go before she's ready for the Olympics. the important thing is to have fun, though:
This is from an extended period of "hiding" with Kate under the green blanket, then pulling the blanket down and laughing uproariously. It was the funniest thing in the…