The Move Is Done

I don't know what's worse: the stress of moving yourself or the stress of wondering if your mover is going to screw you. Compared to horror stories on the internet we got off light; one of the doors in the old place had the paint scratched to shit ("See? I told you I could get your couch through the door without taking it off its hinges.") and the mover more or less extorted us for money on this end ("Well, I dunno if my truck can make it around this tight turn. It'll be a risk, and if we get stuck it'll cost a lot of money, but tell you what, for $200 we'll give it a shot, and that way you won't have to pay the $780 for the shuttle.") I talked him down to $150. Woo. Bill said, "I can't believe you paid him! You're part of the problem!" Well, I didn't want to get into an adversarial relationship with the guy who had ALL OUR STUFF. I was pretty sure if I called him on it, or called my rep at Allied it would just piss the guy off and then he'd "accidentally" damage all our crap. End result was, as far as we can tell, none of our stuff is lost, and it looks like we've gotten away with under $100 worth of damaged stuff. The way I figure it, the movers just prenegotiated themselves a nice tip, and then did a pretty good job earning it.

Now we just have to unpack.

View From Our House

 
This is the view from the house we just moved into. An "across the water view", Bill calls it. We liked it so much we don't mind that the interior of the house is totally seventies.
In fact, after living there for a day, I've got to say, the seventies feel is actually nostalgic and heartwarming; it reminds me of visiting friends' houses as a kid.
The whole place feels unreal; going from my condo located between a picturesque airport, refinery, and sewage treatment plant, suddenly being surrounded by this - this place looks like one of the "utopia planet" matte paintings from Star Trek or some other science fiction tv show. And looking across the street just looks Brady Bunch or something.
So. So pretty. But so cold! We went for a walk this morning and our ears froze off. A storm blew by, dropped gallons of water on us - right at the moment the trucking company came by with our cars - and then cleared up five minutes later.
Rather than wait for our furniture to arrive (T minus 4 days, still) we just went and bought a mattress, one of these "memory foam" things. Felt really good in the store - we did the "fifteen minute test" that Consumer Reports recommended - but had trouble sleeping. Maybe it was because Sofi was kicking me in the head, maybe it was because we left a light on for her, maybe it was because it's just too darn quiet - used to sleeping next to an airport! And then in the morning achey as all hell. And no coffee - the coffee maker is en route. And from the time I woke up (at 6) and now, when I'm finally drinking my latte (5 PM), it was one thing after another - tried walking to the coffee shop but Sofi got too upset and we retreated; Cathy needed to take a shower; Sofi needed milk; the trucking company said they were going to arrive in fortyfive minutes; had to ferry both cars from the freeway exit to our place; by this time it was Sofi's nap time; she napped for three hours, some kind of record! And finally, here we are.
One last thing: Seattle and Bellevue are a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Fortunately, all the streets are named after famous numbers, otherwise I might get really lost. 

Blocks

Sofi has a toy where you slide blocks of different shapes into a box with holes of different shapes - you're supposed to match the blocks with the holes. It used to be the only ones she could get in where the cylinders - because it didn't matter which orientation you tried to stuff them through the holes.
Yesterday I was watching her play with it and she clearly Got It - I'm not sure when she figured it out, but now she knows which block goes through which hole, and if she has trouble getting the orientation right, she'll pull back, adjust her grip, and then try again.
I suppose non-parents think, "Yeah, great Jamie, she can put blocks in holes." There's something about seeing your baby do something - anything for the first time that's just so awesome.

History of Game Time

The latest issue of WIRED (still no idea how we ended up with a subscription to this, but now it's provided meat for two blog posts - maybe we should keep the subscription...) has a cool little "Brief History of Game Time" chart. Now, reading the chart, you notice something interesting. Since D&D came out in 1973, a groundbreaking worth-mentioning game came out almost every year--and some years got two or three great games--up until 2002 gave us America's Army. And since then, nothing but new hardware. That's right, America's Army was the last, great innovative game. Before that it was Halo. Makes it look like Greg Costikyan's right and innovation is dead.
On closer inspection, it's just an off-the-cuff chart that someone threw together. World of Warcraft deserved to make the list. If Halo gets to make the cut why not WoW? And where's Nintendogs? The original GTA makes the list with GTA3's artwork, but it's the N64 Zelda that was considered the groundbreaking Zelda?
Out of curiosity, which designer wins? Richard Garriot and Will Wright have two entries each. The winner is Shigeru Miyamoto with Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda. Unless you'd give it to Carmack for Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake - he doesn't bill himself a designer but I'd argue that he's pretty much the guy.

Came Across This

An article on attention, which should be of value to you, since if you're reading this you're probably one of those people who scatter their attention too widely (or you're a good friend and I love you for it.)

http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay51.htm

Ironic that the only reason I came across this article is because I do the exact thing it warns against…I was talking to Cathy on the phone while browsing the web.

If I was already the man-of-undivided-attention, I may never have come across it. But if I was the man-of-undivided-attention, I wouldn’t have needed to come across it.

I think it’s very important. To say it was like icewater on my spine would be an exaggeration, but I definitely felt *something*. I’ve been living my life like it’s *The Sims* - watching TV, eating dinner, and talking to Cathy at the same time in order to optimize my happiness - but maybe he's right, maybe that really is suboptimal. Instead of extracting full value from any of those interactions I’m extracting a shallow value from each.

This essay deserves more attention. Pun intended.

Mmm...salsa

Sofi learned how to dip chips in salsa just now. She looks so cute; she concentrates/focuses so hard on dipping the chip, and then she puts the chip into her mouth and gets a sort of faraway look in her eyes...
Blue corn chips and mango salsa, btw.

Random Stuff

Seems like Sofi's starting to be social...in fits and starts...a few weeks ago, she was going up to strangers and handing them her stuffed animals - but that only lasted a day, and she snapped back to being fearful of strangers the next day. But at the playground recently, we rode the spinny thing with some girls, and Sofi crawled over to one of the other girls and touched her shoe. Progress.

At the same park with the playground, I showed her how "pill bugs" or whatever-you-call-them roll up in a ball when you touch them. She immediately picked it up and walked off with it - "No!" we cried, afraid she would eat it or crush it or something. But we managed to pry the pillbug from her fingers and save its life.

Brush Teeth

We weren't sure how we were going to brush Sofi's teeth - she pulled away and resisted whenever we got a toothbrush close to her face.
Just handing her a toothbrush seems to work, though - she likes sucking on the bristly end. That's good enough, right? I mean, she's going to lose the teeth anyway.

Whoops

So we took Sofi to McDonald's today, and were peeling the fried stuff off the chicken and giving it to her. She loved it; ate a lot. And drank a lot of milk. And threw up. A lot. Of undigested chicken and milk. "Never coming here again," Cathy said. Sofi seemed unfazed by the vomiting; then I bumped her head when putting her in the car. That upset her. I don't know what happened - I've put her in the car many, many times without bumping her head...so I've been feeling guilty all evening.
Side note - we discovered that dipping the baked apple pie into the sunday makes for instant apple pie a la mode. A taste treat. Too bad we're never going back there.

The word for the day is...

"Smart". Whenever Sofi does something smart, we say, "You're so smart!" and make the sign for smart. In the elevator just now, she parrotted it back to us. "Marrrrrr." She said. And then later, in the bedroom, I noticed her do it out of the corner of my eye. "Marrrrr."

Sign language waste of time?

Sofi just learned how to say "more" yesterday. She's only been signing "more" for a month or two (guess I never wrote in the blog when she learned that one), so it almost seems like trying to teach her sign language was a waste. But it's not, really...the way she says "more" sounds like "mohhhhh" so it's good that she's got the hand gesture to make it clear.

Big Day

Today:

I sucked some food off my finger this morning with a popping sound - Sofi imitated me, right afterwards.

At lunch, she walked down steps while mom held her hands - then she went down a step by herself using the rail post.

I think something 'clicked' re: mouse usage. Reader Rabbit For Toddler up until today, has been pretty much a TV show for her where we click on stuff and she watches. Today she started using the mouse herself and really getting it - she was able to paint the screen and find the animals and move the shapes. Definitely lacking in fine motor control but she gets the idea!

Good Taste

I made the spaghetti alla carbonara extra garlicky / peppery tonight, and Sofi just ate it right on up and wanted more.

Again, she doesn't get it from me! I was a very picky eater at her age.

Already Fashion Conscious At Fifteen Months

Sofi's having a tantrum right now - she found a moccasin that doesn't fit her anymore and when we put her normal shoes on instead she threw a fit.

Also, sometimes she'll bring me a sweatshirt to put on her. And then she'll change her mind and bring me a different sweatshirt.

February In Review

Just noticed I haven't posted in a month.

So -

Sofi is WALKING.

She was taking tentative steps around Christmas, but she didn't really start to walk until later, and now she's toddling at a brisk pace. Every now and then she likes to crawl just for fun, with a smile on her face that says, "I know I'm not supposed to be doing this anymore but I like the variety."

On our morning walk I'll usually take her out of the stroller in the park and let her explore. She also likes to explore on our floor and the garage of our condo, but doesn't like the first floor, even though it has the cool gardens and water features and whatnot.

Sometimes she'll find her shoes and bring them to us and try to put them on her feet. What could she be implying?

She didn't used to notice stuffed animals. Around Christmas that changed - she started getting attached to her Peter rabbit. Now she's fully attached, usually whining unless we give her one or two to play with. Her favorites:
- the Siamese cat she's had since birth
- a tiny bear
- a bright pink pig
- a Pooh she picked out herself at Disneyland
The cutest thing she does with the animals is she'll try to feed them and give them milk from her sippy cup. Then she'll hand the sippy cup and the animal to us, as if to say, "You feed him now." And when we do, she'll laugh.

Speaking of Disneyland - we're planning on moving to Seattle soon so we thought we should take Sofi before we left - VERY crowded, even though it was a Wednesday. Was it Spring Break or something? Maybe we needed this. She didn't have a terrible time, but she didn't really appreciate it, either. We took her on the carousel and the teacup ride and both times she just looked puzzled. "What is this? I don't get it." She has more fun when I toss her in the air. (You know the toss, the you-throw-her-up-in-the-air-but-you-don't-really-let-go toss. I'm not a bad father, really.) She seemed to be really fascinated by the outside of It's A Small World, though, and various other stuff.

On the we're-bad-parents front... Cathy and I make them for ourselves almost every day, and the first time Sofi put mom's straw in her mouth and took a sip we thought it was very cute! "Oh, how cute, she's drinking your mocha!"
And that led down a slippery slope, and now Sofi's a mocha junkie. If she sees mom has a mocha she'll start to bleat until mom breaks down and lets her drink. Chocolate and coffee, great for babies. Mom now has to stealth drink the mocha - wait for me to take Sofi on her walk or whatever and then make one for herself in secret.

Adjustment

Trying to wean Sofi since she was biting Cathy too much. We've been working on it for a month now - just yesterday we decided to stop the morning feeding, which is an adjustment, because normally I'd just get her when she woke up and hand her off to mom and we'd all fall asleep again. Now I'm feeding her, which means waking up at 6 and staying up. Which means she gets tired & upset earlier, which means - what? Earlier nap and bedtime, or two naps? Yesterday we tried two naps, which was fairly effective, but she's kind of used to getting a feeding at naptime, so we're still on three feedings...
We'll get there. Just a little setback.
It's the neighbors - they always clump around upstairs at six, and we're sure that's what wakes Sofi up. Cathy wants to complain but I don't feel right asking them to not walk around their apartment.

Actually, that reminds me of a funny story. The previous upstairs neighbors used to make this loud pounding noise at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM (I used to get to sleep in to 7:30? Luxury!) and I did go up to complain. His wife answered the door, I asked about the pounding noise, and she said, "Oh yeah, that's Tom getting his leg on. We'll do it in a different room from now on."
I was too stunned to say the right thing, I mumbled something like, "Yeah, thanks, because it's been waking me up in the morning." It wasn't until months later that I was talking to her and said, "You know, if Tom wants to put his leg on, he can do it wherever he wants, really."

A Normal Day

One time in junior high I got obsessed with the idea of having a normal day - a day where nothing even slightly out of the ordinary happened, no class cancelled, no pep rally, no hot dog lunch. This meant it could only happen on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday because Wednesday was the hot dog lunch and Friday was, well, Friday.

But something would happen every day - a substitute teacher, illness, something. It went on for weeks. It got to the point where, on the brink of being about to have a normal day, my mom suggested I do something - I forget what - and I freaked out because it would ruin the normal day.

I'm not like that anymore.

I like the google maps hybrid

And since it won't print out by itself, I like doing alt-printscreen to bring it into photoshop to print it out. I'll do it even for places I've been before, just because the nice printout pleases me so.

Too Smart For Toy

Sofi doesn't put the blocks through the block-shaped holes through the lid - she takes the lid off and then puts the blocks in.

Biting

Sofi's been biting while nursing for the past few weeks. Our attempts to "punish" the behavior - stop nursing for a while - have been ineffective. Enough's enough: time to wean her.
Since Sofi used to snack on and off all day, this is kind of tough. What we're trying today is everytime she asks for milk (the one sign she knows, and to her it doesn't mean milk-from-a-bottle, it means mommy milk - shame that the one thing she knows how to ask us is going to always be met with denial) we give her food instead. So far, it's been going great, and she's been willing to accept the surrogate. Of course, it's only noon.