Camera cam: September 2007

Latest quotes from Mana...

"Mana, do bats eat nectarines?"
"Fruit bats must, but not vampire bats. I think they only eat blood"
"Do vampire bats eat mosquitos?"
"Good question."

"Jones-see the new cocoon from that caterpiller Zaide gave me?
"Is it going to be a moth?"
"No, a swallowtail butterfly."
"Then it's a chrysalis."

{Mom or Dad- did I really ask this many questions? Oh, boy}

I'll add one more:

Last Saturday we had some neighborhood families over, and I was playing guitar with one of the other dads (Eric). He said something about a B flat chord in one song, and a few minutes later J asked "Is there a Bee in his guitar?"

Took me a couple of seconds to piece it together.

Reminds me of a joke:
What key do you get if you drop a piano down a mineshaft?...

The newest little camera (even smaller than Ella!)

Everyone say "hi" to our newest little camera in the family (I get to keep making that joke every time we buy a new one, how lucky am I?)!

Of course, we bought it following the example and the advice of Scott, the uberbloggerdaddy (uberdadblogger)?

Little bit of a thing, as Tom was pointing out when I so rudely stopped the footage, it would almost fit in an altoids box.

Notice that I pushed the wrong button and took a still picture in the middle of that little movie? Oops. Wonder how many of our memories will have that extra feature.

This little camera won't capture the quality that Dad's will, b/c of the excellent color reproduction, etc, of his. However, this one will go where I wouldn't take that one!

Might turn out to be the ultimate daddyblogger tool.

Oh, it's a Canon Tx-1 for any gearheads reading this blog (that would be you, Bob Hawley :-)

Balancing Act

So, recently I was delighted to find an email from Sam's dear friend Melanie in my work inbox. She informed us that she's engaged to be married :-) and was hoping for advice about balancing work, and parenting, and one's relationship.

Ummm...balancing? Don't know what that verb means. Juggling? Oh yes. Dashing? Scrambling? Hurtling? I'm all about hurtling.

Then I read an article in the Times about how the seven year itch is alive and kicking, and I start to feel a little better. Ten is definitely more than seven (who remembers that chilly day in May, 1997?), and we're just picking up steam! It's all about finding satisfaction and pleasure in communal late night study halls in the home office, and helping each other with things like "professional goals" for work evaluations. Right now it's Sami's turn, next year I'm up for tenure (gulp! Say a little prayer for me).

Finally, this little strip of pictures floated to the top of this little patch of chaos we call home (remember my metaphor about low tide?). Ah, yes. Of course, we literally can't remember where exactly we were when it was taken, but we recognize those tan, rested, silly people as ourselves. And it still looks right.

Now back to my regularly scheduled study hall...

Anyone Remember Mini-Connectos?

Anyone else remember these toys? Ben Neylon, are your ears burning?

Ben was one of my best friends as a kid, before we moved here to Amherst. He and I spent gobs of time playing with these excellent building toys called Mini Connectos (I don't even know if I'm spelling that right, since we were too busy building ships and guns to write about them).

So, I've searched the web, and talked to people in every toy store I enter, and never seen any signs of a revival of these toys. Jonas is quite a builder, so I've been pretty bummed out that we couldn't find them.

Then our friends Mac and Laura sent us a giant bin of these things called Zoobs. They're just like Mini-Connectos, only *better*. They join together in like 5 different ways, and some of those joints will move! And they come in all the colors Mini-Connectos came in, plus silver. Sweet!

Jonas is captivated, as you can see. He built this ship entirely by himself. Reminds me of Princess Leia's ship in the first Star Wars, the one she's traveling on when she gets captured by Darth Vader (aka HER DAD).

Oops, did I spoil that for anyone?

Anyway, thanks so much, Mac and Laura, for coming through with one of my (er, I mean Jonas') favorite toys.

Jonas gets into the spirit of the season

So, Jonas is very excited about Jack O Lanterns this year. We decided there's no reason to wait until the end of October, when he's itching to carve now. Sam stopped at Atkins Farms and bought one, I opened it up and emptied it out, then he went at it all by himself.

Please note that we own one of those lovely sets of pumpkin carving tools that are specially made to be safe for little hands, we didn't set him loose with a real knife!

So, he did this one free-form, without a single lick of help from me, or a diagram ahead of time. He's very proud, as you might imagine, and kept warning Julian "stay back, I don't want you to get cut by this sharp knife".

Check it out!