Take Me Out by Mark, May 15, 2011

We enjoyed some baseball games when we were in Texas, so it was nice when we moved here and noticed that we lived just a few miles away from a minor league stadium. We planned to attend a game sometime, and found a good reason to go early in the season. Some of the youth from church are in their high school's marching band, which provides manpower for a concession stand once a month as a fundraiser. We found out which side of the stadium they were working and made plans to go to the game.

Elena didn't know much about baseball before the game, but she quickly figured out the most important parts. She may not know why the runners start running when there's a three and two count with two outs, but she does know where to get nachos from. Her excellent eyesight identified the kids' play area, complete with bouncy house and carousel, from all the way across the field. Before the night was over, we made a trip to that part of the stadium so she could ride a horsey.

Aside from that, her favorite element of the game was Louie, the big green monster that fulfills the role of team mascot. Every few minutes she asked "where's Louie?" and we would have to look around until we spotted him--on the roof of the dugout, in the press box, or just hanging around the stands getting his picture taken with the fans. While we were walking over to the play area, all of a sudden we saw him right in front of us. We asked Elena if she wanted to say hi or give Louie a hug, but he was just too big in person and she looked positively scared, not just timid (sort of like this ). We let it go, but as soon as we were a safe distance away, she climbed back on the Louie bandwagon.

We left just before the seventh-inning stretch. It was Saturday, which means there were fireworks planned for after the game, but we just couldn't stretch it. We needed to get a milkshake and put Elena to bed. It's a good thing we left when we did; the game went into extra innings and didn't end until it was too late for the fireworks display.

Elena has strong memories of the outing. Last night she couldn't get to sleep, so I was rocking her and singing. She started to talk about Louie, and I pulled up some pictures of him on my iPod. After we looked at them for a little while, she crawled right into bed and fell asleep.

Never Too Early by Mark, May 08, 2011

We were on the road last week, and spent some time walking around a college campus. Is Elena going to be a Princeton Tiger? She takes particular pleasure in saying the name of the state we visited--for some reason, the words New Jersey just roll off her tongue.

Controlled Release by Mark, May 07, 2011

As Jenny enters the third trimester of pregnancy, we're getting more questions about Moonbeam's real name. We have already told a few people, either by accident or because they were unlikely to leak the information to a wider audience. We wanted to gauge their reaction, which has been positive, but we take that with a grain of salt, because the people we've told would probably support us under any circumstances.

Elena's name was announced in our year in review DVD the Christmas before she was born. This time, we're going to let Elena do the honors of announcing her baby brother's name. We've spent significant time teaching her the name and preparing her to use it as an answer to questions. But it wasn't until yesterday, when she and Jenny were having a conversation about baby brother, that she volunteered his name without being prompted.

Which means that, just in time for Mother's Day, she's ready for the big stage. Give us a call and you can speak with Elena. Ask something along the lines of "What's your baby brother's name?" and see what she says. Even if she says the name, there will still be some guess work to decipher the name from her pronunciation. We can confirm correct guesses, but won't give any additional hints.

Good Manners by Mark, May 04, 2011

A common mathematical phrase is necessary and sufficient , for example: having exactly three sides is a necessary and sufficient condition for a polygon to be a triangle. Sometimes you see the terms switched up, as in: having four sides is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a polygon to be a square--because every square has four sides, but there are lots of other shapes, e.g. rhombuses, kites, parallelograms, and rectangles, that have four sides and are not squares.

As parents, I think that sometimes we take too much credit, because we often think that there is a strict causal relationship between the conditions we create for our children and the resulting outcomes. In other words, we think that we've created necessary and sufficient conditions, when most of the time we have only done the bare minimum of providing some (but not all) of what's necessary.

Elena has started to be independently polite. After more than a year of instructing her to say "please" and "thank you," she seems to understand their proper usage and will often say them on her own. We get more cute thank yous than pleases, but she still responds quickly when we need to prompt her to say please. If we take too long to respond to a request, she has started to catch on to the power of the whiny, manipulative please. I suppose that's somewhat unavoidable.

Two other niceties, "sorry" and "you're welcome" have also entered into Elena's vocabulary. We only occasionally instruct her to say sorry, such as when she's cuddling with Jenny and elbows her (and Moonbeam) in the stomach. However, Jenny and I say "I'm sorry" a lot, maybe too much, and Elena now says sorry a lot. She says sorry when she feels sad, even if it wasn't her fault at all. We're only starting to work on "you're welcome," but she's already starting to use the term properly.

I have one contrived training situation in which it's very hard to get Elena to be polite. She's very possessive of her favorite blanket, and it's almost always nearby. When I'm playing with her--these days she likes wrestling (aka wrasslin')--she leaves it lying around, and sometimes I pick it up. This instantly causes her to start shouting "MY BLANKEY, MY BLANKEY!" and not want to do anything until I release the blanket to her control. At that moment, she isn't receptive to my suggestion that if she'll just say "please," I'll be happy to give it back to her.

Jenny thinks that I shouldn't employ this tactic, because it's too close to the heart--we wouldn't let other kids play with the favorite blanket. I think that in this controlled environment, it's a good way to teach her how to share. I always say that I know the blanket belongs to her, and I'll give it back, but it's important to be polite. She has a baby brother on the way, and sharing will be more important when he comes around than it is now. I'm always open to suggestions other than this one, especially since Jenny thinks it's too much.

Rowing Road Trip by Mark, April 30, 2011

After our first regatta day of the spring, we had another rowing event the following week. This time we headed out on a longer road trip, to the University of Virginia, to watch our friends from Texas take on some of the top teams in the country. There was a second purpose for our trip--I left my single scull in Texas when we left, but the team made room for it on their boat trailer and brought it out to Virginia. We told Elena that we were going to watch rowing and pick up daddy's boat, but she put that together with some of her own thoughts and came out with a somewhat different idea. I'll get back to that a little bit later.

Before the trip I had to figure out a way to transport my boat out of there and back here. Elena and I went to the hardware store to pick up a couple of two by fours and some screws, which was all I needed to build a boat rack. I've built one before, so I had a clear plan in my mind and was able to put it together in just one evening of work. When I told Elena what it was for, she didn't quite understand the last word, and so she kept wondering how I was going to build a boat out of the materials at hand. Jenny had some doubts about the feasibility of my design; she wasn't sure that the boat would stay on while we were driving on the highway. She said that she believed and trusted me, but I could tell she still had doubts and there wasn't any way to convince her other than a successful trip.

Due to the threat of inclement weather the first round of races was moved from Saturday morning to Friday evening, and even though we tried our best to get there early, we only made it in time for some of the races. It was then that Elena's true intentions became clear. She made a beeline for the beach, where all the boats were stored and next to which the rowers were doing wet launches and landings. At this point, it became clear that she really intended to take action on what she had been asking about all day long: "Daddy, I row boat?" When boats landed, she was ready to wade out and hop in. I guess she had her fill of watching the previous week, and now was ready to participate.

Jenny told me that I had to figure out a way for her at least to sit in a boat the following day, even though it wouldn't be out on the water. I had some ideas and plans in place, but they never came to fruition because the ongoing threat of severe storms postponed racing until the evening, and we had to leave in the early afternoon. It is still a top priority for us to get Elena out on the water, although probably not in a rowing shell. On the next warm Saturday we need to find a nearby canoe rental and go out in something that feels a little safer than a racing boat.

The postponed races did give us a chance to spend quality time with Coach Caroline and Coach Kelly. As Elena hadn't been with us when we last saw them, they were happy to see her proudly wearing her burnt orange. We found a cute brunch place in historic downtown Charlottesville partway down a pedestrian-only street that the GPS told us to drive on. We had a nice time catching up, hearing all the news, talking about Texas, their team and how everything was going.

After that, we went back to the race venue to pick up the boat. Elena again thought that she would have a chance to row, but we managed to distract her with the straps used to hold the boats down. She twirled them like ribbons while I used others to securely fasten the boat to the rack. Jenny tried not to think too much about her ongoing worries that the winds would pull the boat off and send it flying into traffic at an inopportune moment.

Despite the bad weather, our drive back was uneventful. We avoided most of the rain. Our place doesn't have enough space, so we delivered the boat to my parents' house, pulling up just as my father (who was on his own that weekend) took dinner out of the oven. He abandoned the dinner and helped me find a place to store the boat--the garage was too small, so we hung it under the deck, where it has room to stick out a little bit. I need to find a more permanent location for it, but for now I'm thankful that they are willing to store it.

After taking care of the boat, Jenny and I made a new dinner for everyone while he had some quality playtime with Elena. She is more boisterous when playing with him than at almost any other time, and that's one of the reasons she loves him so much, because she knows he's willing to wrestle. After so long in the car, it was good for her to be active. It tired her out for our drive home and helped her to be ready for bed when we finally made it back to our house, with our mission accomplished.

Happy Easter! by Mark, April 24, 2011

This year Elena got into Easter, especially the eggs. Festivities started with yesterday's community Easter Egg Hunt. Even though the website said it had been cancelled because of soggy fields, we walked over to the location and found that they weren't letting the eggs go to waste--the organizers were just hiding them in a much smaller area. We had a good time finding some, but also hid a few.

In the afternoon we decorated boiled eggs. This may be the first time in our marriage that Jenny and I have done this, so I suppose we have Elena to thank for that. I worked with her on most of the crayons and dyeing, while Jenny was the primary decoupage artist. Elena really liked the green shapes, but eventually started to branch out into other colors as well.

This morning a trail of eggs led to her basket, but she was more interested in finding eggs. The Easter bunny hid them all over the front room, high and low, out in the open and tucked away in corners. Elena found many of them without too much help, but eventually we gave her hints. Most amusing was when Jenny wanted her to find the one that was between her baby dolls in their bed. Jenny said "Elena, have you said good morning to your babies?" Elena responded by pulling up her shirt and rubbing her tummy, saying good morning to the baby in her tummy.

Later in the afternoon, just as Elena woke up from her nap, Grandpa arrived to be our dinner guest. Grandma is away visiting family members in Utah, so Grandpa needed some company. He always does a good job playing with Elena, and today was no exception--before and after dinner, they tired each other out. Based on the amount of leftovers we have now, I think we could have handled a few more guests! All in all, it was a very pleasant Easter holiday.

Rowing Season by Mark, April 20, 2011

For several weeks Elena's favorite bedtime song was Row, Row, Row Your Boat , which warmed my heart. It was a great choice for this time of year, when the college teams leave the erg rooms of winter training for the variable weather and cold water. They have to; the racing season comes suddenly and moves quickly. It isn't like back in Texas, where they can row as much as they want, whenever they want. But the racing seasons are the same--one of Elena's first outdoor events was a March regatta two years ago, and she showed off her walking skills at regattas last spring.

In keeping with that tradition, a couple of weeks ago we found ourselves at Washington Harbour * along the Potomac waterfront for some early season racing. Gran Ann joined us for the excursion. A funny thing happened just as we got to the water's edge: Jenny handed me part of a Nutri-Grain bar to pass along to Elena, but as soon as I passed it along Elena threw it into the water for the ducks. Elena didn't get any more of the snack, but I took the blame for allowing it to happen.

Before long we saw the boats coming under the bridge, angling across the river to the finish line near us. There were lots of other things, like ducks and water taxis, competing for Elena's attention, and rowing viewed at a distance loses some of its intensity and urgency, but she did spend some time watching them. Once I started cheering in support of the teams, she joined in. During one race I shouted out "Go Big Red!" for Cornell. In the next race Elena shouted "Go Big Red!" even though they didn't have a boat in the race.

I wanted to watch the last race of the day, between international crews from Brock and Oxford, but there was a long stretch before that with no races that had any particular interest for us. Instead of staying at the waterfront, we decided to walk around the nearby streets of Georgetown. Although she's taken many trips to DC over the years, my mother had never been there, so it was fun for all of us to explore the empty canal paths and busy streets.

Jenny had an ulterior motive--she wanted to see the home of DC Cupcakes and get some treats. When we got close, we saw that the line was more than a block long, and overheard some locals talking about how funny it was that those weren't even the best cupcakes in the neighborhood. We followed their recommendation to head over to Baked & Wired . Although it had a line too, it wasn't nearly as long and the cupcakes were delicious.

We made it back just in time to eat our cupcakes and watch the Brock-Oxford competition, which was certainly the race of the day. There was a monitor hooked up to a live video feed so we could see the first half. Brock blazed out to an early lead, with a maximum advantage of a length at the halfway mark. But then the boys from England dug in and started to reduce the gap with every stroke. They may not have been in the lead for any stroke of the race except the last one, but Oxford pushed their bowball across the line first.

By then it was late in the afternoon and Elena hadn't napped at all; she was probably more tired than the rowers at the end of a great race. Luckily, we had a great parking spot, but as soon as we got into the car she started to cry. There was nothing to do but let her wail it out until she fell asleep about fifteen minutes away from home. Once at home, we sat in the car for another half hour--opening the doors usually wakes her. It was a small price to pay for a fun day.

* Washington Harbour was in the news this week because of severe rainstorms that caused flooding on the Potomac. They neglected to put the flood wall in place, and as a result many of the businesses on the ground floor of the development experienced significant damage .

Youngest Siblings by Mark, April 17, 2011

There have been complaints that my youngest siblings were not receiving equal coverage. I offer these pictures as an apology.

Digital Preservation by Mark, April 12, 2011

My parents live in a memory palace. Staying with them, even for a day or two like I did last week, causes questions about childhood to bubble to the top of my mind. To help with their personal recollections in answering my questions they have photos and videos that add hard evidence to memory. I have brothers and sisters who want to see these things too, but live far away. Jenny and I are embarking on a project of digital preservation for us, for them, for other family members, and for our children.

I completed the setup phase of the project while Jenny and Elena were away. We're now equipped to digitize still images, cassette tapes, and VHS tapes--in short, the prevailing media formats of my childhood. For the most part, hardware configuration was easy. We already had a flatbed scanner that hooks directly into the computer. I recently acquired a high quality tape deck with line outs that connects directly into the analog audio input of the computer. Video was somewhat more complicated, but the EyeTV Hybrid tuner we have connected to the computer also has an analog video input--just what we needed for our still-working VCR.

I already had all the necessary software. The newest version of our operating system has image capture software that works well with the scanner and even detects multiple prints at once, automatically aligns them, and corrects the colors in faded images. For cassettes I use Audio Hijack Pro , which has helpful features like automatic track splitting. I find that a hybrid approach works best for video, with EyeTV for capture and Handbrake for compression.

Although digital media has strong selling points, it carries its own risks which often show up in catastrophic ways. We've been bitten by the data loss bug in the past, which is what forced the postponement of this project. Some time ago, Jenny had started to scan scrapbooks when our hard drive crashed. We weren't backing things up at the time, so while the damage was not irreparable, it did force repeated effort. This time around, we wanted to have a comprehensive strategy in place.

I've come up with a multi-tiered plan that should cover us for a wide variety of loss circumstances. Now I just need to implement it. It starts with automatic incremental backups using Time Machine, and occasional complete backups with SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner . On top of that, I'm planning to use a cloud backup service, probably CrashPlan --I don't know whether I want to do full backups using this method, or only a subset of our more important files.

The third level is for a small amount of critical, static data including scanned scrapbooks, favorite photos, and important files that we plan to copy to at least two forms of removable media, including DVDs, USB thumb drives, and other solid state media. We'll keep at least one copy with our emergency kit.

Now that the plan is in place, I need to implement it. We've already started digitizing home movies, including a scenes from Jenny's kindergarten class and this classic from my father's dissertation research.

Despite my best efforts to convert to stable formats and back them up well, I worry about the lifetime of these efforts. When Elena is my age, will PDF, JPEG, and MP4 still be around? How many times will I have to roll the files from one hard drive to another? Do I trust the cloud? I hope that resolutions to these questions become clear with time. I shouldn't hold my hopes too high--there are lessons to be learned from tales of the Fountain of Youth and Tower of Babel.

Clues and Challenges by Mark, April 07, 2011

I've been kicking an idea around for a while, and now it's ready for a wider audience. I'd like to put on a one day competition modeled after the Amazing Race . It won't be until sometime this fall, after Moonbeam comes. At first I thought about staging it around Thanksgiving, as a way of celebrating my sister's birthday, but upon further reflection it might be better to pull it forward and hope to catch the last of the warm weather.

This won't be just a scavenger hunt--it will be a mixture of clue hunting and challenges, mixing in as much local culture and history as possible. I'll need a good supporting staff to help produce it, and I don't think we can handle more than about eight teams. It should last one full day, perhaps eight to ten hours. And unless teams want to film themselves, I'm afraid that most of the race will not be televised.

So if you're interested, and will be in the greater Baltimore/Washington DC metro area this October and November, let me know. Leave a comment, send an email, contact me on facebook, or give me a call.

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