The ABC song, now with Banana

It is a little muddled in the middle, but all the elements are there.

Quite a do.

Erin is very sensitive about her hair. Her irrepressible locks approach the sacred; consequently she rarely allows us to brush it or style it (much less wash it. We do that about every 2 weeks). So she surprised us last week by wanting pig tails. Every day.

Alas, the newfound love of styling was short lived, and it's back to red afro once again.

Lady Godiva, Erin Style.

Homeowners

I just got a call from our real estate agent: it's official. We're homeowners again.



We get the keys on Friday, then we'll spend the next few weeks getting the house ready and getting or crap organized. We'll be fully moved in by mid-October.

The name game

A great resource for baby names is the Social Security Administration. They keep detailed records on the most common 1000 names for the last 35 years or so, and have records for the most common names going back about 100 years. Great if you're curious minded, really interesting if you're trying to find a good name for a kid.

Here were some interesting girl names from 2008, and their ranking.

164: Erin
429: Lyric
575: Aria
583: Amani (also Armani for boy. Just thought it was strange to see
such similar names side-by-side.)
674: Monserrat
791: Precious
893: Deja
927: Ashleigh
937: Tiara
939: Princess

Hip Hop

Pre-School!

Erin had her first day at her new preschool today. She was dressed in fancy new back-to-school clothes (thanks, Grammie) and a new lunchbox (or purse, depending on your perspective) selected by Erin herself.



Here she is testing out the playground:



It was a bit of a rough start, but she had a great day including a riveting round of Itys Bitsy spider, a watercolor painting session, and of course, lots of playground play.

No Throwing Balls in the House, Kids!

Gloves

"Happy Days"

Last week Dr. A and I went to Cal Shakes to see a play that was too smart for us: Happy Days by Samuel Beckett. Acting, direction, environment were excellent. Play itself, not so good. The theater is outdoors, and we picnicked there beforehand.

The play is essentially a well-delivered 90-minute monologue given by a woman buried up to her waist (and then her neck) in a 20-foot high pile of dirt.

I guess I'm just not smart enough, Beckett -- is that what you want me to say!? Stupid Nobel laureates. Phttffffttt!!!

Girl!

So the ultrasound went smoothly -- all the limbs and such were of the right number and in the right places. I had assumed that the tech would let us know the gender right when he figured it out. However, after the ultrasound, the tech left the room to get the guy who was going to do the amnio. When the tech returned, we had this little exchange:

Me: "Um, sooo, could you determine the gender?"
Lame-o ultrasound tech: "Oh, it was a girl." (spoken as "It was obvious to the trained eye. Couldn't you tell?" )
Me: "..."

Good news: everything checked out OK as far as they could tell. The actual amnio took only about 90 seconds. The needle was much smaller than we thought.

Pooping Puzzle Pieces

Parents learn some from books, some from friends, but most is hands-on experimentation.

For your pleasure, McMiller Productions presents a short feature on how parenting is going so far.



I'm expecting the Father of the Year award to be sent from the American Academy of Pediatrics any day now.

The video is grainy due to the fact that I had to edit the hell out of the video because the original image was way too dark to see anything.