Category: bliefs

Amelia Maple

That isn’t a typo, that is what Abby calls her, Amelia Maple.

I told you that I didn’t have the wherewithal to actually get a picture of Emma when she wasn’t nursing or when I was holding her so I made an extra effort and got this one whilst holding the sleeping Peep.Emma comatose

Later, she was awake, and not taking kindly to the chilling experience of yet another bath. At only six and a half pounds there isn’t a lot of biomass to go around for heat retention and such.Emma after bath

However during the bath, seemingly, the most enjoyable thing next to a milk-drunk nap is the scrubby on her little weathered round head.Emma enjoying the scalp massage

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
Who knew Dickens was talking about bath-time.

BorkUncle

What can I say, BorkUncle is one of those things that tends to defy explanation. Like the words Jamey and I used to use to elaborate on “dibs”. Remember Clickitat? Anyway, BorkUncle morphed from one thing to the next, between one 3 year old mind and the other (mine), from one game to another such that you don’t know how you got where you landed but damn it feels natural at the time and it’s funny like a 5 minute tummy tickler.

Let me ‘splain, partly for a peek into “a day in the life” and partly for posterity.

The Bork:
I was singing Abby’s Alouette song about 3-4 weeks ago but I didn’t know the French words. So I filled the gap with nonsense and my imagination (lack of) quickly degenerated into nothing but Borkish ala The Swedish Chef.

Two days ago, while playing Buttercup and Wesley (running down the hall at full speed into my arms and knocking me over) Abby and I fell back on the old standby of tickle-letmego-tickleme-letmego-tickleme-letmego. Something she was saying in mid-tickle quickly got mushed together and she said ‘Bork’ instead. I laughed out loud at the ingenious application of Borkish…but then it changed again to the point where I questioned whether she was asking for mercy.

The Uncle:

Do you want me to stop?
BORK! [affirmative tone]
Okay. [I stop]
BORK!
Were you, like, crying uncle or…?
Bor….Whadyou say?
I asked if you were “crying uncle”. You know, asking me to stop?
Uncle?
Yeah, Uncle.
[pause then at the top of her lungs] Bork!…[and then]….UNCLE!

The BorkUncle:
I was cracking up. Since we had already backed down to tickleme-letmego and my laughter momentarily disengaged the tickleme part she tried to tackle me and, naturally protecting my vitals from ‘V is for Vitalslayer’, I pushed her up over my head and she flipped her legs over her own head and well, describing it just doesn’t do it justice. But because I was laughing so hard, the last words she said ‘Bork Uncle’ became the thing she said before the maneuver and, well take a look for yourself and observe the newest game for three year olds sweeping the neighborhood. Behold the BorkUncle.
BorkUncle High Res (1.7MB)
BorkUncle Low Res (868K)

Some of you may say ‘what about Amelia?’

I know there isn’t a lot of stuff here yet regarding Amelia but there is a good reason for that. Rather there are quite a few good reasons.

1) She is usually sleeping
2) When she isn’t sleeping she is most likely nursing
3) When she isn’t sleeping and she isn’t nursing I am holding her

1) When she is sleeping she is swaddled and at best you can see her from the nose down.
2) When she is nursing, well, let’s just say it is really hard to get a picture of her that doesn’t include Angela, and I don’t think Ang would appreciate THAT picture on the web.
3) When I am holding her the last thing on my mind has been taking her picture mostly because her little tiny rib cage and squeezed up legs and nearly inaudible squeaks and coos are very distracting.

Lastly, Amelia has been spending a lot of time with Momma and Abigail has been spending a lot of time with me. Yesterday we went to Ballet class, and then to drop off some film and then for some dinner…

…quick sidebar: The Daddy still hasn’t learned the limited extent of a little girls bladder. I offer Taco Del Mar in Parkway Plaza as proof.

Daddy! I peed!

And she was right…all over her ballet clothes. The ever-prepared Daddy didn’t have a thing to change her into (or so I thought) and we had just sat down for dinner so we quickly went into the restroom, dried off what we could, finished our meal and then dried off her pants in the heater vent of the car. Daddys car and Abby’s pants now smelled like Taco The Mouse. end sidebar…

After dinner we shopped for Amelia’s preemie clothes, hats, diapers, etc. Then we got some new computer hardware (case fans), and then back to pick up the film. We got home at 7PM.
All that to illustrate that The Daddy and The Peanut have been spending a lot of time together.

It is reflected in the pictures below:

We picked Dandelions until our hands were black with Dande-sap.

Then she was so happy to dye some easter eggs.

I helped with the heavy lifting, but by the end, she could do it herself.

Amelia Mabel Zimmerman

Here she is, Ms Amelia Mabel Zimmerman
Born April 11, 2006 at 06:57 and weighing in at 6lbs 7oz

Amelia Mabel born. Amelia is snuggled into Momma, staying warm and fending off the whole “cruel world” thing.

Amelia Mabel born. Here is Amelia (Emma) under the lights of the inquisition.

Amelia Mabel held by Abigail Elaine. Now her big seester, Abigail gets a chance to hold her baby.

Amelia Mabel held by Abigail Elaine. Abby is going to be a great big sister. She is very tender and has already helped wherever she can.

Of accidents and houses

I’ll get right out with it – Angela was in another car accident. Albeit minor it does stir the mind to think of how many vehicle accidents we have been in recently…that would be four in the past 4 years.
I want mass transit.

We are fully moved in…still unpacking yet but moved in. This is a really nice place and a nice location, still can’t believe the story of how we found it all.

Baby Girl #2 is due May 4th, still no name yet, she will be the first to know and then I suppose us and then all of you. 🙂

Angela has whooping cough for the past week or so which makes for long nights and baby girl isn’t even here yet. Hopefully that will pass soon enough for her to get some rest before delivery.

Abby is adapting well in her new environs. She has a huge bed, a huge room of her own, her very own playroom on the way, her own backyard w/ sandbox and she just discovered the wonders of another musical, Oklahoma. She eats em up and spits em out, can’t get enough of them.

I have a new logo in the wild. Eleganza.com hired a friend to re-do their website and he in turn recommended me to do their logo. It isn’t up yet but you can see it at that address soon, maybe a couple of weeks.

Mom and I went to a symposium at the UW tonight entitled Human Wrongs and Human Rights to mostly discuss the new book by one of my old philosophy professors. His name is William Talbot and after 10 years he still remembered the Philosophy 410 class I was in with him. Anyway, seems like a great book and very accessible philosophical discussion on rights. I am going to order it tonight, straight from Oxford University Press.
Okay, so now we are all caught up. I will get some pictures going here of the new house in the coming days.

Diffuse Dorothy

Inspired by James’ work with Arthur and his posies I resolved to take an ostensibly average photo and attempt to emphasize the expression and the attitude I liked in it for an ostensive expression of art and skill. (How often do you get to use those two words back to back? Did I even use them in the correct order? Anyway…)

What I came up with was this irradiated shot of Abigail in her Dorothy dress from last December.

Abigail as Dorothy 12_2005

If you are interested, I got this affect using Photoshop in the following way.

  • I copied the orig image onto it’s own layer
  • Desaturated the top layer
  • Masked the areas where I wanted the color to come through (Dress, lips, and eyes. I know, I am such a feminist)
  • Some blurring (to take away some grain and bad blurring of the orig photo)
  • Then, the coup-de-grace was Diffuse Glow with settings of 0 on grain, 10 on Glow, and 8 on Clear. That is an expert way of saying that I hacked and monkeyed around with the settings until I got the look that I wanted. Very bright highlights with little loss of detail.
  • Then I applied that to both layers and the mask itself with knocked down the colors rather nicely.

All that ‘desaturation-diffuse-glowing-photoshop-mumbojumbo’ and I still think it doesn’t hold a candle to the natural ability of James and his Picasa. He seems to have a feel for what looks good and I am getting lost in some pretty unintelligible numbers.

I would say we should have a photo Tech-night sometime where we spend a lot of time manipulating photos and goofing with the art that computers allow but that STILL won’t get the point across, just getting the subject to express itself through minimal application of the appropriate manipulation that covers the feeling of the shot. Hmph.

One more thing, if you want to take a look at an exceptional photography site check out www.photo.net. Excellent artists with ‘Photoshopped’ and natural photographs from a wide gamut of photographers. Be aware that there are occasional nude/semi-nude photographs on this site.

late nights and the perfectionist

I am sure I am not getting enough sleep.
When I don’t even question the spelling of a word such as sentimentalist and I don’t even catch it until reading comments on the next post days later.

The perfectionist part enters where I am spending more than 30 seconds caring considering all the other stuff I have to do.

Glad I am not a perfectionist-packer. Angela, if she ever opens any of the boxes I packed in the garage may not be so glad.

Packing and the sentamentalist

We are packing our things and this is usually not a good thing for a sentimentalist. EVERYTHING means something and it slows down the process immensely. As amazingly sentimental as I am however, I find this move easy mentally while difficult logistically. It is hard to know that I have been here almost nine years, it feels like three. Of course Abigail is still a newborn and my new car has been dented twice. While we are at it…
I have had three jobs.
I have been single, engaged, and married.
I have had six couches in this house.
I have hosted two New Years Parties.
I have extended the garage.
I have added a bathroom.
I have plumbed the whole house.
I have retrofit the electrical.
I have re-landscaped…twice.
I have learned to scuba dive.

I haven’t learned how to play pool.
I never got insulation in the walls.
I never cleaned under the stairs.
I didn’t fix the kitchen floor.

I planned on being here between three and five years.
We plan on being there over ten years, there will be a lot more have’s and haven’ts in Talbot. This house off Park has made Talbot possible and our first ‘have’ will be a second baby girl. Not too shabby.