Here you see Sydney drawing on my Cintiq, which is a monitor you can draw on directly. (Much better than using a mouse or even a tablet to draw). Sydney’s concentration can get very intense when she draws.

The program she’s using is TuxPaint, by far the best of several children’s drawing programs I tried out. (And it’s free!) I’m not sure if Sydney’s learning anything about drawing, but she’s definitely learning to use computers; I’ve been really impressed with how much she’s learned about how to navigate TuxPaint’s option menus.

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Still sick (although mostly better). Also, basement flooded. Thousands of dollars of damages. Contractors, contractors, contractors. Insurance. Not a good week, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyhow, in that context, I hope folks will understand how baby blogging might end up being a day late. :-)

This isn’t a great photo of Sydney, but what I love about it is all the iconography that might be meaningful on its own — the space rifle¹, the ghost doll, the Flintstones-style dress, the red fingernails — but which, placed together, defies any attempt to find a coherent meaning.

Gotta love a big pen. Remember when she was bald?

1. Sydney likes to fire the zap gun at adults; if the adult pretends to die in agony, Sydney finds that especially hysterical. (back)

Not much to say, really, except: Why aren’t I having this much fun? Seriously, to enjoy myself this much I pretty much have to take drugs.

Maddox is a super fun baby to watch and play with because she just plain enjoys herself so much.

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Boy, I’m sure milking Sydney’s third birthday for a lot of Baby Blogging posts… Actually, Sydney and Maddox are currently out-of-state (visiting grandparents for the holidays), so I’m currently very toddler-deprived.

Anyhow, on to the cute pics.

Here is Maddox on the merry-go-round at Chuckee Cheese. Did Maddox enjoy it? I dunno. I said “hey, let’s put Maddox on the horsey, that’ll be a cute picture,” and we did, and it was. Maddox grinned and enjoyed it, but Maddox pretty much grins and enjoys all of existence; her basically happy nature is, I think, her most striking personality trait. She’d have grinned just as much if we had plopped her down in a dusty corner with an empty coke bottle to play with.

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Opening the purple butterfly boots sent by a set of grandparents. Her majesty is pleased!

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More photos below the fold!

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This photo Kim Sara took of Maddox is so cute it makes my eyeballs want to explode with glee.

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Halloween… a time for costumes and candy. Also a time for going outside in freezing wind and tramping from door to door like oddly-dressed beggars. Every time a car passed us Sydney pretended to be scared, screaming “monster!” and clutching me or her Dad hard. But it was fun.

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Sydney politely shakes hands / tentacles with the dark lord.

But then they get less formal. Awwww.

Just hangin’ out and looking cool. I love this black turtleneck, it makes her look like a beatnik.

Sydney tries on Bean’s bicycle helmet. Safety first!

Then she tries on Jake’s cap. I think the cap is cuter than the bike helmet, but Sydney much prefers the helmet, and runs around in it for several minutes telling everyone that she’s looking for a bike to ride.

Yesterday was Maddox’s first birthday. And also Kim’s (aka Mommy’s) birthday (but not her first). (Today, incidentally, is my nephew Silas’ birthday).

Anyhow, it was party time! Lots more pics below the fold.

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Sydney’s a jock, that’s all there is to it. She loves running, she loves climbing, she loves lifting big things, she loves swings. Here, she hangs out under my bunk bed.

I love her expression in this photo.

Meet Pirate Janey. Janey is manufactured by Fisher-Price, and she comes in a little set with a turtle, a raft, and a treasure chest. Fisher-Price didn’t name her Janey; I suggested to Sydney that she could be named Pirate Jenny (after the classic Kurt Weill song), but Sydney either misheard or mispronounced, and so the pirate became Pirate Janey.

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You’ve seen Maddox before… you’ve seen Maddox get poked and prodded.

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One thing I really enjoy about Sydney getting older is her growing ability to play “let’s pretend.”

So the other week Sydney was browsing through the DVD rack while I was watching her and her uber-geek Dad was concentrating intently on his computer screen the next room over. Usually when Sydney gets into the DVD rack, it’s not because she’s going to watch anything; she enjoys the shelving and unshelving, and stacking DVD cases like blocks. But in this case she pulled a DVD out, held it up to me, and said “watch?”

I looked at the DVD she had chosen - it was a subtitled Japanese movie, Godzilla 2000. “You really want to watch Godzilla?,” I asked. “Godzilla…” said Sydney, in the slightly hesitant tone she uses when she’s learning a brand-new word. “Godzilla!” barked Matt from the next room. “You want to watch Godzilla! Great! Here!” he said, quickly grabbing the DVD and shoving it into the player. He sounded so proud.

There’s a lot of boring exposition at the start of the movie, so we skipped to a scene where a photographer, her driver and the driver’s daughter are in a SUV when they have to drive away very fast to avoid being stomped into protagonist paste by Godzilla’s giant feet. “Drive faster!,” the daughter character yelled, “drive faster!” Sydney watched the whole rest of the movie, making comments like “Godzilla scary” when Godzilla breathed radiation and “poor Godzilla” when another monster was beating up on Godzilla. Then Sydney asked to watch it again. She watched that movie¹ once or twice a day for the next week.

Flash forward a week - Matt and Kim, with Sydney and Maddox in their car seats, are driving to the vegetable co-op. Suddenly Sydney yells “look out!” Matt says “what is it?” Sydney pointed out the window and yelled “Godzilla! Drive faster! Drive faster!” The rest of that drive (and several other drives after) was enlivened by more Godzilla sightings.

Anyhow, below the fold are a few recent photos of Sydney and Maddox, taken at Kip’s birthday party.
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1. Keep in mind, for Sydney, “watching” a movie often entails playing in the same room where the TV is on and only looking up during the exciting scenes. (back)

Photo by Bean.

This is another one of my niece Jemma from my recent New York trip. I didn’t even ask her to pose there - Jemma just walked over to the sofa and flopped right into the good light beams, as I desperately scrambled for my camera. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

Sorry, no time for more photos today - but I’ll probably post more pictures of my niece and nephew in this particular light-saturated spot sometime in the future. Next week, though, watch out for the triumphant return of Sydney!

Time to start posting pictures from my recent trip to New York. I have pictures from dinner with various bloggers and blog-commenters, but first things first: If it’s Monday, it must be baby blogging time.

Instead of Sydney and Maddox, this week we have my sister Allison’s kids, Silas and Jemma. (Although he hasn’t been seen here as often as Sydney and Maddox, Silas was the star of the very first baby blogging post I ever did — October 16, 2002, when he was born. My goodness, I’ve been blogging a really long time.)

It was about a thousand degrees outside, so of course we went to a farmer’s market - no kidding, this is the sort of thing my relatives do for entertainment. It wasn’t just my sister Allie - my brother-in-law Tim, my parents, my aunt and uncle Myra and Tom - they were all like, “Yay! A chance to sweat while looking at vegetables in stalls - how cool is that?” What weirdos I’m related to. Why can’t they do something normal with their free time? You know, like hanging out in comic book stores, or writing a blog for four years. Stuff like that.

Anyway, there was a little jazz band there, and Silas and his mom (my sister) got to dancing. This is why I love digital cameras - my style of photography is to point the camera in what I hope is the right direction and then hit the shutter button as many times as I can. I took about 40 pictures of Silas and Allison dancing, and this is my favorite one.

More pics below the fold.
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This is the last of the three-part “Amp takes a lot of photos in a grocery story” series of baby bloggings. (Parts one and two are also available).

Sydney and Maddox, playing in the grocery story. You may think that Maddox is wearing a wig, but actually she’s just strapped to the chest of her filthy long-haired commie hippie daddy. (Hi Matt!)
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As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m on vacation in New York right now. What I haven’t mentioned is that Sydney and Maddox are also on vacation, visiting their grandparents in Minnesota Maine Michigan.

So I’m not even going to see Sydney or Maddox for another couple of weeks. In the meanwhile, to tide you over, here’s an extremely cute photo of Maddox that Sally, Maddox’s grandma, kindly emailed to me.

(When I get back home, I’ll print a couple of the photos I snapped of my adorable niece and nephew, as well.)

Taking Sydney to the grocery store can be a challenge, because she really hates being put into the cart. (Sydney hates anything that straps her down and keeps her in place).
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