Boing, whee, boing

We firmly believe that exhaustion (theirs, not ours) makes our kids easier to live with. This mini trampoline is the perfect Jasmine anti-boredom device. It was so good, I had to get the boys their own (with a higher weight limit).

Belated B-day

We had a very late b-day party for the boys. Between illness and lack of available dates, we were a couple months late. It was a ton of fun though. We went to the Butterfly Pavilion and got an upclose look at many invertebrates as well as a talk from one of the staff members. Goodies, sugar, balloons, sugar, piñata, sugar, bugs, sugar, dancing and vegan cupcakes from Tee & Cakes. I think the best part was sending all those hopped up kids home to their parents. ;)

Lovin' the Spider

Jasmine just adores holding animals, especially little furry spiders and caterpillars. I seem to get a lot of these photos, but then she does it over and over and over again.

Those Looks

Kai is a master of 'those looks'. I think the red hair also added to the general attitude. He loves that stuff. We tried to use a turquoise semi-permanent dye, but just turned his hair silver -greenish for a few days. I think I'll have to be more aggressive to get a good color out of it.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

... in this order (according to Jasmine): purple sequin flapper dress, play shoes, wild post-plaited hair, and cell phone.

Take Your Kids to BioHazard Work Day

Okay, it wasn't as exciting as all that since we work with tame bugs. But they were suitably impressed with putting on saftey glasses and stirring solutions with a vortexer. Kai made a DNA molecule from my wooden model kit, all the kids took home some petri dishes with their germy handprints incubating, and then picked out some candy from our break room.

The boys were home for spring break and I thought it would be nice to have them meet everyone. They've been a bit curious about this new change in my schedule and my coworkers have been politely inquiring as to the children whose pictures have wallpapered my wall of the office.

I limited the exposure to about 15 minutes, but Kai was having so much fun with the little gadgets I think he was ready to apply to be the next lab tech. Everyone was so friendly, even Rowan who had an attack of the bashfuls, warmed up quickly.

I'm the only one in the main office who has kids, though one of my office mates is going to be a father any time now. I always wonder if this sort of visit inspires people to get refills on the birth control or to trigger their biological alarms a-ringing.

Hold Please!

Jazz loves holding all sorts of bugs and snakes and spiders and she's learned the proper technique from the Butterfly Pavilion. She even holds our rubber snakes and plastic spiders at home in this way.

Sleepy Bread

This is our special "Opium Bread" soon for sale at all your favorite parenting stores.

Rowan's Author Photo

Rowan and a classmate wrote a book in class and he suggested putting a photo on the back and he'd write a little autobiography to go with it. We went through photos on my computer and couldn't find one he liked. It had to be full face and no goofy smiles. That ruled out most of my pictures of Rowan, so we took some more. This is the one he chose.

Party Animal

Jasmine has discovered the joy of birthday parties... at least the joy of cake and ice cream. We've had a rash of parties and she's quite pleased with the new weekend entertainments.

Wack-a-Doos and Don'ts

If I had to suggest lifestyle changes to anyone, and I suppose I do because I'm a busybody, I would say: do not change or start a new job the same day as your spouse and the same day as you are switching child transportation / school preparations and the same month that your family catches some flu-like health curse. That's how January went. Ugh.

The kids are adjusting great though, even an ear infection didn't slow Kai down. He had some vague complaints of sore ears, but not enough to stop him from going to a birthday party featuring inflatable bouncy architecture.

I guess if you're going to do it though, all-at-once is a way. Theo started working for IBM from home. I guess all their employees are working from home nowadays. That worked out well since I had an extra two hours in my day just for transportation to work, but he has all the morning chaos now. He got smart though and hired one nice woman with four kids under eight years old, to watch Jasmine in the afternoons -- like an extended daily playdate, and another nice woman to drive Kai, Rowan and our carpooling partner Aimee home from school. Definitely some bucks, but it gets him some needed work time.

Back to Blogging

Before I get started on what's been going on, let me note that my daughter somehow manages to look cool and fashionable while wearing her pants as a hat.

Anyhow, I have graduated, I'm now an MS in mathematics specializing in Computational Biology and got my offer the day of my last final. I'm working in Boulder, CO which is about an hour's drive north of my house as long as there is no traffic or bad weather. Luckily, the company I'm working for, OPX Biotechnologies is the coolest place on the planet and not only lets me telecommute a day a week, but like about five other people, I come in at 7-ish and leave at 3:30 thereby avoiding all the nasty gridlock.

More of what's been going on in later posts and at MacroMath.

Canine Coffee Habit

Some mornings my schedule coincides with the woman driving the car in this picture. I identify her by the excited yipping, and other strange begging noises her Austrailian shepherd makes. Everyone waiting in the Starbucks' drive through hears him whine excitedly, tail whipping back and forth. It's hard to ignore -- and if you haven't gotten your coffee yet, hard not to feel that he's empathizing with you. Once his owner pulls up to the window, he goes silent and accepts the daily biscuit from coffee crew.

I wonder what they put into their doggie biscuits. I wonder if they would give me one. Maybe I should get a prop dog so they won't suspect....

Anyhow, this picture was taken in those wonderful foggy seconds of warm, indoor camera meets frigid, winter air -- and facing into the rising sun. We can pretend it was all done with artistic ideals rather than impromptu amusement.

Maybe I should have called the picture "Sun Dog".

Theo's Cookin'

When I was looking to procrastinate, Theo was preparing a very picturesque meal. He joked it was just like a cooking show down to him wearing product placement (his shirt is a Cafe Press t-shirt with my photo of a praying mantis).

Congrats Dad!

 

On November 28, First Lady Laura Bush unveiled the annual Christmas decorations including the painting for the official White House Christmas card. And here's the painting with my Dad, the artist. (This is the press conference photo picture was sent to me by my step-mom, Priscilla.) It's so cool. :)

His painting will remain in the White House collection with paintings by Norman Rockwell and John Singer Sargent; that has to be a huge thrill for him. (My sister and dad came up to Denver a little while ago just to see the Sargent exhibit at the Denver Art Museum and invited us along.)

There have been a number of "local artist" stories in Albuquerque where he lives, here's some links and press releases:


The most thorough article, by the University of Colorado Alumni Association
http://www.koat.com/news/14735576/detail.html
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/265929nm11-30-07.htm (Click on the Free Trial button)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071129-3.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/holiday/2007/tour_book2007.pdf

Gallery and Artist Links:
http://www.brazosfineart.com/taos_artists/david_drummond/1
http://www.drummondart.com/
http://jkdrummondart.blogspot.com/2007/11/david-drummond-white-house-christmas.html

Sweet and Innocent... or a Really Good Fake Out?

Jasmine really liked the fairy ring headbands at the Dealers' Room at Mile High Convention. It's the kind of souvenir we can afford and she's a difficult girl to say no to. Li Mei really knows how to turn on the cute.

Photographing Jasmine with the standard flash is really tough. Her eyes don't exhibit the normal, easily corrected red eye because they are transluminescent. Look close at the top raw photo and you can see the light passing straight through the outer ring of her iris almost as easily as it goes through her pupil. It's not hard to understand why she loves sunglasses. When she's older, we can get contact lenses that have an opaque iris that may help with that... not to mention the nearsightedness.

Rock Star

Jasmine came up to me and said, "'Tar." She waited a second or so and then requested again, "tar." She's been watching a lot of Laurie Berkner lately, so it wasn't that hard to figure out what she wanted. We don't have a real guitar around here anymore, but we did have something a bit more her size: Guitar Hero!




I think I know what to get her for her birthday (November 19). I wonder if Fisher-Price makes a Flying V and an amp that goes up to eleven. Here she demonstrates the power stance for rhythm guitar.

Wow, she's going to be 4. That's hard to believe, but she's certainly looking more her age than she used to. She's now wearing 2T and 3T clothes and a year ago it was 9mos-sized clothes. Notice the skull and crossbones belt; that's Kai's but she likes to wear it and say, "Aarrrrr!" It's also the only belt we have that's completely adjustable and therefore fits her.




She's got the artistic, Jimi Hendrix, lotus-eater, guitar expression going on in this last pic.

Eventually the boys wanted to play the game and Ms Mei was really not in the mood to share. She went to bed after a bit of a crying jag. Poor thing.

Awwwww, Zebra Butts!

Last Saturday the weather was beautiful and we went to the zoo. I should have known something was wrong when I saw, in a steady stream, people walking to the zoo from many blocks away. It was free day. UGH! Just finding a bathroom without a mile long line is a nightmare on free days. Crowds really stress me out in general, but my kids have all inherited my tendency to absent-mindedly wander around. Cat herding on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.




We did meet a beautiful little girl, J_____, and her mom when they spotted Jazz's cane. It turns out J_____ has monocular vision and we had many vision stories to exchange. We were seperated in the crowds a little while later, but if you're out there, drop me a line. Hope to see you at Anchor Center!

Pumpkins

This is my first attempt at creating a stencil and then carving it. I used a pic of a big lubber we found in a nearby open space, printed it on an 8.5" x 11" paper, traced the main elements using my light box, then altered some blocks as I was actually carving. I think the antenna needed some greater width, but overall I was happy with the result. It really didn't show up well until we had it outside in the dark and lit.

The rest of the pumpkins got stencils that we downloaded from free places on the web. The boys agreed Jasmine should have this Banshee design. I didn't inquire into their choice.

Pirate Skull for Kai.

Classic skull for Rowan.

This year they did a great job pulling out the pumpkin guts. Kai was still a little squeemish, Rowan was pretty gung ho and Jasmine just wanted to taste them. The boys poked the stencil designs into the pumpkins and then I carved them. Kai REALLY wanted to use my little pumpkin jigsaw, but I was worried about broken blades. I'd broken about five of them just getting the hang of it the year I first got it. Next year though, I think I'll buy some extra blades and let them carve out the tops.

Sugar Weasel Number Three

As always, it's hard to get a picture of Jasmine's face outdoors. Here she is on the trail with her cane. It wasn't a good cane day. She was copying her brothers' behavior of whacking things with their walking sticks instead of finding the path with it. At least at Roxborough the paths are fairly flat and sandy rather than rocky and unpredictible. She still has the tendency to ask to be carried when the ground is uneven and I have to insist that she walk. This day she eventually settled on letting me be her guide rather than using her cane. She did walk close to a mile which is very impressive on uneven ground -- that in itself takes a lot out of her. We walked about a mile and a half, in about two and a half hours.

Jasmine really participated in this Halloween. Last year's she was still getting used to being with us, eating regularly and walking. Jasmine did a great job saying Trick-or-Treat and Thank you or Bye-Bye. Now she regularly says, "Candy?" She has gotten exceptionally good at getting her brothers to share whatever they have after she scarfs hers down. They're sweet and she's simultaneously shameless and cute.

Sugar Weasel Number Two

You might be wondering what a sugar weasel is. If you have kids and you've dealt with them after Halloween, you might not be wondering at all. Our kids had their candy confiscated after 24 hours because they were absolutely insane... not just the average insane that we've grown used to, but full-body mood swings with hyper-roller coaster kinetics.

Here's Rowan with his hair combed. It's a hard situation to document. Gads, he looks so grown up already.

Sugar Weasel Number One

We've made it through another Halloween. I felt like a bum of a mother since we purchased costumes for the second year running. It's for the same reason that my Blogging has been non-existent this past couple of months. School and job search. I graduate December 15th with my Master's of Science degree in Applied Mathematics with a Certificate in Computational Biology. Woohoo. Just a few homework assignments, on presentation and a final exam and I'm finished. Hard to believe. Now I'm exploring the careers that exist in the crossover between Biology, Mathematics, and Computer Science and trying to find one that fits me.

I took a little break a went to Mile High Convention with the kids and then the past two days went to Roxborough State Park and crunched through scrub oak leaves with them. Here's Kai with his best smug look.