It is just impossible to track how much and how wonderfully Abigail is growing. So many big and little things! Here’s a couple examples:
Until about a month ago, she often made up words, throwing syllables and phonemes together with joy. I certainly encouraged her! She’d throw her body at a couch cushion, throw up her arms and proclaim “Gurumph-a-do!” She doesn’t -randomly- put together words any more. Now it’s more refined. For example, her hedgehog stuffies are named, in order of getting them: Hedgy, Baby Hedgy, and now Hedgy-Rinsterstein! Rinsterstein?! I love it!
Today, out of the blue, she told me how “drum” was an onomatopoeia and she happily banged on the dining room table describing how it sounded like the word :-)
For a long while, Abigail’s 2 favorite (only?) TV shows have been Tumble Leaf and Daniel Tiger (I totally recommend them). She always says that she needs to watch while pooping in the afternoon, a practice that Megan and I haven’t really been down with. She’ll sit on the potty forever watching unless we go fetch her. Yesterday, she said, “Mom, where is Purple (her purple tablet computer)? I have to poop.” Megan said, “You can have a book.” And amazingly, she said “Ok!” and ran off to fetch a book to keep her company in the bathroom!
We read every night. In April we started reading chapter books. We made it through the first Captain Underpants book with gusto. I started reading the new (2013) illustrated version of The Hobbit to her. She was nervous at how many pages the book had, and kept flipping through it and asking to find the part with the dragon. I told her gently that we would get there eventually as we started. By the second page she didn’t want us to stop! We made it about 25 pages over a few nights before having to take a real break but she now can tell you all about Bilbo’s hobbit hole and Gandolf and the dwarves…
Megan and Abigail went to Texas for 6 days to visit Megan’s dear friend Jane and family. When they came back a few days ago, I swear that she had grown so much in body, speech patterns, and thoughts that I barely recognized her!
I just got an oscilloscope and the manual mentioned “Locating Sleeve: Using locating sleeve could ensure the stability and reliability of the tip exposed to the test point.” Say what?
Here is what a locating sleeve is for. If you need to carefully touch just one point on a PCB, you can take off the tip of your probe off, that is the tip with the spring loaded hook, and then attach the locating sleeve. Now it will be easier to touch just what you are intending to.
Hypermiling is so 2010. Well, I did it anyway.
When I was commuting to grad school, I’d sometimes get stuck in slow, steady traffic on the highway. And sometimes I’d get… 87 MPG for 12.5 miles!
I fill out about 10 web-based time-sheets every day, taking notes on each of the clients I see with a clunky mix of clicking, tabbing, and copy-pasting. The website simply wasn’t built for easy data entry. Do you know of a program where I can write my data in a neat format, for instance, a spreadsheet, and then the program does all the ridiculous click-type-click-tab-type-typing for me?
Megan, Abigail, and I will be moving from our apartment in Berkeley to a much larger house in El Cerrito on January 2nd!
We’ve loved living here with the quiet street and long driveway (we’ll miss jumping in Avery’s Puddle when it rains!), the short walk to Monterey Market, and especially King Park. But we’ve been feeling growing pains in our apartment for a while.
Merry Christmas to all! All the presents under our tree! Abigail will wake to a wondrous sight!
Some tidbits worth remembering about this photo…
See the ice cubes in the base of the tree? That’s how we water it! We’ve been fostering a tree from Mount Shasta for the last 3 years. This is sadly the last year for our beloved Fiona. She’ll be planted in the spring to run and play with her friends.
Megan made the stockings! They are beautiful. There will be three but one is still just pinned together. The finished ones are just gorgeous!
The boxes behind the sliding glass door are part of our move! We’ll be moving to a new house at the beginning of January! Berkeley has been wonderful, hello El Cerrito!
There’s lots of wonderful presents for and from family under the tree. The bike is from Noni (my mom)! Thank you Noni!
In the next few weeks we are planning on moving… twice! Three times if you count our vacation!
– We will be moving my mother-in-law Penelope from Napa to Albany.
– Then the three of us will take a little break to a snow park near Strawberry, California. This will be the first time Abigail has seen real snow!
– Then we are planning on moving to a bigger house just up the road!
