Trent Levels Up

Trent is close to being able to count to 20. He knows all the numbers. He usually gets lost somewhere between 15 and 20 and they just appear in a random order. Trent successfully climbed out of his crib yesterday, so we assembled his new new bed and moved him into it. Now he can get in and out safely. The downside is now he can get out whenever he wants. Trent can sing several songs relatively well. He knows the chorus of Jingle Bells. He likes to sing Happy Birthday. He also like The Wheels on the Bus.

The Holdiays Are Wrapping Up

Well the holiday season is coming to a close. Things went pretty well. Tina managed to wrangle the 24th and 25th off. That allowed us to celebrate Christmas with both sides of the family. The trade off is that she has to work for a week solid after that with a 24 hour shift to cap it off.

We settled the old house, so we're back down to a single mortgage. That's good. We just need to finish unpacking and organizing the new house. I estimate completion in two or three years.

I haven't successfully gone through the Christmas pictures or video yet. I'll get around to that sometime soon and post them.

Happy New Year!

Trent Climbs The Wall

Trent On The Slide

It Depends Whether You Count The Thumb

New Video Capability

I took the video in the last post using a Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder. It's a very small flash-based camcorder designed basically for taking videos and posting them to youtube. It takes about an hour worth of low resolution video. No tapes or disks. Then you just plug it into your computer using a built in USB plug. Copy the video off of it the same way you would from a digital camera and upload it to the Internet. I was hesitant going it because there were several negative reviews on Amazon were people had trouble getting video off the device. But there was an overwhelming number of people who said the device was great. So, maybe the company just has a Q/A problem and produces a few bad units. Mine is working perfectly so far.

What Does Santa Say?

Santa is coming...

Preparations are in full swing at the Hudson household. Right now the most important thing is getting us all well so we can enjoy Christmas with our families.



Today Trent stayed home and we went to see Santa at the mall. We are feeling better... but we weren't thrilled by Santa to say the least. I regret that they only gave us the one shot on the CD. All four of them together really told the tale of how "professional" Santa can be at gently restraining children who are whiny/scared and don't really know who he is or what the possible ramifications might be of one's behaviour. My favorite was Santa leaning over Trent in a sort of "dip" like in dancing, but Trent was pretty much not having it. Ah well. Someday we'll get this Santa thing right.

More From The Back Yard

Last weekend, I noticed that there was a huge flock of birds in my backyard. OK, not technically in my backyard, but in the cornfield right behind my backyard. And technically, it's not currently a cornfield since it's been plowed under, but there are still a lot of corncobs lying in it which is why I think the birds chose it as a place to land. These birds were about 100 yards from my back door. I'm not a bird expert; I think they were some sort of migratory goose. I couldn't get a really good closeup of one. I was worried about spooking the flock. And I lack a sufficiently powerful telescopic lens to get closer than what's here. I've seen flocks of starlings take flight. Watching these birds take off was like that except these birds were four or five times bigger.

The Milky Way

This evening I walked out my back door, looked up into the night sky and could clearly see the Milky Way. While I was admiring the sight a meteor streaked across the sky. We are a long way from the light pollution of Baltimore and D.C. out here. There are some advantages to living in the country.

Move Complete

Our move has been completed. With the help of the fine folks from Brennan's Moving and Storage we moved our household 60 miles to the Eastern Shore. Before you get too excited, let me point out that despite the name of the region in which we live, we're still at least an hour and a half from the nearest sandy beach. I've got the Internet up and running. We're stuck with DSL out here. But, so far it seems acceptable. It is noticeably slower than a cable modem, but probably only because I'm a networking snob. I'll send out a mass e-mail with the new address and phone number.

Two Happy 2nd's Trent!

Trent had two birthday parties this year. Both were small because we're down to just two weeks left before the move. So, our house is almost all packed up. One party was hosted by Wayne and Bonnie. The second was hosted by Trent's Godparents Mike and Wendy. A good time was had by all!

A Three Syllable Word

Trent has added a three syllable word to his vocabulary. It is "screwdriver". He has a plastic Mega Blok screwdriver that he enjoys. This toy formed the motivation for his expanded vocabulary.

Another xkcd Favorite

I really love xkcd. It falls squarely in the obscure eclectic zone that is my sense of humor. Here's another good one. If you don't get it, you'll just have to read the books.

Ted & Lori's Wedding

Ted & Lori got married today. It was a great event. Everyone had a fun time. I took 153 pictures. Of those, 19 seemed worth posting. They're available here. The ceremony and reception was held outside. Ted and Lori wrote their own vows. I heard could hear Ted's pretty clearly. Low frequency sound carries pretty well. I liked his vows. I thought he hit all the right points. Kahlil Gibran would have approved. I had some difficulty hearing Lori's vows. But I think D&D made it in there. Ted's a lucky guy to find a woman who, in her wedding vows, promises to let him play D&D. That's commitment.

Some New Pictures

We went to do the home inspection today. On the whole everything was in fantastic shape. There was some standing water in the crawl space. We'll need to get someone to look into that, but hopefully it can be addressed relatively easily. I added some pictures to the flickr set that covers some of the rooms I missed the first time through.

Blue

I mentioned earlier that Trent's favorite color is green. Really it is a more a turquoise color, but on the greener side. He refers to the color green as "blue". He used to identify both objects that were green and object that were blue as "blue". More recently I think he has learned that there is a difference. He also appears to able to point to red and yellow objects. I've heard him say "yellow" before, but I've never gotten him to point to something and say "yellow". If I ask him to point to something yellow, he can point something out. He can do the same thing with red.

House on the Eastern Shore

We made an offer on this house earlier today. In the afternoon, the sellers accepted our offer. Here's more pictures.

Trent Goes To School

With Tina's imminent return to work, Trent has begun going to preschool. Here are some pictures from his first day. He's going through an adjustment period. The reports from the teachers are relatively good. Once he gets past being left there in the morning he apparently does reasonably well. Since his birthday is in September, he's one of the oldest children in his class. This will be the case for his whole life given the way that school entry ages are structured. Trent is in the same class as one of my work colleague's son who was also born in September. So, there's at least one friend there for him who is his age.

The Shop

My first responsibility in move preparation was to get the shop ship shape. I began by building a lumber rack. It was based on plans from Wood Magazine It has two unconnected parts. Long narrow pieces of wood span the two pieces by lying across the arms. Large pieces of sheet stock slip into the large slot in the middle. Here are a couple of pictures of the rack installed in the shed with the wood from the shop stored in it [1][2]. Here's the shop all cleaned up.

The Eastern Shore

I haven't posted in a while. That's mostly because I've spent all of my discretionary time preparing to move the household to the Eastern Shore. Tina has successfully located a new job as a hospitalist working at Memorial Hospital at Easton and Dorchester General. Since the commute from Columbia to these locations is over an hour and my commute is also in the same direction, it makes a lot of sense to move. This Wednesday we're going house hunting. I've use Google's my maps application to create a map of our hunt. The green markers are the critical commute locations. The blue dots are potential houses. The red dots are houses that were originally part of our Internet search but which have subsequently been disqualified due to commute times. If you click on the markers you can see a thumbnail of the house and a quick summary of the commute times.

Simponize me!

This website allows you to take a picture of yourself and make yourself into a Simpsons character. Here's me:

Binky

One of Trent's new favorite books is Leslie Patricelli's Binky. Some of existing favorites include Sandra Boynton's titles including But Not the Hippopotamus, Barnyard Dance, and The Going-To-Bed Book. Binky, however, is the first book where I've gotten the sense that Trent understands the plot. It is the 12 page sage a baby questing for a lost binky. I think Trent understands the elements of the story. Perhaps because he can identify with the main character, the motivation, the narrative line, and the cathartic nature of the resolution. I won't spoil it for you by telling whether or not the baby finds the binky.

O, Green and Nine

Trent can identify several letters. His favorite is the letter 'O'. He can pick it out of words. He was, for a while, confused about the difference between the letter 'O' and holes. He seems to have worked that out though.

His favorite color is green. Anytime we let him pick out a shirt to wear from his drawer, he chooses a green shirt. Sometimes, when the green shirts are dirty, he gets upset. He likes to pick books off of bookshelves both at our house at his grandparents. He has favorites that he always chooses first. He likes The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis and a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Both have a greenish turquoise color. His favorite Little People animal is the iguana, which is also a turquoise color.

Trent seems to be able to distinguish numbers from letters. But, all the numbers are nine. I've been trying to teach him to count. I count things for him. Then I ask him to count them too. He can't count things yet. But, he can point to things each in turn and say "Nine!".

Little Boys and the Truck Gene

I have made no conscious effort to place gender stereo types on Trent. OK, that's not entirely true. We do buy him boy-oriented toys. But, certainly of all the toys that we've bought him, I'm certain I've done nothing to create within him a specific love of trucks. I've discussed this phenomena with colleagues at work who have had a similar experience. We agree that we may have seen the joy that trucks bring to our sons and reinforced it by buying them truck toys and truck books. But where that original obsession with trucks comes from and why little girls don't seem to have any similar interest in trucks remains one of those mysteries of life.

One of the joys of parenting in the modern age is the amazing amount of freely available highly specific source material available for entertaining, er instructing, the young ones. Some of Trent's favorite youtube videos feature garbage trucks,strip mining, and excavators. One of the other joys is that while I was searching for videos for Trent, I came across this gem for myself.

Trent's Trike

This weekend Trent got his first tricycle. It's a Radio Flyer. I like it. It has a solid aluminum frame. Required some assembly. If only it had rubber tires instead of plastic. Trent seemed to like it too. Especially the bell.

The Great Library Project

The Great Library Project has actually been complete since sometime last Fall I believe. However, now, there are some pictures. The first is a picture looking toward the outside corner of the house. This section contains all the hardback novels, the reference books, and all of Tina and my text books. The second picture is looking toward the opposite corner into the house. This section is made up of less deep shelves that house all the paperback novels.

The Great Library Project involved 17 sheets of plywood, six coats of finish, and about two weeks of free time all told. I learned many things building the library. If I were to do it again, I think I would avoid using any water-based finish. It's just too difficult to get a hard enough finish. With the water-based finishes I'm always worried about books sticking in the paint. The library shelves all have coats of water-based lacquer as a top coat. That hopefully takes care of the sticking problem. But all in all, given the effort that goes in to something like this, the added effort of an oil-based finish is probably worth it.

Trent At The Playground

The flickr set is here.

Tina's Graduation

Just got back from Tina's graduation. She's completed her nephrology fellowship. That represents the culmination of nine years of post graduate education and training. That puts her at thirteen total years, which beats the paltry eleven years I put in getting my Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Congratulations to Tina! All that's left to do now (you may have thought there was nothing left, but you would have been wrong) is take the board certification test in nephrology. It is a big long test that's only given once a year. No pressure though. If you don't pass, you can always take it again the following year.

Trip to the Petting Zoo

The flickr set is here.

Vacation 2007

Tina and I are in our second week of vacation. Tina had two weeks of vacation left at her job, but her job ends June 30th, so she took off her last two weeks at work. Trent was sick for most of the first week of our vacation. He came down with some sort of viral fever on Friday leading into the vacation. What timing!

The fever lasted until Monday and tailed off into some diarrhea. Tina caught a little of it and had to postpone her Georgetown interview until the end of the week. So, the first week of the vacation was mostly about Trent being sick and worrying about the interview which should have been over early in the week.

We were hoping to take Trent on his first trip to the zoo. The weather that first week was great. Into the second week, the weather turned hot which made the zoo seem like a difficult option. So, since many of Tina's future employment options may require a move, we've been focusing one some long neglected household tasks. We've made some donations to Goodwill and made a trip to the dump. We've worked on some general cleaning up and organizational tasks. All things that would be good if we had to put the house on the market and also good if we stayed.

Tomorrow, we're going to have our good friend Kathy watch Trent for most of the day and Tina and I are going to spend a rare day together doing something. Maybe seeing a movie and getting lunch at a restaurant. It's going to be very exciting!

xkcd

I just read some of a new comic called xkcd. Cory Doctorow posted about it on Boing Boing. Here are a few favorites that I ran across. [1][2][3][4][5]

Trent's Words

Trent can say several words now. He says "Mommy" quite clearly and unambiguously. He also pronounces "Bye" correctly and uses it in the right situations. He says "Da" or "DaDa", but not as well as "Mommy". He has other words that he doesn't pronounce correctly, but that he does use consistently to refer to things. He uses "Ba" for his bottle. He says something I don't know how to spell that means kitty. He uses several other sounds for several other things. Tina things he has about a dozen words total.

The Quest for a Wii

After many weeks of polling various stores, Tina and I finally managed to acquire a Nintendo Wii. It's the latest console game system from Nintendo. It was designed by Nintendo to have appeal beyond the typical gaming market. It has a new controller that has many revolutionary features. The controller allows the user to aim a cursor on the screen by pointing. The controller has accelerometers and level sensors. It's really pretty neat. The systems comes with Wii Sports. It includes simulations of bowling, golf, baseball, boxing, and tennis. The neat thing about the game is that playing the game involves making the actual motions associated with real sport. They're all games that you play standing up. When you bowl, you bring you arm back and swing it through in a real bowling motion. When you golf you swing the controller like a golf club. It's really a very neat system. In addition, we've also been playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Smooth Moves is a game made up of over 200 very small micro-games. The idea is that players are presented with very simple puzzles to solve and only a few seconds to solve each one. Last, but not least, is Legend of Zelda. I've never played a Zelda game before. So far it's been a lot of fun. It's an interesting cross between Ultima and a Sierra Online game.

Superhero Dating

In honor of Valentines Day, digg has link to an online quiz that matches you to your idea superhero mate. I had no idea what to expect from my results. Tied for first place were Psylocke and Jean Grey. Lois Lane was second place. I've certainly never thought of myself as a Lois Lane kind of guy, though I'm not familiar with the actual comic character, only the various TV and movie portrayals. [Update 2/17/07] Tina took the test as well. Her results indicates that her ideal superhero mate is Beast with Nightwing a few percentage points behind.