Happy Groundhog's Day!

Eleanor and I spent a long time this morning getting ready to go out and play in the snow. The total time we spent playing in the snow was less than five minutes. It had started melting by the time we went out and it was wet and mushy. The first thing she did was pick up a handful of snow (she has mittens, but hates wearing them).

Then she showed me the snow she found.

Then she was distressed that it didn't all get off of her. I think I should have called it ice, since that's a word she knows and loves.


In warmer news, Eleanor's Grandfather made this little desk for her. He had made little desks similar to this for my brother and me when we were little. I asked if those were still around. He found my old desk, but it was not good enough for Eleanor. She loves her little desk and will sit in it to read, eat, play with Play-Doh, play with other toys, or just to sit. She seems to have a system of "tables" now with her desk, the ottoman, the toilet lid, and a cabinet that used to hold our tv. All of the "tables" are about the same height. Various objects are constantly rotated through the system of "tables." The other day I walked into the bathroom and found waiting for me on the toilet lid a toy frog, a baby bottle, some lotion, a hair clip, and a tube of diaper rash cream.



Sometimes she even shares her desk with me.

Elephant Pancakes

Wow. I just realized how seldom I've been posting Eleanor updates. I didn't even do a Christmas post. Oh dear. I'll try to make up some of that now.

Eleanor is a lot of fun to be around these days. She's constantly interpreting the world in a new and interesting way. The way she categorizes things is great fun too. For example, anything on or above your head is a hat, anything round is a ball, and any bodily excretions are poo-poo. Her vocabulary is growing every day. Today her new word was "more." She learned "bear" this week as well, but it comes out "bu-bu." One day she found the bag of oranges on the floor and brought several to me one by one saying over and over "ball...ball...ball".

Eleanor likes to climb these days, but usually only in the nude. She's found that she can scale the ottoman in very little time. I know this picture isn't the best, but you get the idea.


Eleanor also really likes feeding things. This morning she found a toy bottle and fed Jack Sparrow, a chicken, a frog, and a snake. Then she put the frog in a shoe. Then the frog got a ride on the merry-go-round.

Matt sometimes lets Eleanor play with his iPod. She loves listening to the ear buds, even when they are not on. She also likes to listen to crayons, Christmas lights, and various other slender objects.


This is one of Eleanor's favorite ways to look at the world these days. Once she accidentally did a somersault.


Eleanor is learning to use her potty more consistently and only once as a hat.

The Program: Week 2

Who is this contemplative, distant young man? Click on over to Matt's new music blog to find out. It's an ongoing experiment in music, discipline and community. Can you take up the challenge of listening to only two albums per week, learning each song like knuckles on the back of your hand?

Don't worry, no one gets slapped.

Go ahead, click "Matt's Mog" to the right and hear this young man sing and hear what the two Matt's are listening to this week. Who knows, you may have one of the albums already and can give us some pointers on what to listen for.

The Program: or How Make Listening to Music Fun Again

No this isn't installment 28 in the iPod Rehabillitation unit series. I'm happy to report that all my electronic friends are functioning within acceptable parameters. However, my organic friend Matt Cleveland
and I noticed that our iPods were making us susceptable to another sickness: we weren't really listening to our music anymore. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, given that the iPod is meant to make your whole music library as portable as a thin bar of soap (albeit fragile $300 soap). But what we noticed was that since our mp3 collections were in digital form now for easy uploading and sharing, we were acquiring so much music, so quickly (from friends, relatives and perhaps less... savory means) that we really weren't giving each album the time it deserved. What was worse, we weren't enjoying what we were listening to because there was so much else to get through.

Our solution? The Program: Together the two Matts have made a pact to choose two albums with which we are not yet familiar and give those albums as many listens-through in one week as we can (at least 3-5). Indeed, we choose to listen to these albums as if we had paid our hard earned allowance-money for them. Matt describes it in greater detail in the link above. We'll be posting the albums of the week on our respective Mog - Music Blog sites along with our comments and the cumulative effect on our listening enjoyment and hopefully a renewed appreciation for those albums that only start to really shine after a few spins. Feel free to play along.

Albums this week:
Cold War Kids: Robbers and Cowards - Raw garage-rock with high-pitched, multiple storylines.

Dntel: Life is Full of Possibilities - Postal Service minus Ben Gibbard. Trippy ambient textures and analogue syths for your enjoyment.

Tattoos and Skateboards

Matt's Top 5 Albums for 2006

5. The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics

Oklahoma weird-rock from Wayne Coyne and friends. Not as strong as "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" but sonically and lyrically more direct. I mean, who else is still using the 'talk-box' guitar effect? Good album, even if the "mystics" they're at war with are religioius folk. "What would you do with all your power?"




4.Josh Ritter: The Animal Years

Third album from perhaps the best folk songwriter of my generation. Putting into practice advice from Pete Seeger, he settles into his rural Idaho roots. Beautiful poetry grappling with the great questions. "The keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom..."







3.Derek Webb: Mockingbird

Derek's most confrontational writing yet. Sparse guitar and piano behind words as hard as canon-balls aimed at breaking down the walls of Pharisaism and apathy growing up among us church folk. "Don't teach me about moderation and liberty, I prefer a shot of grape juice." "Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication..."




2.Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Neko used to tour with the New Pornographers but has since taken her golden floodgate of a voice from their line-up to sing lovely, southern-gospel tinged, imagistic songs of love, loss and a madman with a dirty knife dug into his spine: "He sings nursery rhymes to paralyze the wolves that eddy 'round the corners of his eyes..."




1.Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere

Hip Hop producer DJ Dangermouse (of Gorillaz and the Beatles/JayZ mashup 'the grey album') and Rap/Soul vocalist Ceelo found a perfect match in one another for this collaboration. It's rare a pop album gets spun on my iPod but this is one of those rare pop albums that's sells becuase it's actually good music. Besides, this is also Eleanor's favorite album of 2006. If she even sees the album art on the screen she'll start smiling, bouncing and making the hi-hat sound from "Crazy": "Tsht tsh tsh tsh." Needless to say, we've heard it way too many times and I've yet to get tired of it; the true test of a great album. "Who do you, who do you, who do you whodyou think you are, ah hah hah, bless your soul, you really think you're in control?"



Honorable Mention The Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldiers

After catching Jack White (the tall one) and Brandon Bensen (the skinny one) at Austic City Limits Music Fest, Jack is my guitar-hero. The man is a physical giant who seems to enjoy himself every time he picks up a guitar. This is a great disc to throw on, plug in the guitar, turn the amp to "ten" and jam along with Jack. The fun is contagious. "My baby's on the level, I try to read her mind, she's on the straight and narrow, I'm guessin' all the time..."

Christmas Shopping

I guess it's about time for a new post. We are still alive, just busy. Do you think it's strange that I find Santas creepy? I hid from the one at the mall today. I also hid from the guy who tries to sell fingernail treatments. I didn't hide from Chic-Fil-A, where I got a free sandwich in exchange for a pint of my blood.

Eleanor's been Christmas shopping in her own way. She likes all the flyer's that come in the mail. She picked out a new camera from Radio Shack and some bananas from Kroger, all while on the phone--what a multitasker!

Advent Aegis

In the old days the church ordered it's life around the events of the gospels, the events of Christ's life. Some still do. One key time is the time of advent: the time we anticipate the coming of Christ, the incarnation of God in a little baby.

To remember Advent Melody and I will be contributing brief devotions to a another blog called Advent Aegis. In the old days (of our time at First Southern Magnet Cove) we contributed to a print version that Shane and Diane put together. This was still his doing, only we're going a bit digital this time as they're in Slovakia. Amy Sickle, another former FSBC Magnet Cover, will round out our team. So check it out and read along with us through the lectionary texts as we remember and anticipate what comes next.

Also you can navigate there by clicking the link to the right.

Hay Ride

The much anticipated (at least by me) hay ride took place on Saturday. Some folks in our church have this amazing farm on the river. Every year they host a hay ride. Here is our gracious hostess, who made very good chicken and dumplings. Belle is the dog. Eleanor was so happy to play with Belle, but Belle wasn't so sure.

We went on a hay ride last year too, but Eleanor enjoyed this one much more (she slept through most of it last year). When we first got on the trailer, Eleanor carefully examined the boards and saw a crack wide enough to see the ground. She was still examining it when we started moving. She was much suprised and excited to go and was happy for most of the ride.

These are pictures of people riding on hay.



In other news, Eleanor slept over 13 hours last night and did not act as my alarm clock (as is her habit) this morning causing me to almost miss a breakfast appointment. She has learned to bark like a seal, hiss like a snake, and moo like a cow. Today she tried to cut her own toenails.

And last, but not least, we have a shameless plug for Eleanor's cuteness brought to you by EPR Team (Eleanor's Public Relations Team, that is).

iBook Rehabilitation Unit: iFixit

A few weeks back, Melody's aunt, B, suffered a great loss: her hard drive on her G3 iBook failed. B is a writer by proffession and she has been using her iBook nigh daily since 2001. It was only a matter of time. Fortunately for a nominal fee she was able to salvage most of the data. However it was time to upgrade and she soon had a shiny new 13in. Intel Core Duo Powered MacBook with which to ply her trade.

Since we suffered a similar loss earlier in the year and had our hard drive replaced, I asked what was to become of the old G3 iBook. B replied that she supposed she would bring it to me to see what I could do with it. I had entertained notions of doing the hard drive replacement myself but when I waded into the internet walk-through tutorials for it I discovered that the hard drives in this generation of Mac laptops are not very easy to get to. So I payed CompUSA to do it for me. But now I had the chance to test my nerdish mettle. I was resolved. I would replace this hard drive myself.

I'll not bore you with all the tedious details but a few photos taken over the four hours it took to get it taken apart enough to get to the drive, replace the drive and put it all back together again. I couldn't have done it without the exceptional guide from iFixit.



I find it somewhat strange how much this sort of thing appeals to me. I suppose it's a sort of puzzle. I think it has more to do with the clearly defined goals and outcomes. The problems I deal with at work are anything but clearly defined. I think it's therapeutic to really fix something and know what you've done.






Voila! Two working iBooks. B's computer begins new life as a dedicated, portable music machine. Believe it or not this is the abbreviated pictorial version. For the full 4 hour process check out my Yahoo! Photos ablum in a few days.



And Eleanor is still cute. This morning she went over and pulled the Yoda hat from the shelf and had me put it on her. A cute and darling baby she is. Maybe she can use the laptop for college.

Everybody Poops

Eleanor has begun her gentle journey into using the potty. So far she has used her new little potty for a holder of books, a diaper, various toys, and finally pee and poop. Our first day of toilet learning went something like this (only in English):



If the video doesn't work for you on our site, you can click here to see it.

A Challenge from Tig

Here's a pic to grab your attention. I was Lincoln at the Hospital Halloween Web-Design Nerd Party. It was very "The Office".

***

So I have this nurse friend. She's got a blog and she's thrown the guantlett down with this challenge:

"Here are the rules:1. Grab the nearest book.2. Open the book to page 123.3. Find the fifth sentence.4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest!"

So here goes. I had to pass up the bible and a collection of kids poetry (the bible because that would just be too chaplainy and the poetry book because it hadn't 123 pages). So I admit this happens to be the last book I finished and one of my favorites from this year, and granted a little (pseudo-)intellectual sounding, but it literally was closest to match the description.

David Dark, The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea.

"I hasten to add that there is probably a place for both and I'll try to describe the difference with a story of a viewing experience. There is a moving scene in "Patch Adams" (1998) in which Robin Williams's Hunter "Patch" Adams, a medical practitioner, has painstakingly arranged a dream come true for an elderly woman whose confinement to hospitals has, in recen years, obstructed her pursuit of happiness. She has long dreamt of swimming in a pool of noodles, "Patch" discovers, and as I sat in the dark theatre watching teh slow-motion sequence in which she finally has her fantasy fulfilled, I turned to my wife with tears in my eyes and said, "I hate this movie.

"Please understand, I didn't begrudge the woman her moment or wish that the tale (based on a true story) had never been told, but there was something in teh sequencing that felt a little like an insult, a way of cuing sentiment, and a pressing of certain heart buttons that had me feeling a little tricked."

Boy does Mr. Dark use his sentences. So there, consider the guantlett thrown down upon your blogs' toes.

Visits

We've had quote a few visits this month that you, our loyal readership, have missed out on. We'd like to share them with you.


First, we visited our alma mater for homecoming which, with the exception of a delightful conversation with Dr. Mr. Wink, was pretty dull I have to say. Still we had a bit of Chick-fillet on the grass for old times sake. It's considerably less relaxing with babies.


Next came a visit from our newest favorite cat who we don't own named "monkey." However we named him "Mittens," since he seems to have four white mittens. He's very amiable, kitteny and Eleanor delights in him. Sometimes he comes to visit, sitting in our 2nd story windows quite unexpectedly, much to Eleanor's surprise, and ours.


Not long after that we were visited by a strange trio from a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.


Cousin Jack came to play for a few brief but intense sessions. Eleanor really wanted into Jack's pillow fortress and once she finally made it in, Jack didn't want her to leave. I don't know if Jack ever grasped what we meant when we said, "Don't run Jack, the Chiropracter is downstairs." I can image any number of things such words might inspire in the mind of a five year old, none of them scarier than an actual chiropracter.



Then a man with very long hair and a beard came to visit. No, it wasn't Jesus. It was Josh. He and Molly and Cedar came to stay overnight and the babies had a blast reading "brownbear brownbear." You never know how someone is going to voice the various animals. I think that the way one reads the voice of the teacher is particularly telling about their personality, background and social stability.


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Soon, the fanx arrived and it was maximum baby action for a little over an hour.


We've all been enjoying Eleanor's new orange hoody. I thought she should eat an orange while wearing it for extra points. It just so happens that after a couple of visits with Mamaw Jones, we have several winter oranges which Eleanor loves. Despite all appearances below, the kid ate over half of the orange in the space of about five minutes.

Evil Lincoln

Have you seen this Lincoln? He was last seen with these two babies. They both seem to intuitively sense his unseemly manner and cannot meet his steely gaze.


He bears a chilling resemblance to this Lincoln, known to be evil.


Help us, Princess Leia, you're our only hope.

***

In case you hadn't already guessed, this unseemly Halloween post has been brought to you by Matt "Vampire Hunter" Lumpkin.

Matt and Eleanor

Tonight as I was cooking dinner Matt was playing with Eleanor. When I looked out the kitchen window, I saw that Matt on his skateboard and Eleanor in the back of Matt's truck beside her skateboard. Matt said that she never made the connection between what he was doing on his skateboard and her skateboard.

This video is from a couple of weeks ago. It's another example of Matt entertaining Eleanor. They have so much fun together.

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Making Crayons

This morning Eleanor and I went to a couple of yard sales. All we found was an old school box of crayons, crayon bits, and a few other random school supplies. I paid ten cents for the whole thing. After sorting out all the crayons, which Eleanor helped with, I began peeling the wrappers off and sorting them by color. I broke the bigger pieces into smaller bits and put them in lined muffin cups.


I baked the crayons for 15 minutest at 200 degrees and this was the result:

After lunch, Eleanor and I went out on the deck to enjoy some nice cool fall air and color. She used her suprise box for a table and played with her crayons for quite some time.

I think she likes them. 'Twas a dime well spent.

Our Camera Came Home

After a nice vacation in Illionis, our camera came home with new parts that make it work again. As a celebration, I'm going to post pictures and two (yes, you read correctly: two) videos.


Saturday Matt, Eleanor and I went to Garvin Woodlands Gardens for some festivites. It was a beautiful day. Eleanor and I played outside while Matt went to a chapel dedication service. They have built a beautiful new wood and glass chapel nestled in the woods. While Eleanor wasn't impressed by the architecture, she was impressed by the grass, leaves, and waterfall.


Every Monday morning Eleanor and I go to the library for story time. It is usually great fun. After story time, I let Eleanor look at books. Today she was interested in Maurice Sendak's lesser known works.


And now for the promised videos. The first is from last week. Eleanor has begun her journey as in bipedalism. She still needs Dumbo's feather most of the time. Today she walked across the room with a toy screwdriver in one hand and a book in the other. If she realizes that what she's holding is not supporting her, she sits down and goes back to Jungle Book style crawling.

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This video is from tonight. Eleanor likes to put her toys in the tube for her bath. Tonight she found a more efficient method.

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