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11:33 am
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Summertime Non-Blues
It's been a relatively uneventful summer for us. We went to Maine for July 4 weekend, and we're visiting my parents near Jacksonville next weekend. In between, we've had seven glorious weekends of staying close to home.
In Violet news, she has finally said her first clearly recognizable word other than "daddy", "mama", "ba-ba" (for bye-bye), and - less recognizably - "bvoo" (for balloon). Happily, that word is "happy"! She'll repeat it clear as a bell when she's (we assume) happy. It's so darling, it's ridiculous.
Tags: violet
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11:15 am
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02:47 pm
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Old Greek Dress
As is the tradition, we spent the Fourth of July weekend up at Sue's grandmother's cottage on the ocean in Maine. It's much the same every year, only this time Violet was able walk around and play in the cold, cold water. She was initially shocked at just how cold the ocean was, but quickly warmed up to it (ha!), and certainly outlasted our tolerance to it. Funny how a cold ocean doesn't seem to bother kids as much as it does adults. Even when it was foggy and 55 degrees (and that was probably warmer than the water temperature), there were children brave and foolhardy enough to splash around without wetsuits. I got extra chills just looking at them.
Sue's grandmother had a surprise for us. She pulled out a dress that she bought in Greece when Sue was a baby, and dug out a photograph of Sue wearing it in front of the cottage. So of course we had to re-create the photo with Violet (shown here). We're keeping the dress in case the cottage is still in the family when we have a granddaughter. Check back in thirty years.
(For now, here are more photos of our trip to Maine this year.)
Tags: maine, vacation, violet
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04:30 pm
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Father's Day
What a nice Father's Day present - Violet finally took some steps today! She's been *so close* for over a month now - walking holding on to the furniture or our hand, even taking one tentative step here and there - but we were beginning to think she wouldn't be walking on her own until the fall. It might still be a while before she'll walk without us goading her on. But that's okay; now that we know she *can* walk, we can relax and let her crawl around some more so she's easier to keep track of.
Tags: video, violet
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09:53 pm
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The Name Game
The Social Security Administration has just released their list of the most popular baby names in 2008:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/babynames/
Violet has gotten more popular in recent years, ranked the 184th most popular girls' name in the U.S. in 2008, up from #229 in 2007. And that's up from total oblivion in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when it almost never even made the top 1000; 1999 was the first time it cracked the top 900 since 1968. Which explains why I've never met anyone named Violet before. It's the name's highest rank since 1937, but still below its peak popularity in 1919 (when it was #74).
At the rate the name is gaining in popularity, it could be a top 20 name by the time Violet gets to elementary school. Which is kind of what we were trying to avoid - we were looking for something classic, not too crazy, but not too popular. Perhaps we're bigger trendsetters than we had thought.
A name that might better fit that bill these days is Susan. Poor Susan. The second-most popular girls' name back in 1957 and 1958, it was still #24 the year my wife was born, but dropped out of the top 100 in 1985. And now? It's a pitiful #712. What the heck is wrong with Susan? Does it deserve to be less popular than Shyanne, Destinee, Yaretzi, Paisley, and Payton? (Payton? Who names a girl Payton?)
As for Peter, it's a semi-respectable #183 for boys, not nearly as popular as it used to be, but not dropping off into oblivion. Yet.
(PS - Violet is two places below Brooklynn. Brooklynn? Come on people, even with one n that's just... I mean... Brooklynn? Really?)
Tags: violet
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05:20 pm
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Sporks!
Everybody hates sporks.
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03:07 pm
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Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream
Two strangest dreams, actually. In one, Mario Cuomo was giving a speech in my hotel room (at some fancy resort - we were there with friends). He brought his own lectern and everything. I got annoyed with his being there and we got into a big shouting match. It wasn't about policy; I just wanted him to go. I was quite riled up. I think I managed to get to the steam room eventually, but that's less strange.
In the other, we were hosting a dinner party (it wasn't our house, but it was - you know how dreams are), when Sue brought out a big box of pregnancy test sticks. All the women (and one guy - to be funny, I guess) took the test and everyone announced that they weren't pregnant. (Nobody had left the table, but the tests were taken non-explicitly and without peeing - again, you know how dreams are.)
I wonder what babies dream about. Nothing makes sense to a baby; do their dreams make even less sense than that?
Tags: random
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02:12 pm
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Professional Photographer
I'm now a professional photographer!
Technically speaking, that is. I just received a check from Langenscheidt Publishing, who is using my photo on the cover of their latest Syracuse street map! I've had lots of people use my photos on their blogs, I've had one used in a small magazine, but this is the first photo I've ever gotten money for. And I like it. (Langenscheidt is much nicer than other companies I know.)
Now if I could find someone to pay me for every photo I take, I could retire comfortably. Any takers?
Tags: random
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06:06 pm
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Ice Ice Baby
Next time I go ice skating, remind me to never accidentally fall through the ice.
One of the fun things we did while we were up in Tremblant (photos here) was go to the beautiful Scandinavian Spa for an afternoon. It's a complex of outdoor hot tubs and cold tubs, and indoor steam rooms, saunas, and warm "relaxation rooms", with full spa services offered if you're in the mood (we both got massages - my second one ever). The idea is to alternate between warm places and cold places, for an authentic Scandinavian experience. It's supposed to be good for you, they say, and it's definitely fun.
If the 57-degree plunge pool or waterfall isn't enough for you, there's the option to take a dip in a hole cut in the ice in the Diable River. And how often do we get the chance to do that? We just had to give it a try. After all, it was by far the warmest day of our vacation (a balmy 25 degrees - that's Fahrenheit, my foreign friends).
Well, getting in is surprisingly easy. By the time I was up to my waist, though, my feet were telling me to get out. Very insistently. The bigger surprise was then the searing pain about ten seconds after getting out - there were about 30 seconds where I doubted I'd ever be able to stand again.
Yet I survived, and so did Sue. And then I had to do it again because Sue somehow didn't get a good photo of me in the water. And what's the point of doing it if there's no proof? People ask me how Sue can put up with all the photos I take - well, I'm willing to suffer for my photography habit, too!
There was no suffering the rest of the day; if we hadn't had to get back to our hotel to pick up Violet from daycare by 4:30, we could have stayed there warming and chilling (literally and figuratively) all afternoon into the evening. But not in the river again. We got our story and our photos and that's enough.
Tags: vacation
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10:53 pm
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Violet Is One!
It's cliche to say "I can't believe my baby is one year old already!" so I won't. I don't actually feel that way. On the contrary, I'm amazed that she's *only* one - it feels like she's been around forever. Yet paradoxically I'm still surprised that we have a baby at all. Even after a year, it feels normal and not normal at the same time - like we're Violet's parents, but we don't feel like parents. You know what I mean? Other parents of one-year-olds might.
We didn't do anything spectacular for her birthday - my parents came up from Florida, my brother and his family came down from Westchester (twenty minutes away), and our neighbors came from next door. Some cake, some champagne, some presents, and boom - Violet is officially one.
She's pulling up and sitting down, doing some cruising, and loves climbing stairs (but can't come down - fortunately, she's usually good at knowing not to come down). She's not walking or talking yet, but it really seems that could happen any day now.
Last week she went to her first foreign country - we drove to Canada to go skiing at Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. It was our first ski trip in two years, and our first with the baby. And it was fantastic. We picked Tremblant mostly because the daycare situation was ideal - our hotel was right at the lifts, and the resort's daycare center was right inside our hotel. Plus with the pedestrian village, it was easy to walk her around at night for dinner and some window shopping. She didn't mind the 5-degree weather at all. Without any wind, it wasn't as bad as it might sound.
Violet loved being in daycare. Perhaps too well - other babies were crying and clinging to their parents; Violet just zoomed right off in the morning with nary a glance back. I guess that's good. She probably picked up a few words of French there, too. Maybe. She didn't seem to understand "ne mange pas!" any more than she does "don't eat that!".
Sue was worried that a two-year hiatus would make her skiing pretty rusty, but we needn't have worried. We got right back into it, and didn't fall once. It hadn't snowed in a long time there, so the trails were quite icy and slick. Which we got used to. At least it's less tiring than pushing through snow (or slush, which was the conditions in the 65-degree weather when we were at Tremblant six years earlier).
It'll be two or three years before Violet is up on skis, so we have time to prepare - as much fun as it will be to ski with her, daycare has got to be easier...
(PS - photos of our ski vacation can be found here and photos of Violet's birthday and other March photos can be found here. As of now, I have tons more photos to upload to each set, so feel free to come back often in the next few weeks...)
Tags: skiing, vacation, violet
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