new home

Whew! The whirlwind month is over for us. We sold our townhouse in New Mexico and bought a house in Urbana and moved into it. Or mostly moved into it. All of our stuff is here, but much remains in boxes.

Since we have moved so many times in the last 5 years, I didn't think this would be too big a deal. However, our one year old greatly increased the difficulty. Not only do we have more stuff, but it's rare that we can work at the same time because someone has to keep an eye on the kid.

I should say that it's not for lack of trying that Clara didn't help much. Here she helps daddy take the guest bed apart.

Here's the view from the south grounds.
The house is ranch-style and much bigger than the last several places we lived.

Come visit us some time!

girl on the way!

So FB got the scoop, but the news from the doctor is that we're having another girl. Thanks to all who supported the name Otis, which sadly is no longer suitable. I am hard at work dreaming up a middle name. Jill has picked out the first name.

After a blazing hot end of summer, fall has been fantastic. You'd think that after so many sunny, mild days we'd have some nice photos of our park outings, but we don't. So we'll show more Clara!

As you can see to the right of this page, I've been reading a book about railroad history. The biggest surprise is the number people killed during rail construction. The scariest case was the construction of the Panama railroad -- an estimated 6000 workers died. At any time, 2/3 of the workforce was too sick to work.

A personal favorite story was how the 4 owners of the Central Pacific Railroad stole big money during construction of the transcontinental railroad. One of them was Leland Stanford, founder of a small junior university in California. Go BEARS!

informal cyclocross

Local bike riders have organized some in-town weekday cyclocross races, and I raced tonight. I rode the downtube-friction-shiftered Trek 500 with much aplomb. My troubles were the dismounts, barrier jumps, and remounts. The 3 guys that finished ahead of me gained at least 3 seconds per skill-set-required action. I should practice. And yes, there were more than 4 racers. Maybe 9.

After the race, Luke complained that my collision with a barrier on the last lap left it sitting higher for those after me. There's a positive aspect of lacking finesse.

A great advantage of college town life is that babysitting works fabulously. Let's say you want to go out to a nice restaurant with your true love without having to mind the baby. Just call up a friend and give her some dinner and the baby. Return home and sleep, and then said friend goes to her just beginning party. Perfect!

We ate very well at Silvercreek on Saturday night.

Clara enjoys crawling into her toy box to play.
Clara also enjoys getting into the kitchen drawers, but we disapprove.
Is that the face of repentance or disdain? I say repentance.

entering the teenage months

Have we discussed Clara enough lately? She turned 13 months today, so let's have a little update.

She still has 6 teeth, 4 uppers that are getting big enough to see when she smiles and 2 lowers.

She says 'dada', 'moma', and 'bye-bye' only when she wants.

She has taken 2 steps on her own, but mostly crawls or walks while holding onto whatever is handy. She loves to climb stairs. Just this week, she walks with us while holding our hands, but only when she wants.

When we're eating something she doesn't like too much, she points toward the counter where we once, maybe three months ago, had put the only package of whipped yogurt snacks that we ever bought. She seems to hope that if she points to that space, they will return.

She likes pasta best, especially mac and cheese (made by us, not kRaft).

We gave her bites of my German chocolate birthday cake, and she bounded around the house for 30 minutes.

We've been watching episodes of Psych recently, and Clara enjoys the theme song very much. Dancing and smiling ensues.

Her favorite activity with mommy is 'buzzy bee,' a tickling game. She holds her fingers just like mommy when she wants mommy to do it. Peak a boo is also fun.

She usually goes to sleep at 9:30p and wakes up around 7:30am. Recently, she's been waking up from being cold or hungry, but generally sleeps through the night. Two daytime naps of about 1 1/2 hours each.

When she's MAD, she jerks her entire body like a fish out of water.

She grabs my stomach flab and mommy's nose hard! We're teaching 'gentle'.

She waves at strangers. We do this every day on the quad while mommy is teaching. When strangers wave back, she does a shrug/hide her face duck before looking at them again.

We love her lots!