Baby Blue Bicycle

Park City snow

2012-02-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

I took no photos from my ski day at Park City Mountain, as I was alone for most of the day. PCM added some trail names to runs in Jupiter. My favorite spot is now called War Zone. I sent an email suggesting an alternate name. How about Overhang?

I continue to look forward to the day when my nieces can ski the steeps with me. I heard that they improved this week.

Jill and I snowshoed somewhere between Kamas and Mirror Lake. For about half way up, we trudged along a well packed trail. This was much appreciated because the snow was deep and I am far removed from high altitude acclimation. The place was super crowded as we saw 4 other people during our 3 hour walk.

The local moose watering hole?

We got to a local high point. Not the tallest peak around, but it felt like an accomplishment.

We visited the Park City museum on Friday. I talked a while with Karl, one of the last living silver miners in the area (fun facts: the 'rich' silver ore was 1.25% silver, or 25 lbs of silver for every ton of rock. Dynamite was set off every 8 hours to break up the rock. George Hearst, father of William Randolph, owned one of the mines.) Karl has amazing hearing considering he was close to the explosives and also served as a spotter for a mortar group in Japan during WWII.

A final fun fact about PCM is that for a short time, mining cars took skiers up the hill through an underground tunnel in Thaynes canyon. At the top of the canyon, an elevator took them 1800' to the surface. The ground level equipment is still there next to the Thaynes chairlift (final fun fact: Thaynes has been a favorite run of mine, but I didn't get around to skiing it this time. I almost feel bad, but Jupiter is so much nicer).

Park City trip

2012-02-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

My side of the family took our nearly annual trip to Park City, Utah last week. Not surprisingly, we had a fantastic time. During my youth, I would ski every day with my dad. This year the schedule went like this: Sun: church and super bowl, Mon: downtown Park City wandering, Tues: skiing at Park City Mountain (Jill and girls went to Red Rock), Wed: Chad and Jill snowshoe, Thurs: indoor playground, Fri: downtown wandering, Sat: back home. We swam three times (Clara went into the big pool with cousin Anna on the 3rd trip) in the outdoor heated pool (no small amount of energy needed to heat said pool).

I was 2 years old on my first trip, exactly the same age as Clara this time around. Unlike when I went, Clara and Janny had two older cousins to play with. Clara and Erin demonstrate a surprising amount of attitude here.

We think Urbana should have an indoor playground. However, the view from the wi-fi and big-screen equipped parents' lounge (to which a local deli will gladly deliver your sandwich) would not look like Monkey Moutain's.

Clara and Janny had so much fun there. We played for about 3 hours.

On Friday night, we drove to Heber City to eat at Dairy Keen, the most insane kid-oriented restaurant I can handle. They serve burgers and corn dogs along with shakes while a train circles the room along the ceiling. Being Utah, most families have about a zillion kids and there are a zillion families at the Keen on a Friday night.

I was pretty sure that no one was allowed in the cockpit since 9/11, but Clara used her charm to claim the co-pilot's seat. She also scored a whole bag full of peanut snack packs from the snack guy. She thought that was the best thing ever until she learned that she was carrying peanuts. Clara no likey peanuts.

In part 2, I'll show more pictures with snow. Despite this being a relatively poor snow year, there was some fine skiing and snowshoeing to be had.

working overtime

2012-02-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, both girls have slept through the night on a few occasions. My mind feels like it's coming out of a fog, and I'm not that impressed with myself. I have done very little to develop friendships in the last year, and am now dealing with a bit of loneliness. I was quite surprised by this discovery-- how can you be lonely if you spend all your free time with wife and kids? A mystery of life I suppose.

The kids are getting the hang of life around the house. Janny is involved in all household chores.

The girls can now take baths together. Convenient and fun for all.

Clara remains our star dishwasher.

Janny is best at rearranging dishes in the dishwasher and checking for water spots.

Clara loves buses. She regularly points to them and says 'Clara bus'. So we took a bus ride last weekend. We walked the half-block to the stop, waited 2 minutes, and got on the Red bus to the Champaign terminal. Then we walked to Pekara where we happened to meet some friends and ate lunch together. We had to wait 15 minutes at the terminal for the return trip, so we checked out the artwork.

Still the bike plus trailer is our primary means of getting around town. After over 2 years of using the Burley trailer daily, the rivets for button snaps on the cover have broken. Hopefully repair will be a snap.

'winter' activities

2012-01-17T21:16:00.003-07:00

We signed Clara up for 2 year old indoor soccer. Soccer Planet just opened in Urbana-- it's a hockey rink sized soccer field. Clara's gang kicks balls, stacks cones, plays with a parachute, plays freeze (red light, green light), runs through obstacle courses, and more. She enjoys it. We are happy to have a big play space available during the winter.

Speaking of winter,what a mild one for biking around town! As the car drives, the soccer field is 4.5 miles from our house, but the tolerable bike route is 6.5 miles (Frasca should pay for a pedestrian route to connect Willow Rd over or under I-74). Last weekend we took a slightly longer detour on the way home to hit the Apple Dumpling for lunch. We were the only non-farmers there.

Since Janny can sit, both girls are now stuffed into the trailer. Janny falls asleep within minutes while Clara sings, talks, and checks out the scenery. Though Chad pulls it on these longer trips, Jill has no troubles taking both girls herself.

Janny went from walking behind this toy on her own ...

Interlude about Clara. She is off the charts small [either nurses don't study the weight distribution function closely, or the actual numbers don't matter for kids in this part of the curve. I don't know the percentile. I do know that she weighs 23 lbs and that Janny weighs 15 lbs and is in the 3rd percentile for her age].

We have been trying new schemes to get Clara to eat more. As you can see below, she has the option of peanut butter or jam on bread, mac and cheese, goldfish crackers, and applesauce. But she scrapes jam off the bread. A new scheme involves Jill reading books to Clara. Jill will stop until Clara eats another bite. So far, this has been successful.

Clara continues to talk more. The only unfathomable word at the moment is something like hookeeya. As in, 'I'm riding in the hookeeya.' Big bonus points to the first to decipher this.

... to standing up by herself without any assistance. She practices walking while holding our hands every chance she gets.

Finally, our house is once again filled. Fereshteh is back from Iran (thankfully, we decided to not start WWIII while she was still there. Maybe we can not start it ever!). We're glad to have her back.

post holidays

2012-01-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

I didn't make a resolution to blog more this year. Did you notice? I have an additional excuse for not blogging besides the fact that the girls are conspiring to eliminate my alone time. Jill and I were using our down time to read Hunger Games, the trilogy. The series was unlike anything I had read before: a mix of brutal violence and teenage romance. [To be clear, I don't read books in either genre, especially the latter.] The main character has a fascinating blend of bravado and massive self-doubt. I'll leave it to Jill to write the full review. In short, the story telling was excellent, but the gore made me ill.

We spent the holidays at Jill's parents' place near Nashville. Except for Jill getting the cold the rest of us had previously, the week was a relaxing time of playing with the kids, visiting some sights (mansion of the Maxwell house coffee people and a children's museum), and resting. And eating.

Ricky and Enoch are quite good sports with their bossy, nosy cousin.

I grew my first mustache for Christmas. I felt very proud, but Jill did not love it. So it's gone.

Quick updates for the kids: Janny can walk behind her push toys and has a tooth. She wakes up once per night to yell, drink milk, and go right back to sleep.

Clara likes to say '2 minutes' whenever bedtime, naptime, or dinner time is announced. She's eating slightly better now (albeit oddly. She at hot dogs for breakfast twice during our trip.), but she's still crazy skinny.

Christmas cheer

2011-12-18T17:59:00.002-07:00

Recen weeks have been tough. The girls both got colds a couple weeks ago and they have had a lingering cough since. Clara decided to go on a near hunger strike (she weighed less at a doctor visit than she had a couple months ago, not that she was big to begin with), and Janny refuses to sleep through the night. Last night we tried white noise (large fan) to no avail.

But you know what? I'm happy. During normal waking hours, the girls are super fun to play with. That takes some of the sting off middle of the night feedings. I still have a job, and I have a wife that loves me. And my health (except for a cold that won't go away because I don't get to sleep enough) is good.

Clara says funny (to me) things all the time, like 'Don't do that, baby [to Janny]', and 'Oh pretty', when she gets something she wants (like a chocolate).

Janny is crawling around the house and now pulls herself to stand. Clara is her hero.

Clara loves to play with the nativity figures. Here they are in a boat on a soapy lake.

Did I mention that Janny is crawling everywhere?

Another semester has blown by. Our super thoughtful students gave us a hot water holder machine. so come over for tea any time.

We read Curious George rides a bike 5 times yesterday. Clara cried the first time she saw George crash the bike. Sweetheart! I don't want to give too much away here, but Bob is able to true the wheel and fix the flat (things that Daddy can do also).

Speaking of biking, I'm riding just a little. I rode in the grass and mud with Tom last Sunday. Today, I took a short ride in the dark and saw another cyclist coming the other way. In the dark in mid December, 2 riders were out there living the life. The others all smartly rode in the morning.

MI thanksgiving

2011-12-04T14:56:00.001-07:00

Has it been a week already since Thanksgiving?

Two things conspired to delay this post. First, I took a work field trip to MO to visit a limestone mine and lime processing plant. The mine was awesomely huge. One of the 2 traffic lights in town is located in the mine. The formation is 100 feet thick and has been mined for about 100 years. Explosives are used to break up the rock. Grinding happens inside the mine, and the small rocks are sent on conveyer belts to the kilns (ovens). Lime processing involves cooking the rocks in 300 foot long, 11 ft diameter rotating kilns made of steel and ceramic tiles.

The second hiccup is that Janny is sick. She has congestion and a runny nose. She's also very tired, perhaps because she moaned from midnight to 3 am on Friday night. In related news, Jill and I are also tired.

We got together with Jill's side of the family in Jackson, MI, for Thanksgiving.

The Smiths all drove up together from Nashville. Clara really enjoyed playing with the big kids.

Some of the northern Michiganders drove down for Thanksgiving day. Here was the whole gang (minus photographer Jill) that was present for the meal.

On Friday, we went to the childen's activity center/science museum in Albion. Janny enjoyed the under 4 year old region.

To no one's surprise, Clara enjoyed the mini-river. Chad spent all morning here...

... and even allowed other kids to play as well.

The artistic amongst us decorated cupcakes. Jill worked hard on the simulated pie crusts.

Not just for decoration, those cupcakes were super yummy.

Our Christmas tree is up. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Janny reaches 8 months

2011-11-21T18:54:00.001-07:00

Janny is 8 months old. She's one of the bigger babies in the baby room at church.

She now sits, eats solidish food, crawls, and puts everything she can find into her mouth. She doesn't like resting on her tummy, so her crawling is a lumbering motion using two hands and a knee or foot or two. She's not fast, but she can get to a another spot in a room when needed.

We're feeding her baby oatmeal in the morning and a two dish dinner consisting of rice cereal and a veggie. But her favorite food are puffs, just as they were for Clara. We're trying harder to make her eat better than Clara did/does.

Janny's sleep patterns are unlike the rest of us. Jill, Chad, and Clara all love to sleep. Janny can do with much less. Here is a typical sleep schedule for us lately.
Clara goes to bed at 9pm.
Janny drinks a bottle of milk and goes to bed at 10:30. We go to bed straight away.
Janny wakes up at 1:30 to yell and drink a sip of milk. Takes about 30 minutes.
Janny wakes up at 4:30 to yell and drink a little milk. Again, about 30 minutes.
We all wake up around 7:30am.
Janny naps for a hour or two some time during the middle of the day.
Clara naps from 2-4.

Written out this doesn't look to bad. Still, we look forward to sleeping through the night again.

Clara is getting to be a talker. Discussion topics are limited but it's a blast to hear what she's thinking about.

before dawn

2011-11-13T07:41:00.001-07:00

Grandma and grandpa S stopped by for a short visit last weekend. Have I said this is the best fall ever? There we were sitting on the back patio of Pekara in downtown Champaign on the first Sat in Nov. And it was sunny also, which clearly overwhelmed my photography skills.

They left our house at 5am on Sunday to drive home. Our human fire alarm, Janny, woke them up, so they decided to get moving. Oddly, they didn't leave when she first yelled at 2 am.

On Thursday, we heard a loud thump at 5:30 am followed by some crying. Clara tried to climb out of bed and fell down boom. She calmed down enough to ask for milk and fell asleep shortly afterwards. We all woke up at a reasonable hour and did our normal morning activities (eating raw eggs, doing 500 pushups and situps, practicing Latin, and developing our political theory). Only when I picked up Clara to change her diaper did Jill notice some stains on her shirt. When she was on the changing table, I saw a large gash below her chin. Yikes! As a doctor, I knew right away that she needed stitches. As the wrong kind of doctor, I could do nothing for her.

So we called the doctor's office to learn where to take her. Convenient care (CC). For those outside of the U.S., you really want CC rather than the emergency room if you need emergency treatment but all your limbs are relatively attached. CC = good. Emergency room = bring a novel.

Janny is not too worried about our impending trip to CC, or all that worried about Clara either. Actually, Clara is not concerned about her chin either at this point. At about this time our friend Jaime stopped by to see if we needed anything from the grocery store. Clara wouldn't show off her cut.

We got past the CC door almost immediately. Clara started to get stressed. She didn't want to be weighed or have her blood pressure taken. Then she really didn't want the numbing paste rubbed on her chin. Then the nurse tied her arms to her waist with a sheet, and 2 nurses held her down with all their might. She said, 'mommy, daddy' a zillion times and thrashed against the nurses while the doctor stiched her up.

Then she was calm. Since we were at the clinic, I got my flu shot (with 4 kids staring at me from less than 10 feet away. Consequently, I couldn't reach my happy place, and my shoulder felt bruised all day). The nurse gave us all (except Janny) candy after poking me.

All our plants are getting ready for winter, save one. A pink rose bloomed this week.

Happy halloween

2011-10-31T20:49:00.001-06:00

The leaves on the tree in front of our house are red, so it must be time for halloween.

Clara felt lousy (must have been the visit to doctor office this morning) so she didn't enjoy her costume right away. Thanks to Fereshteh, she was a Persian princess. Janny was Winnie the Pooh. She's been quite happy despite getting her flu shot today.

Spirits were much improved upon the trick or treat visit of good friends, Hermione and Sleeping Beauty.

sniff, sniff

2011-10-24T20:57:00.001-06:00

The near perfect fall continues around here, if you forget the rainy, 40 degree days from last week. That means we've been visiting parks and playgrounds pretty often.

On Friday, I met the gals at the park near County Market after work. A group of 8ish year old boys were throwing sticks at a tree trying to knock down a plastic bag that was stuck on a high branch. The sticks were also getting stuck, and I helped the boys climb up to the first branch (and wondered if I should have. If they happened to fall...?). They eventually knocked the bag down. I picked it up, looked inside, and saw dog poop.

At dinner I noted that Clara's shoe had much dog poo on the sole. I had carried her to the restaurant from the park.

What's better than being a parent?

Janny is gaining mobility. No crawling per se, but she rotates around. She also does a hopping/scooting motion while seated that slides her along the wood floors. Have I mentioned that she's the loudest member of the family? She always has a scab or 3 near her eyes and nose. We keep her fingernails short and try to file them smooth to prevent these scratches. No success.

Lot's of pizza making has happened recently. Clara is taking after mommy and enjoys helping in the kitchen. Her new favorite sayings are 'what that?' and 'mine'. For the latter, Jill's chant is 'ours and we love to share.'

I rode my bike to the 'big' hill near Block on Saturday. 90 minutes of glorious fun. Only one farm still had corn to harvest-- the rest were all mowed up.
On Sunday past, our church had our annual farm party north of Mahomet. Tom battled the headwind out there while I drove my bike with the family in the car. We rode back together pushed along by the wind. As my boss often says, 'I've paid my dues.' I.e., I've ridden into many headwinds.

This is cheating. My mom took this photo while she and dad were here. We've been really lazy about taking outdoor photos lately.

Finally, Jill was all choked up today while boxing up another set of clothes that Janny has outgrown.

fall family visit

2011-10-11T21:22:00.000-06:00

My mom and dad popped in for a weekend visit on their way home from leaf gazing in Vermont. Interestingly, they were rather impressed with the trees here. The leaves are larger than those in VT. Of course, we don't have so many trees. They only grow along streams and in town so as to not block sunlight and steal water from more valuable plants. And we had sunshine and 80 degrees compared to rain and cold in the east.

We had an appointment with Leyla to have family portraits taken. My mom snuck in a few shots between the pro's. She's quite skilled.

It looks like fall around here but with lots of sunshine and warmth. Jill and the girls are often at parks during the day.

Dad bought an ipad version of Jack and the Beanstock. He was extremely popular with the three two-year-olds that he shared it with, including Clara of course.

Lots of leaves are ready to join my compost pile.

day off

2011-09-30T16:36:00.000-06:00

I took today off from work. Why? 1. I have 16 15 vacation days to my credit. 2. Today was a nice day. 3. Yesterday had too much bad news at work. a. Our funding agency is adding no new projects this year, and our project ends in April. b. The last proposal call we submitted to (rejected quickly) funded projects from defense contractors. i. I thought I had left that world behind after leaving the national labs. ii. Probably I don't have a good chance to win proposal contests when I compete alone against multi-national corporations. A change of tactics is in order.

The day off helped. See how I have a glow about me now?

Our local school had an in-service day, so we agreed to hang out with our neighbors' kid. We played and played at Meadowbrook Park.

We had planned to walk the path and look at the sculptures but Clara refused to leave the playground. So we played.

Janny slept. I think she sleeps about 11 hours per day lately. I advise her to sleep more.

This afternoon, I dusted off the race bike and road for an hour. I've been off and on sick with sinus/chest problems for a month. Finally the end is in sight. I rode moderately hard and felt great.

Finally, Jill was advised by a neighbor to not go outside after 8pm. On a recent evening, a different neighbor was robbed in their driveway upon driving home. Here's our view. The opposite approach is better. If more people are out and about, there is less chance of bad stuff. Living in fear is just sad.

Janny faces

2011-09-21T20:47:00.001-06:00

Hey, it's my birthday, so I'll post what I wanna. We were enjoying the beautiful evening outside when Jill noticed that the lighting was lovely. So we took some photos of Janny.

Two and a half

2011-09-20T20:40:00.001-06:00

Since my last post, we reached a couple milestones. First, Clara turned 2 years old! Her favorite toys are blocks, balls, and trains. I love when she plays 'catch' with me. We throw, roll, and kick any number of her favorite balls back and forth.

We had extra visitors this week. Jill picked up Josh, Ally, and their parents' car near Chicago, and they stayed with us for a week. [I skipped that trip because I was feeling terrible. I think a lack of sleep, a cold, and allergies conspired to nearly wipe me out for 2 weeks.] We had a blast pretending to be a family of 6 wherever we went. Let me tell you, adding two bigger kids that can do lots of things and have great attitudes is no problem. Adding two more babies would hurt.

Since they were here only Sun through Sat morning, I couldn't join any of the big events. And since we have 2 little people, the big events were limited to Curtis Orchard, local parks, and 707 cafe. Josh and Ally were very good sports!

The second milestone was that Janny turned 1/2 last week. We gave her some rice cereal to celebrate. The spoon attracted more interest than the food, but she did eat some. She can sit up pretty well by herself. Any toy that she can pick up (and that isn't stolen by Clara) pleases her. She plays seriously with her toys. She seems to never sleep during the day (she does, but naps are fewer and longer).

On our way back from MI on Monday, we took our second stop along the Kankeekee River. There was a path down the bank to a small 'beach'. Jill fed the baby, and Clara and I threw sticks, rocks, and clam shells into the river. The Kanky is an impressively attractive small river.

Finally, I should add that another person does in fact live in our house. After a 2 year break from us, Fereshteh is back under our roof. She's in the guest room, so now guests stay in Clara's room and the four of us all sleep in our room.

return to Kickapoo

2011-09-05T19:58:00.002-06:00

Labor day weekend couldn't come soon enough this year. Janny is starting to have demands beyond food and diapers. Work is normal. I was tired. Not a sleepy tired, but more of a body, spirit, and soul tired. So we did much resting (and I napped) on Sat and Sun. By Mon, we felt ready for action, so we headed out to Kickapoo state park.

I dusted off the baby backpack and the bjorn and we drove off (in our car!). Janny loved the first 15 minutes in the bjorn and then got angry. When we decided that she wasn't going to sleep in the thing we took her out. She was happy for 5 minutes. So we walked back to the lake and gave her some milk.

Do I look happy? Dang, this thing plus Clara (20 lbs, still) felt heavy.

We walked the riverview trail until the first road crossing. Not a bad first hike, babies!

We had some lunch at the lake restaurant. Three other families from TCBC were there with their big kids. They had just hiked along the river and were about to canoe on the lake. Clara and I spotted an albino trout [we learned from the canoe guy that the lake is stocked with these fish twice a year. Opening day after stocking is apparently super crowded with fisherpersons.].

After lunch we headed down to the river to play in some water. The summer has been very dry so the water level is low. This was a great thing for us because we could walk into the stream bed and throw rocks.

Who likes rocks and sticks and water more, Clara or daddy? We both had a blast. Some rocks were heavy for Clara!

Janny and Jill hung out by the shoreline and played with leaves.

Clara was so sad to leave at 2p. She cried and cried before falling asleep on the ride home.

Final notes: this was our first trip to Kickapoo since we moved back. 10 years ago (seriously?) we were going out there with Todd for mountain biking.

I sometimes wish that the U of I were located close to one of the handful of nice locations in the state. But Jill points out that they'd be much more crowded. So there's that.

celebrating 11 years (and a few days)

2011-08-27T20:52:00.003-06:00

This weekend we received two anniversary gifts: a hotel stay minus the kids and a zucchini.

Our 11 year anniversary happened in July. As per usual lately, we celebrated late, as in yesterday. Jill's mom and dad came for a visit and paid for a hotel room and watched the girls on Friday night and Sat morning. Jill came up with this plan: ride bikes after dinner on Fri to Tuscola (home of the outlet mall!) and ride home on Sat.

We were quite excited for this adventure. We put on much reflection and used our super lights on the bikes upon our 8pm departure.

Why is riding at night fun? Almost no traffic, nice temperatures, almost no wind. We saw zillions of stars. We rode the 25ish miles in about 2 hours. Look how relaxed and happy Jill is upon reaching the outlet mall.
After some sleep and a big breakfast (and purchasing gifts for the girls at the mall's toy store), we were back on the road again. We could see the corn and beans under the bright blue sky, but it was rather warm and the wind was against us. There was almost no traffic -- this is central IL after all.
While we were resting in the shade of a tree, a local named Bill came out to chat with us. And he gave us the giant zucchini shown above.
Lunch was at the Philo tavern in the center of the universe. Rib eye sandwich for me and a bleu cheese bacon burger for Jill. Yum.
We arrived home around 2:30 to Clara napping and Janny drinking milk.

The girls did great without us. Clara went to sleep without much complaining, and Janny slept through the night. The gang all visited the sweet corn festival which we missed completely this year. We'll get around to eating sweet corn soon enough.

... and one more from the trip

2011-08-22T16:58:00.005-06:00

I was struck down by a vengeful cold yesterday. Rather than show pictures of me lying on the bed, floor, or couch, how about some photos from CA? You bet!

My dad emailed me some photos from our Jeep trip on the Rubicon trail. In so many words, I said that it was a beautiful place, and here's some visual evidence. This is at the top of Cadillac Hill. The white stuff in the background is snow.

This is Spider Lake, a short hike off of the trail.

This is a minor example of why you shouldn't drive a Prius on the trail. And this was nothing. It does suggest the reason we drove about 1 mph on the first day of the trip.
Since Jill and I took some time to settle down (I hope that we have done so now, but we'll see), my parents stored some of my childhood valuables at their house. This trip seemed like a good time to claim my valuables. This list included an A's hat (actually my 16 year old team hat from our 29-0 season. That was a good team -- I was a 2nd stringer.), an official NFL football from the Pete Rozelle era, and the best of my baseball card collection.
I have a few more small piles and the complete 1985 Topps set (the McGwire usa card is from that set), but this is pretty much the best I got. As for Luis Polonia, my friend Todd had a birthday party at an A's game and we got to meet him. I think he (Luis, not Todd) spent some time in the pen later in his life.

I spent all of my allowance on baseball cards from 1987 until around 1991. This roughly corresponded to the peak of the baseball card collecting era. Smartly, I did become more interested in older cards near the end, and those haven't bottomed out completely. I learned a valuable lesson from this seeming waste of money -- that 'investments' don't always increase in value. Of course, this didn't stop us from buying a townhouse in New Mexico just before the peak of the housing craze. Fool me once...

long lost friends

2011-08-16T20:51:00.005-06:00

Despite our infrequent travel to CA and our notoriously poor keeping-in-communication skills (thinking of you guys in New Mexico, or not currently in NM as the case is with several of you), I'm happy to report that we had some fine visits with old friends.

2 thoughts from these visits.

1. Friends are generally quite happy to see you again despite long periods of no contact.

2. All friends we visited are married with kids. What's strange to me is how normal this felt. How hard is it to find a good person to marry? How hard is it to have and then raise children? Somehow, we all ended up in about the same place. **

Fred and Judy's family (not shown), friends from college, are still lighting up the Bay Area. Kenn and his wife Anne and baby joined us for dinner as well.

Eleanor was Jill's roommate in grad school. Now she's married and has a cute kid!
Andy and I go back to 6th grade, my best friend growing up. Funniest quote (not exact wording due to poor memory) of the trip came from Melanie, who has known Andy longer than I have: 'Sometimes I look at Andy and wonder why in the world I married that 13 year old.'
We just squeezed in a lunch date with Emily and her boys on our way to the airport. I must have met her in 7th grade, and we had many classes together through high school. Occasionally, I saw her in college too.
We took off one of the walls of Clara's crib so that she wouldn't hurt herself while climbing out. We found her on the floor under her bed in the morning. Twice we have had to rescue her in the middle of the night due to awkward positions, but finally we seem to have figured out a way to contain her wild sleeping while allowing wakeful escapes. We think.

** We do have friends in other conditions: single, widowed, divorced, and married w/o kids. We just didn't happen to visit them on this trip.

family vacation

2011-08-12T05:56:00.003-06:00

We're back in Urbana after our 2 WEEK vacation to California. A whopping 5 years had passed since our previous visit. And we hadn't seen my sister's family in about a year and a half because we missed the annual Park City vacation due to Janny's impending arrival.

The trip was fantastic. Firstly, our families really are a blessing. We enjoy spending time with them, even a lot of time. Mom, dad, sister, bro-in-law, and cousins all helped take care of our kids, allowing us to take it easy.

Cousin Anna enjoyed holding Janny, and despite the expression in the picture, Janny enjoyed the attention.
Sister Lisa came with us to New Brighton beach for some quality ocean time. Yup, we were all wearing sweaters in late July. We weren't sad to take a reprieve from the 'heat dome' that was oppressing the midwest.
We loved watching Clara play with the big cousins. She learned lots during the vacation, including how to climb out of a pack'n'play (which translated quite well to climbing out of her crib at home). Some additional words/phrases include 'hiiiiilllllllll' (whenever we drove down my parents' driveway), 'pool madu', 'pond madu', 'doggie madu' ('madu' is water), 'tookie' (cookie).
Lots of people have told us that Clara looks like this grandma.
Dad and I went 4 wheeling on the Rubicon trail with the Jeepers Jamboree. I left the camera with Jill, so I'll have to borrow some photos from him to post later. Quite the adrenaline rush! Dad had told me that the Jeep can handle being tilted at 30 degrees to the side no problem. Beyond that, tipping over is likely (handy tip: if the Jeep is tipping over, don't reach hand towards the ground to stop the fall. Broken bones result). We frequently approached this limit while also being pointed up or down a steep hill or rock. Throughout the first day, I completely tensed up when going over big obstacles. Eventually I consciously relaxed my tensed muscles, realizing that being tense couldn't help in any way.

I drove some, enough to scare myself and to develop some confidence. The Jeep is a manual transmission, which I haven't driven in years. The most tricky places were manned by spotters, good for pointing the way and bad that someone saw my poor driving skills up close.

The most memorable experience was changing a wheel on Cadillac hill (probably 15-20% grade) due to a sheared valve stem. Big thanks to the guys behind us that told us to use a strap to compress the suspension -- much less lift is needed to get wheel of the ground.

scary things

2011-07-24T15:43:00.003-06:00

Janny is sitting on my lap, Clara is napping, and Jill is at a baby shower. For the second time this weekend, I'm the sole tall person in the home. Yesterday, Jill took a personal day to run some errands and enjoy some relaxation. I partly understand why she needed it.

As per usual around here, things moved along smoothly. Until Clara helped me fix a flat tire on my collecting-dust-race bike. I got it pumped up to 90 psi, and she started to roll the wheel around the family room (of course I'm allowed to do bike repair in the house). BANG!!!!! I didn't make absolutely certain that the tire seated on the rim, and it blew. Clara sreamed, cried, bear-hugged my legs, and called for mama. She remained uphappy for some time. I was also bummed because that was a $9 tube.

Clara has had a few scary incidents lately:

1. at zoo, goose snaps at her hand

2. getting ready to leave uncle matt's house, a massive st bernard ambled to the door wanting to lick everybody. no leash, no owner in sight. Friendly. Clara not buying it.

3. tumbling head over heels down grandpa and grandma's stairs. i caught her three steps from the bottom.

We're starting gardening at a small scale this year due to the kids, so we only have a couple tomato plants, basil, and some growing black rasberry plants. I try to keep things growing, which is a challenge lately considering it's been murderously hot. We were 1 day away from picking our first tomato when I saw it laying on the ground half eaten. Squirrels! They are also knocking off the green ones. I now throw stuff at them.

I managed to squeeze in a bike ride last night from 9:30 to 10:30p. It was still hot. i enjoyed not really feeling how fast I was going -- just rode harder until I got the faintest sensation of pain. I'm no Cadel Evans.

I think that Janny can roll over now, but I've only observed the evidence without seeing the action.

family reunion in Nashville

2011-07-18T20:30:00.004-06:00

Last, last weekend was the White family reunion, and for the first time ever, it was held in Nashville, TN. From our house, the drive takes about 6.5 hours not counting necessary stops due to small people. Impressively, we took only 4.5 stops (once for gas while the girls slept) on the round trip. Somehow, we have kids that don't mind travel and sleep well at night.

Though Clara does travel well, even she can't just stare out the window watching mile after mile of corn fields pass by. So we let her play with the camera. I deleted about 80 photos of her eyeball from too close up (looking through the lens instead of the finder. Oh well, at least she knows how to turn it on and how to push the picture taking button). Here is one of her better self portraits.

We had a crew of 23 people (I think) hanging out at grandma and grandpa's house. Pretty good representation given that most of the family lives in MI. We took a trip to the zoo on Friday, but spent most of the remaining time playing games indoors. It was hot.

Jill and Christina and kids take a break from the cool air conditioning to hang out on the porch like in the old timey south.
Matt's ministry (Ultimate Goal) is allowed to use a repurposed building for indoor soccer. A local church bought out an abandoned strip mall but is not yet able to fill the whole place. So they offered to let UG use it for a nominal fee. Since we're all in good with UG, the family got to try it out. We played some basketball and wiffle ball in the huge room.
Grandparents' house is within walking distance J Percy Priest Reservoir.
The Smith family portrait, from our small camera.

happy 4th

2011-07-04T15:53:00.003-06:00

Fereshteh volunteered to watch the girls on Saturday morning, so Jill and I rode our bikes without kids seats or trailer. Jill dusted off the Gunnar, and I rode the trusty blue trek. To date, we've been having fantastically pleasant summer weather, but Sat was HOT (heat index 102, ouch). Did that phase us in the least? Hah! We rode to Mahomet with a short visit to Lake of the Woods. Lunch was at Hen House (philly cheese was pretty good (keep in mind everything tastes good after a scorching ride)).

Did I mention it was hot? We were away from home from about 10:30 am to 2:45 pm. We heard that Clara was sometimes difficult to handle (I, for one, don't believe this at all. She is our perfect angel child). Fereshteh has offered to watch the girls again.
On Sunday after church, we picnicked in Champaign with friends Jarrod and Jessie.
Clara and Janny wore matching dresses to church and the picnic.
I don't know when the following captured event happened. That doesn't look like my smiling, bouncing baby girl. Probably someone at 707 Cafe pinched her or something.
This morning, co-worker Ivan and I rode with the Prairie Cycle club. Their plan was to ride around C-U, but Ivan and I turned back at Lake of the Woods to take a slightly shorter way home. Ivan was on his brand spanking new Felt. Thankfully I don't have a problem with covetousness, so I was happy on my Look. I will try to get my right pedal to stop squeaking before the next ride.

No softball this week because of America's birthday. Happy birthday USA!

how to win

2011-06-29T20:43:00.002-06:00

On Saturday, Jill rode to the farmers' market for our weekly stash of fruit and croissants. On the way home, she stopped by a garage sale and bought a wagon full of blocks for Clara. $3 well spent.

There haven't been enough pictures of Jill lately. So here's another. She keeps on being super mommy. Today, she pulled the kids on her bike to my office, and we all ate lunch at Papa Del's. Mmmmm.
Janny smiles and laughs and grabs toys with her hands.
But I want to talk about Clara.

Some 2 months ago, she took apart our toilet paper dispenser, and one of the 3 parts disappeared. Jill and I looked to no avail. Today, Clara was playing with the remaining two pieces, so Jill asked her to find the other piece and then went off to work on something. When she returned, Clara was playing with all 3 pieces. She wouldn't say where she hid that piece.

She loves to enunciate the 'k' sound at the end of words. MilKKKK, blocKKKK, stucKKKK, socKKKK. She also said 'poopy' this week.

She knows the number 2. She's very happy about this. When she holds 2 balls, she says '2 balls'. Same with 2 pieces of pasta or 2 blocks. Strangely, she also says '2 mommy' and '2 daddy' while pointing at one of us. I take that to mean that we each do the work of 2 mommies and daddies. It has to be a compliment, right?

In the last post I mentioned the link between physical contact and team success. TCBC's A softball team increased the giving of high 5's, and we won for the 2nd time this season. Coincidence?

center of the universe

2011-06-21T20:11:00.005-06:00

Here's Jill's new hairstyle. It's very cute.

On Saturday, the whole family rode our bikes to Philo, IL, aka the center of the universe, also boyhood home of David Foster Wallace (according to his book of essays, though I wonder if he actually grew up in Urbana. I'll keep checking into this). It seems that Philoians prefer the former title as it's printed on their water tower. We saw no signs about DFW.

Our destination was Philo's only restaurant, the Philo Tavern. Normally, I get the steak sandwich (recommended by Mike Ditka during the year the Bears played in Champaign), but the daily special was bbq pork sandwich. The bonus special added cheese and bacon to the bbq, and yes, that's what we both got. You could make a good argument against doing so because we only rode about 8 miles to get there.

Janny keeps getting sweeter. She sometimes sleeps through the night. Just today, she started to giggle for Jill.
Prior to the bike ride, we watched Matt and Jaime's kids while they were house hunting. It was very fun to see Nathaniel shuffling around on his own.
Clara loves playing with these blocks. She says 'block' and drags either me or Jill to her small table. She points to the chair that we need to sit in ('daddy' or 'mommy'), and then we build something. Too fun! By the way, I forgot to note when it happened, but Clara calls us mommy and daddy rather than momma and dadda.

We lost another softball game but played decently well. Recently, I read an article that noted a correlation between physical contact (high 5's, chest bumps, etc.) and team performance. I sent an email to the team suggesting that we work on this. If it works, we may have to go further. Brotherly kisses, anyone?

dedicated

2011-06-17T20:09:00.004-06:00

Already we're starting a new weekend, but I'm still catching up from last weekend. We had Janny's dedication at church, so we invited some family to come celebrate with us. Many came. In fact, we had to borrow John and Nancy's house (they were away for the weekend) to house everybody.

We had the honor of hosting Janny's namesake, Aunt Jan. See any resemblance?

Janny is the happiest 3 month old baby in the world right now. You know who is happy about that? Us.

Check out the kids' table. Yup, that's Clara sitting with the 'big' kids eating her lunch.
We didn't do a whole lot away from the house. We had a blast hanging out in the backyard with bike parades, chasing, wagon pulling, and basketball playing. Late Sat afternoon we went to the park near County Market for some playground and wiffle ball. Perhaps 8 other kids at the park joined in on the game. Miko had the best swing, but I enjoyed Xavier's overhand-one-armed approach. Hitting the ball in this manner is not easy.
Here's the whole crew after church. We took up 2 1/2 rows in our usual back-corner. Serious representation.
Our softball team went through a dry spell, but we have played much better the last 2 weeks. We didn't win, but we didn't lose by double digits. I slumped a little bit during those games, but swung the bat better this week (3 for 4 (all singles though)). We've still only won one game, but watch out for us in the playoffs!

Finally, I interviewed this week for a promotion at work. I'll find out results in a month or so.

Double finally, Jill restyled her hair!

Memorial weekend zoo trip

2011-05-29T15:10:00.002-06:00

To celebrate Memorial weekend in style, we decided to take a trip to the zoo in Bloomington on Sat. I can't remember the last time we left town (Christmas? Maybe i should check the blog archives?). Btown is only 45 minutes away, so this was a nice way to build up to some upcoming adventures.

Below, Jill and Clara pose outside the sun bear's cage. The sun bear is my favorite animal at the zoo, a happy looking guy in continual search of fun. We had just waited out a monster thunderstorm inside the rain forest room.

We invited the list of friends on our 707 cafe list, and Matt and Jaime and kids answered the call. This worked out great as Jaime led us to a great Italian family restaurant for lunch. Oddly U-C has nothing like this -- Fazzoli's doesn't cut it, and the other Italian places are fancy-style.
On the way to Pontiac for a talk about water treatment in the oil industry, coworker Dave and I discussed big vs. small zoos. He argues that only large cities have economies of scale to have zoos. I argue that there must be a way to have a successful small zoo. Granted, many animals cannot be considered (e.g., elephants), and fewer animals can be in the zoo at any time. But why not rotate different animals in and out every 3-6 months. Then people might be interested in coming more often. Wouldn't this work? By the way, he suggested that we go to Indy's zoo, but not this weekend because they opened a huge new exhibit and were expecting large crowds. Again, this seems to argue for my opinion, no?

Also on that drive, we passed by a wind farm. Neither of us had been up close to one before, so I drove our survey's hybrid (Fusion) (ISGS is GREEN!) onto a service road and we got out. First, these windmills are huge! From a mile or so away the look big, but up close, wow! Second, on this average-wind day, the noise was a sort of background-noise-level whoosh-whoosh. It was noticeable, but not nearly as loud as most home appliances or automobiles on a highway.

Speaking of the 707 cafe, Jill switched to morning hours this week. Clara is taking a single nap in the afternoon more often now. More friends with many more kids showed up for the fun and donut holes.

a few back items

2011-05-20T20:48:00.004-06:00

Since I have a rare, spare moment, I'll catch up on a few items that flew by in recent weeks.

First, Janny smiles at us once in a while. It's not easy to make it happen, but here's proof.

Clara is still a riot. She is always doing something. Then it's time to sleep, and she's out like a light.
Here's a picture of Don, the cyclist riding across the country. His bike is a Jamis Aurora (I used to have one), a nice steel touring bike. Front and rear panniers and some funky metal fenders with no curvature around the tires. He travels light since he does no cooking or camping. He's quite fit for being 70.
Another school ended already. A couple of our adopt-a-students will be seniors next year!

the ballgame

2011-05-20T20:32:00.003-06:00

After thinking about attending an Illini baseball game for some years, we finally made it out to one tonight. We thought it would be a good time, especially since the weather was so nice today. We underestimated the fun by yards. First, we were allowed to bring our dinner into the stadium (we had planned to eat under a tree nearby). Second, free entrance. Third, some 20 kids played on the grassy hill along the first base line. Clara played with groups of them the entire time she wasn't eating.

This made for a remarkably relaxing time for us. We will probably go to this season's last game tomorrow.

I think that Clara gets frustrated when she doesn't feel useful in the kitchen. She loves to help however she can. For example, stirring. Oh, and she has a set of molars as of a few weeks ago.

Janny is a sweetheart, happy baby except when hungry. Then she can be really loud.
This is not our house. Our roof does not have a giant hole in it.
Finally, our softball team got thwacked this week. Opponent score 28 runs in 4 innings. Youch! Yet another of my best hits of the year was caught.

707 cafe

2011-05-13T19:20:00.003-06:00

Wouldn’t you know that the one night I plan to blog the system is down. Not to be denied, I am writing this up in word with the hopes of posting soon.

Jill has been full of fun ideas, perhaps due to a lack of sleep? She’s been inviting friends to come over for 707 Café, our home's cafe that is open a few hours per week. She invites friends to drink tea, eat desserts, and discuss children (or not).

The IL marathon came to town, so we walked down to mile 7 to cheer on some friends. Friends looked good at the ~ half-way point. No, we’re not interested in joining them.
I made a red brick path!
I hope you recall that our church softball team won the B league championship tournament last year. We are 3 games into our first A league season. One win, two losses. Here’s what I love about softball this year. Sometimes I hit the ball really well and make outs, and sometimes I pop up and get hits. Fun unpredictability. Did I mention that I have hit 2 home runs? I have, but I must thank the very favorable wind in each case.

We hosted a bike tourist on Wed night. Don retired in the fall, and decided to ride a bike from San Diego to his home in Dunkirk, NY. I really like his plan for the trip. He makes contact with people through warmshowers.com, the rotary club, and people he meets along the way. I imagine that riding alone all day and then camping alone at night would drive a brother nuts. This way, the former professor gets to share stories every night with someone different.

I learned a good lesson from him: when planning to meet someone in new to a city, don’t suggest a cafe that has more than one location. I suggested we meet at Espresso Royale on Goodwin. Near the corner of Pennsylvania and Lincoln, he asked several students how to get there. The first several had no idea. What? It's a 5 minute walk from there! It's the only cafe on the east side of campus! Finally, someone directed him to the undergrad library. Eventually, I did find him.

Rainy day in the kitchen

2011-04-27T15:11:00.008-06:00

And here's the rest of the story:

After chilling the dough, roll it into balls and flatten them with a glass dipped in sugar.

Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes.

Next, eat deliciously.

The whole recipe can be found here.

Janny's first easter

2011-04-24T20:23:00.005-06:00

You may have noticed the blogging hiatus last week. The problem isn't a lack of cute photos or amusing moments but that raising two kids is really tough. Prior to Janny's birth, I always had about an hour after sending Clara to bed during which I could rest, blog, or do dishes. Now, I have time and energy to do dishes.

Two positive developments transpired on that front this week. First, we hired help. A high school girl from church is coming for 2 hours per week to help Jill with housework, chasing Clara, or whatever else is needed. Second, I learned a little about Jill's experience. Previously, I had wondered why less than all the household management was getting done while I was at work. As of yesterday, I now wonder how Jill gets ANYTHING done during the day. This perspective has improved our marriage.

Our indoor/outdoor lifestyle is coming together. We have a functional grill and a set of patio furniture and we're using them.
The girls dressed in lovely dresses for Easter.
Clara was happy to show off the dress at church today.

Janny eats more than Clara did and is bigger than Clara was. This might become important in the near future. Yesterday, Clara bopped Janny on head (as she does with less frequent recurrence). Generally, Janny would wince slightly and continue staring blankly. This time, she turned her head towards Clara immediately and gave her the stink eye.

For our part, we continue to preach 'gentle with the baby' to Clara.

Clara's new favorite word is "yeah." She doesn't say "no" yet. It's useful and amusing that she will respond positively to any question.

"Clara, do you want to take a nap?"

"Clara, do you want to help mommy clean the floor?"

"Clara, is Daddy incredibly handsome?"

the cruelest month

2011-04-11T20:16:00.003-06:00

Glorious spring weekend. We wore shorts all weekend and spent much time playing outside. Some flowers are blooming. New grill fired up for the first time (pork chops).

My 3 girls enjoying the great outdoors.
Our group of adopt-a-students is growing faster than our family. We had all these guys and gals come over for dinner on Fri night. We met a friend of one of these guys at church on Sunday, so maybe we'll have even more soon.
I'll conclude with a few vignettes from this crazy life.

First, we were badly late to church a week ago. We're usually a few minutes (okay 5-10) late. That week we made a special breakfast, strawberry crepes, that took some extra time. Just as we were finishing up and hoping to leave, Janny started to cry. So we gave her a bottle. She threw up on her outfit. After changing the outfit, Clara needed a new diaper. Voila, 40 minutes late!

Second, on our way home on Saturday, we decided to ride past our old neighborhood. We used to stop and chat with a sweet older couple that sat on their porch everyday when the weather was nice. Like most people, they loved to see Clara. We moved (in a near hurry) just as the cold got started, so we didn't get a chance to let them know. The lady was on the porch with her daughter-in-law. She was so happy to see Clara again and meet the new baby. We loved showing off the girls. As we talked it became pretty clear (not 100% and we didn't ask) that the husband passed away over the winter. We'll miss him.

Another young person we knew in NM also passed away last week. That makes 3 for us, all under 40. Causes were avalanche, heart, and heart. We're praying for you, Steele family.

3 weeks

2011-04-04T20:00:00.004-06:00

After Grandma and Gpa S took off for home, the grandparents K took their turn cooing over Janny. With much love and help, the first two weeks with the new baby were not unbearable.

Janny is much like Clara was as a newborn. She sleeps in blocks of 3-4 hours at night and has one or two wakeful periods during the day. She cries if hungry or trying to do some business, but otherwise is very quiet and observant.

Janny's eyes are mysterious. They are very dark with shades that sometimes look gray, green, blue, or brown.
The first thing Clara says every morning after waking up is 'baby'. We walk over to say good morning to her little sister.
Finally, I have started rinsing dishes with cold water before placing them in the dishwasher. I might save a few gallons of hot water per day. Woo-hoo! I probably won't continue this next winter because the water is quite cold on my dainty hands.

birthweek

2011-03-18T10:39:00.003-06:00

Before we get to a couple updated pictures, I'd like to share a few practical steps to ensure a smooth transition from a family of 3 to 4.

1. Make sure that #4 is not born on the same day as #3. I don't know the optimal spacing, but 18 months is reasonable.

2. Don't be the person that gives birth. This is hard, tiring, and requires a heavy dose of healing. The 'coach' gets tired and feels much empathetic pain, but recovery from these is quick.

3. Invite in-laws to stay so that they can cook, clean, and play with person #3 in the morning while #1, #2, and #4 sleep.

4. Have a job without immediate pressing deadlines and with a generous paternal leave. I'm writing this from home on Fri at noon in front of the ncaa tourney game.

Good luck!

While we were in the hospital, Clara turned into a full-blown toddler. She's heavier, funnier, and funner. Here she is in bandita mode.

Here's grandpa holding an infrequently awake and alert Janny.
When she's not running around outside (we've had marvelous spring weather this week), Clara likes to see what Janny is doing. She doesn't like the idea of Janny using her stuff, but sharing things like the packnplay is fine.
This is the up-to-the-10-minute-update of Janny: asleep on mommy's lap.
Hmmm, I'm getting sleepy. Maybe I'll take a nap.

Janny is born

2011-03-14T15:59:00.002-06:00

Janet Verily Knutson was born at 2:48p today. We call her Janny.

Jill and Janny did a heroic job getting through the day. Both are feeling very tired right now.

Janny weighed in at 7 lbs 3 oz, a whopping 7 oz more than Clara at birth. She's 19" long and quite dashing.

Nurse Tina was called in for special duty today and was a wonderful helper. She and her husband ride bikes, so hopefully we'll see them on the road some time.

And happy pi day to boot!

mini bobike

2011-03-06T20:28:00.002-07:00

Recently, I have become aware that we're about to have 2 very small children. Until this point, I hadn't put much though into transporting the two kids via bicycle. We love the burley trailer, but until Janny can sit upright, we won't be able to fit both girls in it. Our relatives bought us a cool rear-mounted bike seat, but it's still a little big for Clara.

Last week I bought (via craigslist) a mini-bobike, a front mounted seat for kids weighing less than 35 lbs.

Installing the seat is no problem. Getting on my bike with seat installed reminds me of getting into the backseat of my roommate's vw bug back in college. Once on the bike, we were snug, but the handling and sight-lines are fine.

Clara and I rode around the block on the maiden voyage. I think the lack of smiles on Clara's face is due to (1) her taking any new activity very seriously and (2) the 40 degrees temp. Since there was no crying, I claim success.
For Matt and Jaime: we watched Nathaniel's video with Clara this weekend. She LOVED it, and watched it about 10 times. Here's her response at the end of a viewing:
That's 'more' in sign language.

Locally, Unofficial St. Patrick's day, or as its now called 'unofficial', was celebrated on Friday. Usually, I'm oblivious to such events, but I headed towards Green St at noon to buy my lunch. At least every 3rd house or apartment complex had a large (>20) group of people hanging out, drinking, and making merry. Everyone wore a green shirt except me, which is why I was surprised when not only did I receive a ball-fake on my way past the 'qb', but felt the football breeze just past my left ear as I walked down the sidewalk without turning back. On the way back from El Charro with 4 tacos in my backpack, I was prepared but the weak throw landed at my feet.

How could so many students be at so many parties? Our adopt-a-students, who didn't participate, say that students from all over the big 10 universities come here for it. I don't condone the over-drinking, but I enjoyed seeing that many people having fun.

getting close

2011-02-28T19:41:00.002-07:00

At Jill's last doctor appointment, we learned that Janny can come any time now. She's very unlikely to wait past her due date of Mar 13.

I felt like the last few months slogged by as we dealt with winter and the extra rest that pregnancy demands. But now I'm getting excited. I keep waking up when Jill gets up for her frequent 'nose powdering sessions', thinking this might be it.

Clara isn't resting on her laurels until lil' sis shows up. She's taken a fancy to playing with water (we put her in our shower so that she can pour with abandon) and reading books. The best part of reading books is that she demands to sit right on our lap for reading time. She doesn't sit still for much else.

Her 7th tooth arrived this week. She enjoys eating with her own spoon. She get a surprisingly good fraction of food in her mouth each bite. Also note that she likes water bottles/cups.
We have some wonderful friends. Since we're at often home not doing much, Neal and Christine have been coming over to hang out with us. Clara enjoys the attention.
Finally, a note about peas. I hated peas as a kid but rarely had to eat them since my mom also hated them. Well, peas are easy to cook, and Clara doesn't mind them so they are often on the menu. And you know what? They taste good. The texture is still odd, slightly mushy after the initial crunch, but they have a pleasant sweetness. Didn't they used to taste like dishwater? Has modern breeding improved them? Have I changed?

pricey conservation

2011-02-12T11:29:00.003-07:00

We have been living with new insulation in our house for over a month now, so now seems like a good time for a review. To be brief, we love it.

The full story is more complicated of course. Since the weather is never exactly the same month to month, I'll not worry that we've only one gas/electricity bill has come since the install and that bill had 3 weeks prior and one week post. That bill was 240, and the previous (including a week of visitors) was 260.

Let's say we save $50 per month for 6 months out of the year (4 cold and 2 hot). That makes $300 per year.

Our total cost was about $5500. Here's where I need a finance expert to tell me the pay back time frame (including interest, expected cost increases of gas/elec, value added to the house, etc.). In any case, I imagine that more than 10 years will pass before it is 'paid for'.

I'm aware of a number of cases in which improved efficiency leads to greater resource consumption. On a related note, I have kept our thermostat at the same temperature as before. The stat is located in a narrow hallway right next to the closet containing the furnace and water heater. I suspect that the temperature in the rest of the house is around a degree or 2 warmer than previously. I would probably lower the setting to make up for this, but the womenfolk would likely protest.

Mercifully, we have a warming trend this week. Now, we're off to lunch in our car. I'll crank the heater as needed.

back in baby blue

2011-02-05T10:57:00.004-07:00

It turns out that we did survive the snowstorm. Rumor has is that we got 4" sleet and 4" of snow. Shoveling it was very hard as evidenced by my broken shovel. It can't be replaced at the moment because there is a midwest-wide shovel shortage. Too bad because there is another 4" of new snow this morning.

I hope that you didn't mind the cliffhanger ending to the previous post. Here is the big reveal. Clara basks in the glory of Baby Blue Bicycle's baby blue bicycle:

And here's the profile view:
Jill's Trek, once darkish blue (see top picture), then baby blue (see right panel), then orange (hmmm, maybe in the annals) is now baby blue. Don of Creative Dust Powder Coating in nearby Villa Grove did a great job. The cost was $150 including stripping the orange, and he personally delivered it 9 days after receiving it.

Jill won't be riding it until at least a few weeks after the new baby comes, which is just as well given this very white winter.

why people move to CA

2011-01-31T21:07:00.002-07:00

Saturday was probably the nicest day of the new year (Sunday almost qualified, but the 2 hours of sunlight gave way to more clouds and gloom), so I put on my new winter tights and hopped on the trusty blue bike. Rather than riding in the morning with the club, I waited until Clara's afternoon nap when the temp reached around 33 degrees.

After heading southish and eastish for a few miles, I was inspired to head for the trees and streams in the farmland. The first stream crossing looked like this.

Not far downstream, I crossed again and found it frozen over. Even though I fancy myself as an environmental scientist guy, I can't explain why/where it froze downstream. I will say that the stream froze because it's cold.
After the corn and soy is hauled away and a few snowstorms have hit, the fields tend to look like this. That and the gray sky tend to dampen the old spirits some.
Shortly after I took this picture (just NW of Sidney, not the Aussie town), a guy who had just passed me in his car pulled over and took my photo. As I caught up to him, he said 'I took a picture of you.'

Finally, I'm happy to report that our blog title is/will be again more applicable to our current situation. Details forthcoming given that we survive the next 2 days of sleet/snow/freezing rain (weathermen are predicting 12" of sleet/snow accum).

death of a rim

2011-01-27T19:05:00.003-07:00

After riding bikes for over a decade, I have finally worn out a rim. I bought this Mavic MA3 rim in 2002 to build my first wheelset: a Surly fixed gear hubs and dt spokes. That's right, I was near the front of the big fixed gear wave. And this stuff was purchased from Harris Cyclery. I was rad.

When we moved to NM, I found the fixed gear less fun, so I took the rim and spokes and laced them to a dynohub.

Before I chopped the rim with a hacksaw, it was much harder to know how much material remained. The sidewalls were quite concave. Bruce the cantankerous shop owner thought I could get several hundred more miles out of them. Since we haven't seen an above freezing temp all month, I feared an explosion on my way to work. The extra sidewall material of a new rim (Sun CR18) is good for my peace of mind. Same dynohub and spokes.

Janny's coming soon. Here's Jill's belly supporting both girls at week 34 (I think?).
Clara fell at the playground and chipped a couple teeth, but I have been unable to photo the damage. This is a good thing: 1. they are hard to see and 2. damage is not bad. She doesn't complain when eating or drinking.
My favorite Claraism right now: she points then moves her hand to her ear and says 'hi' when she wants to play with the phone. I love to watch her dance also.

Fun facts: she still has 6 teeth (mostly), wears size 3 diapers, takes two 1 hour naps and sleeps from about 9p to 7:30a. She ate 2 hot dogs (only 1/3 of a bun) for dinner tonight.

MLK weekend

2011-01-18T20:06:00.006-07:00

A sure sign that a long weekend is going badly is when 'I'd rather be at work' comes to mind. I thought this multiple times on Monday when Clara was screaming at me.

Clara picked up a cold (maybe her second ever, easily the worst. She had a runny nose and a cough). Instead of enjoying play time by herself, she had to be held every waking minute. No problem, except that I'm not allowed to sit while holding her. There was much yelling.

I felt mediocre to lousy all weekend. I didn't have Clara's symptoms. Mostly I felt tired and lethargic (a 3 day weekend without any fun bike rides).

Jill had the worst of everything. She had Clara's cold. She vomited thoughout Sunday night and Monday morning. She's ~ 33 weeks pregnant. On Sat she felt bad. Sunday she felt terrible. Monday she didn't eat anything and barely moved. Except she did have to move on Mon because the insulation guys called at 8:00 wanting to come at 9:30. The access to the crawl space is in our closet. Occasionally I checked to make sure she was still breathing.

I hoped to go to work today (Tues) to take a break from the madness. Jill couldn't do anything again. So I got a 4 day weekend. Mercifully, Clara started to feel better this evening.

Enough of the lowlights. Clara has found a new way to eat bananas. We're so proud!

The previous owners of this house left us a pile of wood that I gave to my co-worker and this fine wagon. We dusted it off and tried it out this weekend. Clara enjoyed!
The insulation guys finished the house today. We now have 9" more insulation in the attic, and our previously vented crawl space is now sealed and insulated. If I had a larger fortune, I would replace the windows, but for now I'm quite happy.

And Lord willing, I will be going to work tomorrow. Huzzah!

like old times

2011-01-10T20:46:00.004-07:00

A big draw for moving back to Urbana was that we already knew some people from our grad student days. This week, we managed to get 3 of those families (now with kids!) to our house for fun times.

Leyla was first up, though without half of the family. Clara does her best to make her welcome.

Did you know that Maria stayed with us the first time she visited Urbana to have a date or few with Andy? Perhaps we positively influenced them?
Finally, Matt and Jaime and the kids came over tonight for some mac and cheese and merriment.

Watching Clara actually play with other kids is so fun.
Clara needs to be part of the action when I am doing dishes, so into the carrier she went. She needs to scrub a little harder and cover the entire surface, but she's doing well considering her small hands. She'll be so happy when she gets to wash them all by herself.

Happy holidays

2011-01-03T20:36:00.004-07:00

The house is too quiet right now as Clara is sleeping and the rest of the crew has gone home. Our huge pile of snow melted, and I'm back to work. Go new year!

We visited one of the few (3?) hills in town for some wild sledding. We skipped the run with the jump in the middle because the hard packed snow was fast enough for our gang.

I took Clara on a couple runs with me. She neither loved nor hated it. I take that as a good sign.
The Martinez crew got Clara a super fun bath toy. It's a pump and faucet combo with fun buckets. Soon she'll be ready to do my reverse osmosis experiments while I sip pina coladas by the pool.
Family portrait with our brand new fake tree and home made star (thanks Grandpa and Grandma!).
Couch shot of the cousins. Unsurprisingly, getting all 3 to look at the camera and smile was too difficult for us.
In biking news, I rode with the Wild Card gang on both New Year's eve and the day itself. Both days were windy, and the second day was terribly cold as well. Nice photo evidence as usual is on Paul's blog. I'm pleased with my condition though I'm quite impressed at how strong the strong guys are already.

Of course, the upcoming baby will very likely chop my riding time. We visited the doctor today and Janny and Jill are doing great. She (Janny) weighs approx 3 3/4 lbs.

Christmas preview

2010-12-23T14:57:00.005-07:00

All my posts to date have discussed with the past, so here's a curveball: a preview of the upcoming Christmas holiday.

Let's begin with the setting. For the first time in my adulthood, we are the hosts. So we need a tree, right? Since Clara has no self control, we planned to wait until Christmas eve to set up a tree. But today we find that no store in our neighborhood has any more real trees. Rather than decorating the evergreen in our front yard, we plan to buy a fake tree. I worry about the commitment to storing and caring for it.

10 people will be in our house for a week (though one is still in the womb). Now that we have multiple bedrooms and baths, our house won't feel overstuffed. Anyone else want to join us? We're out of rooms and beds, but couches are available.

I bought Jill's Christmas present over a month ago. I think it's a nice gift, so I hope she really likes it. Confession: I find the giving of gifts stressful, even to my wife of 10 years. After Thanksgiving, my former professor said that he enjoys Thanksgiving more than Christmas for just this reason. So I'm not alone.

I'm really enjoying singing Christmas carols during this advent season (exception: Angels we have heard on high). I'm quite excited about our church's Christmas eve service for one more chance to sing. I feel a mix of nostalgia (hay ride caroling in CA) and excitement for the upcoming Christmases when Clara and Janny understand what's going on.

On Christmas day, we'll eat Pop Tarts for breakfast (broiled in the over since we haven't replaced our toaster that died in Abq) and a ham for lunch. Stockings are opened during breakfast, and big presents after that. Nothing too big for us this year since we already got the house.

... and the guests are here. I leave the rest to your imagination. Merry Christmas to all!

2 winter treks

2010-12-12T18:19:00.003-07:00

Miserable weather came our way this weekend. Despite 5" of snow remaining on the ground and rather cold temps recently, we watched rainfall all day long as the temp hovered around 35 degrees. I kept hoping that it would slow if not stop, but at 3:30pm no end was in sight.

Needing to get some 'fresh air' to avoid stir craziness, I dressed in rain gear and hopped on my just-finished-up blue Trek. Observe the new fenders and front rack from Velo Orange. Very shiny! I worked extra hard to install them with uniform space from the tire.

I was comfortable for the entire 1 1/2 hour ride, except that my feet got soaked and chilly. Somehow, my garage door opener fell from my pocket on Main Street between High Cross Rd and Cottage Grove. I looked for about 5 minutes, but couldn't find it due to nightfall and a very wet road with snowy banks. Let me know if you find it.

Overnight, the temp dropped to low 20s, and we got a few inches of snow. The wind has been howling all day. Why not try another bike ride? This time, I rode the gray Trek with Innova studded tires. The roads were quite sketchy but I stayed upright.
Conclusion: I love Trek's sport touring bikes from the 80's. There is lots of room for fenders or studded tires, and they ride beautifully. However, if it keeps snowing like crazy this winter, I'll put a Surly Puglsey on my Christmas list.
Clara's spirits aren't dampened a bit by the dodgy weather.

A big change this week is that she now drinks milk on her own. We delayed empowering her for this because milk drinking was a rare opportunity to hold her. Nothing else makes her sit still for long.

snow storm

2010-12-06T20:06:00.003-07:00

Winter has struck with a vengeance, so we're working to keep our spirits warm. One good way is to bring lots of people over to literally warm the house.

For the first time this semester, we had all of our adopt-a-students over for dinner. Less than 2 weeks before finals start, and then they head home. So sad and happy -- like the end of a Harry Potter book.

Much snow fell on Friday night and Saturday morning. We all bundled up to either play (the gals) or shovel the driveway (me).

Jill's 13 very brave students came to our house despite temps in the teens for a pot-luck dinner on Saturday night. After the 1" storm earlier in the week, one of her middle eastern students concluded that he hated snow upon his first encounter. Maybe now that he's seen so much more he changed his mind?

Finally, some bike content. I shod my gray Trek with studded tires and went in search of ice and snow on Sunday afternoon. The best snow to be found was the arboretum park area of campus. Because of the very cold temps, riding through the powder with 35 mm tires was no problem. So fun!

local events

2010-11-29T20:26:00.003-07:00

On the weekend before Thanksgiving, we dropped Clara off at a friend's apartment and went to Jim's birthday party. Jim roasted a glam pig and invited co-workers (Jill is one), friends from church, and neighbors (he went door-to-door inviting them). Some 50 people came and ate and much was left over (12 baskets full?). I played some corn hole and lost to local champ Peter. Clara also had a good time.

On my way to work this morning, I was rudely and abruptly sent flying over the handlebars. Thankfully, I was only going about 10 mph at the time, so no injuries were sustained. As best I as I deduce, this is what happened. Coming out of a sharp turn on a dirt path, my foot pushed my fender onto the tire, which got stuck on the tire and crumpled. Nothing was jammed in the fender.

After gathering my wits, I de-jammed the fender and rode the rest of the way to work. Here's how it looks now.
Since I've been riding this setup for about 3 years, I'm going to assume this was a freak event. On the other hand, I might make a change or 2 (maybe switch from 177.5 to 172.5 cranks). Maybe I'll get a Boulder Bicycle (okay, not soon).

a happy thanksgiving

2010-11-29T20:00:00.007-07:00

For thanksgiving, we joined the Smith family at Jill's parent's freshly moved-in-house in Nashville, TN. The 3+ of us drove down there and back without incident. Clara slept large chunks of the ride and managed to entertain herself with either food or toys for most of the remaining time.

Grandpa and grandpa hosted a good time for kids of all ages.

As a bonus, the cousins from MI drove down to join us. Clara loves to play with cousin Josh!

We have decided to name the next baby Janet, or Janny for short, after Jill's Aun Jan, shown managing the mayhem here.

Indeed there was much mayhem when the whole gang was in the house. Clara was in awe of the big kids. We decided to not put her on the top of the people stack.
Most of our time was spent hanging out with the family, but we also managed to watch the new Harry P. movie and visit JPP reservior and the Opreyland hotel.

lull before the storm

2010-11-17T20:00:00.003-07:00

Probably our readers don't expect to be overwhelmed by the excitement that is our lives, but I hope to bring more action to the blog soon. Recently, when we've not been organizing the house, we have been forgetting to bring the camera to mini-events (like going to a park, walking to the grocery store (we switched from Schnucks to County Market because it's a handy 6 minute walk away), and Thanksgiving dinner with the adopt-a-students at church).

Clara continues to improve her walking. I expected that we would point to a specific moment when she started walking, but it was quite gradual. She walked behind her push toys. She stood up on her own. She took steps, but was clearly falling. Now she's toddling all over, and it blows my mind.

Wood floors, baby, and a blanket means lots of fun. No one was hurt during this stunt. Or when I pulled her.

Occasionally, Clara can put food into her mouth with a spoon.

A final interesting Clara note. Very, very late last night, Jill sneaked a peak into Clara's room and saw her sitting up and playing with her bunny blanket. Jill was quiet as a mouse, so Clara didn't notice. Both gals went back to sleep without making a peep. We wonder if she does this often.

getting settled

2010-11-10T19:14:00.003-07:00

We're starting to feel settled in the new place, now that we've been here for nearly 2 weeks.

We had our first overnight visitors already. Mom and friend Monica were in the state to check out Chicago and took the train south to say hello. During their brief stay, they babysat Clara and unpacked and organized our kitchen. We vote that they come back any time!

On Sunday, we had our first Bible study group meeting in the conservatory. To mark the occasion, Maggie served tea (in the British manner). Yummy!
Clara couldn't be happier about the presence of the dishwasher. We're happy because more than 4 of our large plates fit on the bottom rack.
Today, our latest piece of furniture arrived: a very long used couch.
True, the rug doesn't match, so it will be swapped out soon. On the right side, you can see one of the chairs that we bought through craigslist. The seller turned out to be a fellow ISGS employee that I hadn't met. Next time I visit the big building, I'll say hello.

We've met a handful of our neighbors. The neighbors to our backyard called to fill in all the scoop about everyone else. She also mentioned that she can see inside our house quite easily. Noted! Our westerly neighbor is a toffee maker. I enjoyed many pieces today.

Finally, Clara is walking! I'd guess that she is crawling 2/3 of the time and walking 1/3 for now.

new home

2010-10-31T20:27:00.002-06:00

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!

2010-10-21T20:05:00.004-06:00

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

2010-10-13T21:07:00.003-06:00

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

2010-10-07T19:18:00.006-06:00

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!

back from the Pitts

2010-09-30T17:12:00.004-06:00

I had my first business trip as a daddy this week. Umf, I felt gut pain the first couple nights from missing the kid.

I spent Sun through Wed near the confluence in Pittsburgh at a groundwater protection conference. The conference theme was the water-energy nexus. Did you know that electricity production uses about the same amount of water as agriculture in the US? Did you know that India uses 30% of its electricity generation to pump groundwater? The nexus is an HUGE story.

Bobby Kennedy Jr. was the keynote speaker. He walked within 1 foot of me, but I neither shook his hand or tripped him. He hates coal.

My birthday happened a week ago. We had caramel apples instead of cake. I hope to bake my cake tonight.

Here's some reasons that I missed Clara terribly. What a funny kid!
Clara is a huge star with Jill's students.

The conference was too busy for me to enjoy Pittsburgh. The one tourist thing I did was ride the incline. I would have loved to ride a bike there and climb some of the steepest streets in the country. Maybe next time.

whirlwindy

2010-09-14T20:21:00.002-06:00

Big news to report this week, but let's save it for the end.

Clara's big birthday celebration extended to essentially a full week. Jill's parents stayed with us a couple days and brought birthday presents. Clara is clearly impressed.

Quiet time is not overly common with the ever-active Clara, but grandma is able to get some reading time in.
One difficulty of marrying someone that grew up 2000+ miles away from home (and living near neither place) is that getting both sets of grandparents together is a rare event. We're pleased to report that for the 3rd time ever, both sets of parents were in Urbana albeit for a couple hours. Here's your proof.
Clara loved playing with Grandma's iphone, perhaps her favorite toy to date.
One of Jill's students is quite the photographer. My favorite subject:
Okay, the big news. First the smaller news: it looks like we'll be selling our townhouse in Los Alamos. We accepted an offer from a buyer, and if all goes well we'll close near the end of October. Hurray!

Finally, we're expecting another baby in March! My favorite name for the baby is Otis, but no one else likes it. But that's what we call the kid for now.

first birthday bash

2010-09-06T19:02:00.003-06:00

Today actually isn't Clara's birthday, but it was a fine day to celebrate. Last year, in the evening on Labor day, Clara was born. Now she's a whirling dervish with a grand sense of adventure. As for us parent-folk, we're full of joy and gratitude to have her in our family. And sometimes, we're exhausted.

For lunch we went to Clara's favorite Mexican restaurant, where she is adored by the wait staff. First, they gave her a helium filled balloon. After she ate some frijoles and arroz, they put a sombrero on her head, sang a birthday song, and set out a plate with whipped cream and chocolate. All very good!

Now that she has some hair, that's another good place to put whipped cream.
After an afternoon nap, we were joined by some friends at the local park for a picnic and cupcakes. Thanks so much to all for celebrating with us! It has been a joy to have you in Clara's life during the last year.
Clara ate a bunch of sweet potatoes before starting on her cupcake, a white cake with lemon cream cheese frosting made by mommy and daddy. After dipping her hands in the frosting she put some in her mouth and ate with relish.
Will we pay for Clara's excessive eating of sweets eating today? Time will tell...

Stocking up on the 80's

2010-09-04T10:56:00.003-06:00

I'm no nostalgist. Though I enjoyed growing up in the 80's, I'm pretty happy with life right now. That said, I seem to be a huge sucker for bikes from the 80's, as evidenced by the photo below. Only one is not ours.

As Clara rapidly approaches her first birthday, moving everything to everywhere else is about the most fun to be had.
Clara needs lots of energy to accomplish her daily tasks. Starting with a jug of milk and a glass of oj gets her off on the right footing.
Jill (and I) survived her first week teaching a reading class at the IEI. Perhaps one reason for the job availability is fellow teacher's sabbatical to jolly old England for the semester. I think Clara will miss her.

A new BOB

2010-08-27T09:53:00.003-06:00

Today (Fri) is a day off for daddy, except that he's taking care of the baby who happens to be napping at the moment. I should mention how happy I am about the gorgeous weather we've had lately. Sunny and dry enough that I don't have to mow the lawn often.

In biking news, I've been advising our friend Nina on her road bike acquisition plan. She's been riding a nice hybrid for some years and was hoping to enter the glorious world of road bike riding. Also, she wanted to build up a bike from all the parts.

Some time passed, and ebay auctions were not 'won', before we came across a 1988 Bridgestone RB-1 frameset from the i-BOB list (internet Bridgestone Owners Bunch. Fun fact: Bridgestone has not exported bikes to the US since 1994). I had some spare parts in the garage, so last week we started to put it together. Eddie Merckx looks with approval at the lugged steel frame.

Some 3ish hours later, we had a mostly ridable bike: single speed, single brake, too-wide handlebars. I think Nina is gonna like it.
I'm afraid that Clara is developing a bit of a reputation in the church nursery. Last week she took a pacifier out of another baby's mouth to play with it (she doesn't suck on them). You wouldn't know this bully streak by looking at her.
In other news, our church softball team won the men's B church softball league championship. After finishing the regular season 5-5, we were the 8th seed in the tournament. Of the four tournament games we won, three were by 1 run. And we were the visitors for every game, so we had to hold them off during every last bottom inning. High drama for Jill, Clara, and our other 3 fans!

Finally, Jill is venturing closer to work-a-day life. In addition to her normal rating from home job, she'll be teaching a reading class at the Intensive English Institute. The current plan is for me to watch Clara during class (1-2 M-F) for my lunch break. We're excited about this gig.

melted

2010-08-15T19:56:00.003-06:00

I'm writing this post with the a/c off and the windows open. After 2 weeks, the heat has broken. During that time, I would walk outside at 10pm, and it would be hot. I would ride to work in the morning, and it would be very warm.

Clara managed to find entertainments during her more often than usual interior confinement. To her dismay, many of our cabinets are locked, but the pots and pans are accessible.

We played in the garage one night and learned that the floor is very dirty. Note Clara's knees and hands. Soon she will be walking. Sooner, we'll wash the floor.
On Saturday morning we volunteered at Salt and Light, made relatively famous becauseExtreme Makeover rebuilt the leader's home and provided truckloads of goods. I didn't bring my camera, so no photos with the somewhat famous family. S&L gave out hundreds of backpacks filled with school supplies to families that waited in line for quite some time to get them. Jill and I walked the line handing out cups of water.

After church today, we went to lunch with John and Nancy and a couple law students. Zack is from Fremont and went to Cal. There are hundreds of people that fit this description, but two of them meeting in Urbana rarely happens.

Other than my commute, not much bike riding has been happening. Today I rode to my favorite destination, Homer Lake. Felt soooo nice.

very hot

2010-08-08T19:35:00.007-06:00

This is a rather disjointed post of recent goings on. I blame the heat. Each region must have a unique way to quantify the weather so as to impress outsiders of the misery we endure. For example, in the desert, one could cite the temperature (i.e., Ack, it's 115 degrees!). Here in the midwest, we use the heat index, a complex combination of humidity and temperature (i.e., Please kill me, the heat index is 117! (which it was on Tues and Wed)).

If you haven't stopped by to visit us (or if you live in town), you might wonder what my co-workers look like. Our leader, Massoud, retired last week so we ate lunch together and took a photo. He gave a speech advising us to do work we enjoy with people we like. And make sure that our work and ideas are relevant.

Here's the best picture to date of Clara's lower teeth.

Friend (and fellow Wild Card bike racer) Tom came over for dinner last week to show pics from his recent trip to Malawi. That's in Africa. He went there with 3 others from our church to work at Rafiki Village, an orphanage/school for children that have lost parents due to AIDS. I don't have a feel for the place, but it seems to have an intense blend of hope, joy, and grief. After the orphanage work was finished, Tom did a 6 day hike of Kilimanjaro.

Tonight our friend and budding professional photographer invited us to a park for a photo shoot. Clara was a fine model despite the heat and mosquitoes.

Finally, we've had our second set of Mormon missionaries visit us here. I impressed them by remembering the name of a previous guy. We're impressed by their deep knowledge of the more mysterious passages of Scripture (Paul's mention of 3rd heaven, Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead, etc.). Tomorrow they want to talk about our pre-human life as spirits in heaven. Since that's not of general interest we'll talk about the gospel stories of Jesus' life instead.

milestones

2010-08-01T07:17:00.006-06:00

Before we get to the newest news, let's rewind the internets and recall a couple big events. First, Jill and I celebrated our 10th anniversary while on vacation. 10 years of love, laughter, and living the dream!

Second, my mom visited right after our vacation. The biggest adventure the gals took was a trip to Arcola, nearby Amish town, where they learned that much stuff is closed on Mondays. They enjoyed the nearby Mexican restaurant nonetheless.

Back to the present: we celebrated Jill's birthday last night. Happy birthday, Jill! We invited some friends over to celebrate with food and a dramatic reading of The Importance of Being Ernest. What's more appropriate than cucumber sandwiches? Thankfully, the farmers' market had cucumbers for ready money.

Jill has been wanting to have gatherings in our garage for some time, so that's where the activities happened. Nancy and Nina anxiously await their next lines.
Maggie dressed for the role of Miss Prism, replete with handbag. We forgot to check for a stain caused by an exploding temperance beverage.
Many thanks to Christine for making the apricot-almond cake. Yummy!

Northern vacation part 2: the Lake

2010-07-22T19:31:00.007-06:00

For the second week of our vacation, we rented a beach house near Michigan City. You don't need a good reason to spend a week on the beach at Lake Michigan, but we did. Jill's parents had their 40th anniversary last year, and this was the celebration. Matt's family, Mom and Dad, and we all came.

A typical looked like this: breakfast, beach, lunch, beach, dinner, beach, bed. Clara took some excellent naps on the beach.

Brent and Beth's family came down for a beach day. We squeezed some bubbling blowing, squirt gun fights, and board games into our beach days.
Usually, I'm not that excited about swimming, but swimming in the Lake was a blast. The water was mild, shallow for a Long distance from shore, and mildly wavy. We played catch with a frisbee, nerf football, and tennis ball. We swam out to the buoy because it was there.

Clara and the boys played a rousing game of 'where is ___?'. They would all hide behind the coffee table and stand up when their name was called. Super funny!
So the vacation came to an end. We saw a Lamborghini on our way through MI City. I returned to bug picking from our spruce tree. The bugs enjoyed the 2 week reprieve.

Northern vacation part 1

2010-07-18T06:53:00.006-06:00

Taking advantage of my massive vacation allotment, we just took a 2 week vacation. The first week was a near re-creation of our 2003 bike tour of MI, except that this time we had a baby with us and drove the entire route. On the bike tour, our relatives were amazed that we could ride our bikes so far and pampered us. For this trip, Clara received most of the doting.

The first stop was Athens, MI, where we visited Great-grandpa and Aunt Kevin and Uncle Terry. Clara swam in a pool for the first time in Uncle Terry's pool. She even dipped her face in the water a couple times. The big outing was a trip to Turkeyville for a turkey (no kidding!) lunch and mini-concert by a band playing Johnny Cash songs.

Then we moved on to Jackson (birthplace of the Republican party!) to see cousins Beth and Brent and Amy and Aunt Jan. Clara enjoyed playing with Josh and Alli's plethora of toys. I enjoyed Wii sword fighting with Alli, though she more often got the better of me.

Jill's childhood friends put on a shower for Clara. She loved the chocolate ice cream cake.
We took a day trip from Jackson to Bowling Green, OH, to see Todd and Leigh. Clara enjoyed playing with their son Jack, who is 3 months older than her, and his toys.
Penultimate stop was Evart to see more Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and great-grandma. We watched the cows, birds at the feeder, and the Tigers beat the Twins on tv. If you're wanting to become a Christian but are afraid of losing too much of your Sunday at church, consider joining the Free Methodist church in Evart. The service was 45 minutes, including a nice performance by some dulcimer players in town for the festival.
Finally, we headed down to Zeeland. Here we are at the top of Mt. Pisgah, a 200+ stair-step hike, that overlooks the big lake and Lake Macatawa (fun fact: the property taxes for some houses along Lake Mac are $40k per year).
We took a few short bike rides, once pulling Clara in the chariot and a couple times without her when she was napping (fun note: we didn't leave her home alone). Favorite place was Evart with nice rolling hills, ponds and a river, and dirt roads. I'd love to explore that area more.

bug picking

2010-07-02T20:16:00.003-06:00

Last fall, David and Heather told us that some bugs were attacking the spruce tree in our yard. I thought little of it. A month later I got around to picking pine-cone shaped objects off the tree, but no bugs were seen.

This week, I noted that the spruce budworms were back. Wanting to get on the spruce tree's good side, I picked a few hundred and threw them on the ground. The next day, the other David told me that the bug/pods can crawl back to the tree from the ground. Rats! I broiled the next round on the grill, but then settled on drowning them in soapy water. After 5 days of picking, they are harder to find on the tree, but they aren't gone. I probably picked 1000 off the tree.

The worms live inside those mini-cones. Like turtles, they hide inside when startled. Unlike turtles, they are creepy and gross.

On the other end of the cute-ugly spectrum is the happy baby of the house. She's climbing up onto everything she can.
Thankfully, since we haven't locked the cabinets yet, she has only opened one drawer so far. That would be the drawer with q-tips in bulk that can happily be dumped on the floor.
Sunday afternoon church picnics took place all month. Clara did her best to entertain the brethren.
Finally, in competitive sports news, our softball team is playing mediocre ball. We, including me, could hit in a more timely and frequent manner, but our defense is good. As for bike racing, I skipped the 2 races I did last year. One would think that with a nearly perfect angel child such as Clara, Jill and I would never feel worn down. Alas! My fitness went south, and I didn't want to spend the time and cash to race at a sub-optimal level. This Wed, I did join the team for a training ride and even got a shout out in Paul's blog. Thanks, Paul!

a case for small zoos

2010-06-23T19:46:00.005-06:00

We took a road trip to nearby Bloomington (IL not the cool Breaking Away town in IN) to visit the zoo. While in Abq, we joined the local zoo so that we (more often, Jill) could visit the animals any time. The polar bears there are fantastically fun.

Given that Chicago has 2 zoos and that Bloomington is a large town not far from there, we didn't expect the zoo to be large. And it is not. But here's what's nice about a small zoo:

1. Not too much walking or time and you see everything

2. Small crowds

3. Interesting small exhibits (e.g., bugs, tiny white haired monkeys, goats that may be petted)

Of course to qualify as a zoo, there must be monkeys and big cats. Done and done in Btown.

There is a rain forest building with unshy birds. Several of us almost walked into this guy.

The leopard paces behind Jill and Clara.
Our favorite animal was the sun bear -- a large-dog-sized bear that enjoys digging and overturning objects in pursuit of food.

For lunch, Clara tried a pickle. Yum!
Check out the big tower near downtown. No elevator could be seen, so we're guessing that it's not an attraction a la Eiffel Tower.
Clara is now climbing objects to a standing position. So far, no major injuries have incurred other than some head knocks on the carpet. She also sometimes crawls on hands and knees, but when in a hurry, the army crawl works best.

noise

2010-06-15T20:20:00.002-06:00

I can't remember if a previous post discussed our musical ambitions (yes, I'm that lazy). The skinny: we're trying to learn to play the piano (Jill) and guitar (Chad) so that Clara (a) grows up somewhat exposed to music and (b) can be the skilled member of our trio.

You might ask yourself how Jill makes time to practice while raising our relentless baby. This might shock you, but here's your reason:

Here's me strumming away on a smooth C chord. I am getting the hang of strumming and switching chords, but the F chord is my current nemesis. Our friend Jessie (more on her below) told us that a certain worship leader she knows rearranged songs to get rid of all F chords. So maybe I don't need to get it after all?
Sometimes Clara needs to sit with mommy at the piano and bang a few notes.
Spectacular thunderstorms have been passing through in late afternoons. The best part is that the temperature and humidity drop after they pass. It's barely evident in the photo below, but that rainbow was the best I've seen in the midwest. We could see the whole bow from our porch.
Somehow we didn't get the camera out this weekend to prove that Jessie came to visit us. She's on furlough from teaching at an international school in Kenya. She loves living there despite the lack of good cheese.

My short list of reasons I'm glad to not live there: no pizza, nobody rides bikes (shocked by that!), armed guards required. Otherwise it sounds kind of fun.

9 months

2010-06-07T20:11:00.004-06:00

Guess who turned 9 months old today. Give up?

Clara did! She visited Dr. Beck today and was declared a-okay. She's average height and 25 %ile in weight (just under 16 lbs). She speaks no words and has no teeth. Her latest trick is dragging toys with her on crawls around the house. She also grabs low hanging surfaces with hopes of climbing higher. So far she remains grounded, but we worry about future experiences with gravity.

Our church small group celebrated Christine's recent graduation. Congrats Dr.!
We also had the senior pastor join us to discuss our church's 'plans for growth'. I feel for church leaders that hope to implement big changes. Churches are hugely conservative (in the disliking change sense), and members tend to get upset if their opinions are rejected. We'll be praying.

Joel and Leyla along with their kids came over for dinner and wiffle ball in the backyard. We really need to play more wiffle this summer.
Excitement this weekend was tempered by setting up my latest reverse osmosis experiment and getting data. When our lab is rich, I'm going to buy automated sampling equipment

local hot spots

2010-06-02T20:09:00.002-06:00

We hit the second of the 3 nicest, nearest vistas outside town this week -- Allerton Park. In the olden days, we rode our bikes there and back. We're still full of vigor, but we took the motorcar. There are some very nice gardens in the park, and 2 of them had weddings the day we visited. In fact, we walked right next to a bride and her father as they were about to march in. We shared no bits of wisdom from our nearly 10 years of marriage.

The high temps and swampy conditions couldn't dampen or melt this family's spirit.
We walked out to the sun singer and back through the swampland. I'm happy to report that papa has the sweetest blood for mosquitoes. Total bites at the end of the day: Chad (8), Jill (0), Clara (0).
Jill recently has been saying that she can read Clara's mind most of time. It usually goes thusly, 'what's that?' 'can I eat it?' I couldn't say what she was thinking when this photo was snapped.
For memorial day, we planned a bike ride to a restaurant in Tolono for lunch. This was a great plan -- we'd ride there in the dry, eat lunch during the storm, and then ride home dry.

The only problem is that Dead Horse and Lu and Denny's didn't sound or look so great, respectively (perhaps we are mistaken, but after looking us over a local suggested that Monical's (which appeared closed) was our only viable option). I recalled visiting a nicer restaurant many years ago, but now methinks it is actually in Philo. We'll investigate.

So we ate bunches of ho-hos from the IGA and watched the heaviest rain from their mulch department. We rode through some light rain to BWW in Savoy for a late, well-deserved lunch.

Clara had fun, and so did we.

big huge weekend

2010-05-26T20:29:00.007-06:00

Our weekend was so big that it took 3 days to get everything done and 3 more to write it up. First, I took Friday off from work so that we could meet up with the rest of Jill's family in Indy. Since rain was in the forecast, we scrapped the original plan of going to the zoo and went to the Children's Museum.

We first visited the Bob the builder room, where kids could play with toys and climb on construction looking stuff. Across the hall was a Barbie exhibit. I thought, well, it's sort of fun but I don't see the big deal. But each following room got better and better. I highly recommend a visit.

Ricky and Enoch loved the hand operated backhoe and tanbark shoveling room.

A few exhibits were designed for babies, but Clara mostly played with the family.
Best exhibit: small river with weirs, channel control, crane, boats, locks, and dams. My second favorite: the actual train engine designed to push trains up a 5.9% hill. Hugely huge!
After playing for 5 hours, the gang was just starting to wear down.
The Tour de Champaign took over the streets of C-U this weekend. On Sat, I raced the cat 3-4 criterium race with a few teammates (2 had raced the earlier 4-5 race and 2 others were fresh). I assumed that most riders were cat 4 since there was another 3 race later. The pace felt very fast for the entire race, but I assumed that was due to my limited training. I yo-yo'd between 20th and 10th position throughout the race. Once I got stuck at the front of the peloton chasing a small break. After 5 seconds, I was cooked and decided to hide. As the laps counted down, I successfully moved up a bit and took 6th in the sprint.

Two days later I found out that I was the first cat 4 finisher. Proud!
Sunday's course was supposed to be a figure 8 but due to road construction the second block was converted to a straightaway and 180 turn, as photoed well by Jill below.Very early, I realized that the back of the group was a bad place to be. As the leading riders finished the turn, they sprinted back to speed. Meanwhile, riders near the back were still slowing down. Staying with the group required digging deep into our suitcases of courage. Every lap. 35 laps? It was hot (90 degrees at least).

Eventually, teammate Jason took off on a break and I stayed in second position in the group. No one tried to come around us to pull for about 10 laps. Poor guy in front. Jason won the race, and I came just short in the bunch sprint and got 4th overall. Proud.

Mercy, it's been hot this week.

Clara's latest achievement is going from crawling position to sitting. We're working on teaching her sign-language for 'more' and 'all done', but she prefers to cry or shove the spoon/bottle away from her mouth.

relentless

2010-05-19T19:03:00.004-06:00

What with being either rather pregnant or on bedrest, surviving winter, and raising an active baby, Jill had yet to take a ride to Homer Lake since we moved back to town. Saturday's plan was to eat lunch in St Joe on the way to the Lake.

Here we are looking happy and getting hungry at a branch of the Salt Fork River (I think). It's no Rio Grand, but after riding through miles of corn fields, seeing a lazy river is a pleasant diversion.

The baby slept almost the entire ride. This was the longest ride I've done pulling her along (maybe 30 miles?), and I confess to feeling somewhat worn by the end. On short rides in town, the chariot only feels weighty during accelerations. On the long ride, the extra drag adds up.
After some enchiladas (me) and flautas (Jill), we reached Homer Lake, looking ever so green after the many rainy days of late. A retired professor in my ol' department was there on a walk, so we chatted a bit. He is enjoying his retirement by working on a biofuel project funded by the beleaguered BP. How's that for some much needed positive press for BP?

At El Toro East, we met some local bike club members led by the renowned Sue J. Many were dressed just like us and didn't have clip in pedals. What kind of cyclists are they anyway?
This here is product placement. Looking to buy a bike? You won't do better than one of theirs. (Since we buy used bikes for cheap, we don't own one. Maybe someday).
Clara is dominating our lives as much as ever. A one word description of her: relentless. Lately, she plays from 3 to 10:30pm with nary a break except to eat. We're really hoping to push her bedtime up a little, but she is wired between 9 and 10.

Thankfully, she's fun and cute. Here she is eating milled chicken/rice/yogurt curry. She liked it!

two-thirds old

2010-05-11T20:24:00.004-06:00

Another month has come and gone like a thunderstorm. Clara still has no teeth and only some hair, but she hasn't been resting on her laurels. She figured out that eating solid foods is a significant step beyond putting toys in her mouth. When hungry at dinner time a few days ago, she snapped at spoons of oatmeal. Previously, eating solids had been merely a diversion.

She's a crawler now, mostly. It's kind of a drag/army crawl with interspersed rolls, but she gets all around the living room, often in pursuit of power cords, loose papers, and vents. The tiled kitchen and hallway are barriers due to a few too many ouchy head bonks. And she's getting louder, complaining when either frustrated or bored with us.
She loves hanging out with our friends. Sadly, Fereshteh is gone for summer, but will be back in the fall as a big-time UIUC student. Go Illini!Clara and Jill sometimes stop by my office to say hello and bring a treat. Clara loves checking out new places. How many other phone cords will she see during her lifetime?
Speaking of oldies but goodies, on my way home today a fraternity was playing Guns n Roses in the front yard. Which got me thinking, that song came out when I was in jr. high. After some math, I conclude that many frat boys weren't born yet.

I'm reading (okay, skimming. Malcolm Gladwell would have done a much nicer job with the topic.) Gregg Easterbrook's The Progress Paradox. The basic question is why Americans are so unhappy despite the amazingly pleasant conditions of our lives. Basically everything is better than it used to be (e.g. the environment, food, health care, leisure time, ...). So enjoy life people!

Local marathon

2010-05-01T17:43:00.003-06:00

Most big sporting events in this college town have a spectator to participants of about 1000 to 1. Today's big event had a ratio closer to 1 to 1. Somewhere around 10,000 crazed souls ran the Illinois Marathon around Urbana and Champaign.

We walked the 1 block to the course between miles 4 and 5 just before 8 am, just in time to see the lead runner run past. He was running fast, by himself already.

The parade of runners near our house went on for about at least 45 minutes. What a trip to look down the street at curb-to-curb runners as far as we could see.
We cheered often and hard, and even more so for friends. The list we saw was Mike, Rob, Matt, Chad, Amy, Neil, Rachel. We might have missed a few during the tight groups.
After a quick return home, we got pastries from the Farmers' market and headed to Nina's house near mile 11. We only caught the tail end of the group, so we picked a spot near the finish, the football stadium.

This is where we learned that marathoning is difficult. Large numbers of people stopped, stretched, or walked even though they could see the finish about 1/2 mile away.
My favorite runners (in no particular order): Abe Lincoln costume, pirate costume, barefoot guy, walking cast guy (who carried a spare shoe), and Cal shirt guy.

In conclusion, we were impressed. We had fun. We're not convinced that we need to join the runners next year.

wet weekend

2010-04-25T19:46:00.003-06:00

This was a good weekend to be a duck. After numerous sunny days spent in the office, we had much rain.

Did the rain stop our adventures? Nope, they were accentuated. We walked to the library to get some fiction and came out to a downpour. Somehow, we only have 1 umbrella that Jill used to keep the baby dry.
How is it that Jill looks wetter than I do? For the above photo, I had already taken off my rainjacket. Both of our pants and shoes were soaked through.
Rain makes me feel more philosophical. The following question came to me while on my ride to Block in the rain: (Sidenotes: a handful of fields already had corn plants poking out of the ground. I didn't take the camera for fear of destroying it. Finding a spot to hang wet bike clothes after wet walk clothes was tough.) how have we changed since becoming parents? Short answer: I'm less introspective [joking]. One minor change is that not only have we not watched a new movie in the last year, we haven't even been interested [that includes you, Avatar]. Maybe Clara brings us enough extra drama and laughter?

My boss told me that I would now _always_ have worries about my kid in the back my mind. Other than the usual stress of preparing her to become a visionary world leader, it's hard to think of specific worries. Maybe that's the rub -- they wouldn't seem so big if we could name them.

We bought this cool toy for Clara on Saturday even though officially she's too young. The animals and farmer can move all around the farmyard. She likes it nearly as much as an empty cereal box.

some unprecedentosity

2010-04-18T08:31:00.002-06:00

Since we're such highly educated people, you might think that we always have our act together. To be frank, we have a ways to go. We haven't even started on boarding pre-school applications (I say she should learn locally in Chicago, but Jill has her heart set on Prague for extra focus on the classics.) What we did get done for the first time ever was give Clara a bath on consecutive days.

Jill did make some lemon cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese. I find that they must be eaten 2 at a time.

One reason for Clara's additional bathing was playing in the grass time yesterday. She liked sitting on it and pulling it up, but would not roll. Grass blades poking her face was no fun.
We took a ride out through the local tree farm yesterday. After riding past plowed corn and soy bean fields, seeing baby trees with flowering buds is a welcome sight. The farm is not small-- about 2 miles long by one mile wide.
For a touch of extra safety, Jill recently bought a flag for Clara's trailer.
Pulling the trailer at moderate speeds is much easier than trying the stick with the fast boys on the Wed night ride. Dave told us to get ready for his 35 mph pull minutes before it happened. Even if he had told me 3 weeks ago, I'm not sure I would have been ready. Dropped!

Finally, God knows if we're going to have any more children, but we have stumbled upon a fine name theme. Jill said something about 'older' names, but I heard 'oder' names. My favorite oder name to date is Modje (pronounced Mowed-HAY, accent mark over the e). Feel free to use that one and change spelling as needed.

now 7 months

2010-04-09T16:35:00.003-06:00

The fine weather this week called for a picnic. Our Tuesday dinner with our adopt-a-students seemed like a good time to have one. We enjoyed curry chicken-salad sandwiches and Jill-baked shortbread cookies.

We loaded up the bikes with dinner and baby, and the boys walked over to Illini Grove. I rode the Ute cargo bike, which has been neglected for some time now. Jill puts groceries in the trailer with Clara, and I rarely transport lots of stuff. I had considered getting rid of it, but will hold onto it until after the revolution.

Our 3 'kids':

Clara is yet another month older at 7 months. No doctor appointment this month, so we don't have official stats other than that she is bigger and is in the 80th percentile for funniness. Still not too much hair and no teeth. She celebrated this achievement by getting her first runny nose. 2 days later she's fully recovered.

She wouldn't sit still with Raggedy Ann for the photo shoot.
A month after their initial plan, Grandpa and Grandma are in town to see the baby. We've hit Hickory River and the Courier Cafe. Maybe we'll visit Allerton Park tomorrow.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T19:02:00.003-06:00

Our first easter as a family of three was today. Christ is risen! 'I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.' Ezekiel 36:26

Our adopt-a-student Eric came over for a lunch of pork tenderloin (with mojo sauce), rice, green beans, lettuce, and strawberries. Yummy!

The family portrait was taken during the sunny part of the day.
Clara will be 7 months old this week. She's starting to eat solid foods. First was rice cereal mixed with formula. Now, Jill has put our new mill to use, making sweet potatoes, bananas, and carrots. SP were the best. Below, Clara enjoys some carrots.
Clara is developing a sense of MINE. She cries when we take toys away or when she drops them on the floor. Don't fear because Jill is already on the case. She and Clara play pass the ball (thanks, Grandma K) and celebrate each good pass.

Call me a wimp, but I skipped the morning team bike ride during a downpour so that I could ride in sunshine in the afternoon on Sat. I rode around Homer Lake, sailing there in about 30 min with a strong tailwind and grinding into the wind back for over an hour. I'm partly following friend Mark's program of 3 20 minute intervals. Mine were 12, 20, and 5 min. Not terrible by me.

Hills and Knobs

2010-03-28T17:09:00.006-06:00

Wild Card Cycling held its annual spring get in shape weekend in Southern Illinois this weekend. Rather than rooming with another guy and his smelly cycling shoes, I brought the whole family along. We stayed in the honeymoon suite of the Valley View Cabins near Anna, IL, where the 'view' is mostly of the interstate, but is quite pretty nonetheless.

We drove the 3 1/2 hours down on Friday morning to meet up for our noon ride. The plan for Friday was a relatively 'easy' 40 mile ride to Bald Knob, an impressive hill with a giant truss cross on the top. Large signs warn that the cross could fall any moment due to structural instability. It was still standing when we left. We rode at a moderate pace most of the way to the big climb with many stops to regroup. On the big climb to the Knob I got dropped like a rock by strong men Jason, Jay, and Martin.

The big ride was Saturday to Golconda, a small town on the Ohio River, and back to Valley View. How small is Golconda? Small enough that there's no bridge to cross the river into Kentucky. We started off with a group of about 20 with blue skies, 45-50ish degrees, and a slight wind.

At mile 20, I was feeling sprightly enough for a self-portrait riding the warmup hill after our first stop. I wore a wool base layer, wool sweater, and my jersey. The other guys ragged on me the whole ride about how hot I should have been. Maybe I didn't notice because I was so worn out, or maybe I was slightly dehydrated. Neither of the stops at 20 and 40 miles had any water, so I had to beg a swig off Luke in Eddyville (mile 40). At Golconda, I drank about 2 bottles in the bathroom and left with 2 full bottles. I rejoiced greatly at mile 80 when Jay requested a stop to get more water.
Now you might know that winters tend to be cold in the midwest, so generally cyclists take it easy and gain some holiday weight. The 5 other guys I rode with the whole route did not follow this custom. On the flats and rollers, I hid in their draft without problems. The long, steep hills revealed the truth, though. I was clearly the slowest. The strong 5 graciously waited up for me at the tops.

My view for most of the ride.
While I was being ground into a woolly blob, Jill and Clara took a couple rides in the nearby valleys. When we ride together, we stop at nice places and take photos and eat good food at places like the cafe in Cobden. With the racers, the stops are at convenience stores. My lunch was banana nut muffins, fig newtons, and peanut M&Ms.

Clara, as per usual, was a big hit with the patrons of the cafe in Cobden. In fact, she was a hit with the team as well, as she and Jill won a Wild Card mug for 'most supportive family' on the team.
Lots of rain on Sunday, so only the hearty rode. I saw Scott, who had to work on Friday, take off wearing rain gear. The rest of us headed back home. We took a short detour to Ferne Clyffe state park, which in fact has a cliff and a lovely lake.
I should add that the roads were generally excellent, and the drivers were quite courteous, despite the lack of other cyclists in the area. Perhaps they were enjoying the wine trail enough to not be bothered by us.

More baby skills

2010-03-18T18:35:00.002-06:00

Clara is getting skills quickly lately. Last week, she started to roll, now she rolls all over the place. This week, she can sit up by herself. Occasionally, she stops paying attention and topples over. Surprisingly, she rarely cries after thumping the back or side of her head.
Yesterday, Clara convinced us to let her eat big girl food again. For the third time, we mixed up pre-cooked rice cereal and her milk.
This time, she ate, loved it, and was happy.
Spring continues to be beautifully perfect. This may be the best time of the year as it's warm and the grass is not growing yet. I joined the Wild Card crew for part of the Sat ride (see Paul's recap). Jill and Clara are out riding with the chariot daily. A couple times they brought me bubble tea at work.

Speaking of work, I finished writing my first proposal this week (should I add finally? should I give some excuses?). It's small and somewhat simple, but I'm happy with it. Maybe the clean coal institute will be also.

new normal

2010-03-11T20:15:00.004-07:00

My primary enjoyment from this blog is recording the fun and unusual happenings of our lives. Well, as the last 2 weeks have shown, sometimes very little unusual happens, or unusual that I care to write about. I choose to write no more about recent sewage troubles.

But what goes on during an ordinary day in this small family of ours? I'm glad you want to know.

Let's begin with morning, which starts between 7:10 and 7:30 am. Either the alarm or Clara wakes me up. I pick her up and change her diaper, then make my lunch, eat breakfast (sometimes alone, sometimes with Jill), do some personal hygiene, kiss the gals, and head for work.

I get home from work around 5:30. Now it's play time with baby while Jill cooks dinner. We're about to eat, and baby starts crying. We ignore crying, crying increases. Hold baby, feed baby, baby is now happy and sleeps for about 10 minutes. After we all eat, I read, write a blog, watch 'Chuck', work on bikes, or just collapse on the floor. Baby cycles through a rotation of jumpy chair, rolling on the floor, being held while yelling or smiling. Wow, is it 10:00 already? Dishes might not get done tonight. Feed baby for a top-off. Please go to sleep, baby. Jammie time, some crying, hold the baby, no crying. Finally asleep, or more crying. I sleep.
Jill will have to fill in the details of what I miss while working, but it seems that much fun happens. With the balmy weather this week, Clara got to play in the park. She loved swinging for the first time.
Jill's last Christmas gift came today, an electric piano. She hasn't played much since giving up lessons in her youth, but said that what she knew is coming back. Higher culture, here we come.

rolling

2010-03-05T18:09:00.003-07:00

Big, big change for the baby this week. She is partially mobile. First, we put her here.

Not much later, she is here. Tada!
Clara is fond of this book, but maybe only because of the title.

deep freeze

2010-02-25T19:07:00.004-07:00

This winter is putting us through the grinder. Since we returned from Park City, I think only one day has reached 32 degrees. Guess what day it rained. Now, I'm a big fan of winter; I love snow, my allergies are non-existent, and I can always wear another layer. But a warm spell would really soothe the soul right about now.

On Saturday, we took a pizza ride to the southwest Jupiter's. Uh, the reason Jill pulled the chariot was, um, because she wanted the exercise and I needed a recovery ride. Except sadly, I didn't need a recovery ride since I haven't ridden fast in over a month.

At the home front, daddy and baby still smile a lot.
Another winter highlight is wearing a favorite sweater as Clara demonstrates.
Clara's outings have generally been limited to eating out and going to church and Bible study. On Tuesday night, we reached further and took her to our adopt-a-student's symphony at Krannert. The first two songs by the opening high school band went fine. Then 'Vesuvius' opened with a BANG!!! (two 1 by 4 planks slapped together). Clara jerked forward, breathed in, and wailed. So Jill and Clara listened to most of the remaining pieces in the hallway with another mother and 11 month son.

books

2010-02-17T19:44:00.003-07:00

Free time is a treasured event around here, but I have managed to dig some up. I read a couple books in the last few months, most recently 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel. The book has quite a lead-in; the story will make us believe in God. I already do, but would I be further encouraged?

Pi, the main character, describes his mish-mash of beliefs from the major religions. Then, we relive his 200+ day shipwreck adventure on the Pacific Ocean. Readers get to decide if his story is a parable or the truth. Either way, it's a downright scary tale of sorrow and suffering. I prefer to believe his story (the alternative involves more cannibalism than I can stomach). After all his suffering, he lives a relatively normal life.

Call me dense, but why you would believe in God after hearing this story?

Prior to 'Pi', I read 'The Crossing' by Cormac McCarthy. Jill hates these types of books. Lots of angst, introversion, and minimal relationships. My favorite exchange between the brothers:

B1: When did you start cussing so much?

B2: When I quit eating.

The writing is brilliant. And succinct. At the end, I felt depressed.

With Clara around, depression is short-lived.

Finally, I joined facebook this week. Wanna be my friend? I'm still figuring out how to arrange my digital life. I prefer the blog so that I can tell stories, short though they may be. But learning about the doings of people I haven't seen for 15 years has a mesmerizing, bizarre pull.

Utah redux

2010-02-11T19:17:00.002-07:00

Vacation was so nice, let's look at it twice. Sometimes when I'm not 100% focused at work, I like to look at recent photos on the blog. So this post might be more for me than you, but I hope you enjoy.

Here's the view up the mountain from as high as we got on our snowshoes.

Along the way, we made a Colts logo for intimidation in the Super Bowl. As you may know, this did not lead to victory. Even sadder, I couldn't see it while riding the gondola on Fri. Most saddest, we made it upside down. We thought the helmet logo was the same direction as an 'omega'. Not so, but maybe this didn't cause the defeat.
The Park City stream was flowing nicely. In the summer, it's a nice place to dip the toes for a cooldown. In winter, we just look.
Clara turned 5 months old on Super Sunday (also happy 2^5 birthday to Jessie that day). She can now look down on Raggedy Ann. At her dr. appointment today she weighed in at 13lb 15oz and 26" in length. She can roll over, but doesn't feel any need to do so. She still likes to laugh and shout.
Finally, I'm not sure what my mom wanted me to report about their calorie counting. I know that they have lost weight, but don't know the extent. Perhaps they can comment.

Oh, and finally, finally, since even my dad has joined facebook, I might also. But I'm scared.

snow birds

2010-02-07T14:03:00.005-07:00

Did you get my clue from the last post? We went to Park City, Utah, to play in the moguls (well, only I played in the moguls). Our whole family met up at my parents' condo for a week of playing in the snow.

I skied two days (Mon and Fri) mostly on my own at the 9990 lift. On Friday afternoon, I joined my dad and niece for her first double blue run. Bravo! We're all looking forward to the year she can ski with me; me for the company, and her parents so they don't have to keep up with her.

It's getting hard to show everybody together, so here's a mediocre photo of the cast.

A series of storms hit the area the week before we arrived, so we got to play in deep snow.
The nieces love Clara, and she was amazed by them. They both wanted to hold her often and did their best to make her smile and laugh. Happy times!

Local horses don't mind the snow or the kids (though they wished we had brought apples like we did last year).

Just because Clara is small doesn't mean she can't join the fun. We took the bus to downtown and walked back on the multi-use trail. We almost made it back home before Clara got hungry, but she handled her first outdoor drink of milk well.
We left the baby with the family one morning to do a short snow shoe adventure. We hiked the hill/canyon just to the left of the gondola where we unexpectedly encountered a moose. The moose wasn't willing to pose for a close-up, so you'll have to look carefully to find her in the photo below.

A recurring source of amusement was watching my parents track their calorie intake with an app on their iPhones. They would compare notes to make sure that neither cheated. In that spirit, here's a recap of my high altitude training:

Two days skiing (I hiked up to Murdock bowl on Fri afternoon)

One 2 hour snowshoe adventure (probably less than 800' climbing)

One flat 6.5 mile walk

Two days playing with the nieces (in the snow and at the pool)

Alas, the vacation ended, and we're back home in IL. Mercifully, we returned to blue, sunny skies, not to be confused with skis, of which we have no need here.

riche moguls

2010-01-28T19:47:00.002-07:00

And now for some good news about our townhouse. We have a tenant, paying actual money. Hooray for us! During the brief spell between tenants, we decided to get the place painted and to have new carpeting installed. At $2.50ish per square foot, the carpet was a sizable cash outlay given the massive dimensions of our 3 story abode and given the temporary lack of rental income.

We didn't (don't) want to be real estate moguls, but there are benefits. The best part will be subsidized trips to NM thanks to the tax write-offs. We just need to get out there (seriously, we hope to take a trip sooner rather than later). It's also nice to own a piece of land (albeit a rather small, very dry piece), even if we don't get to touch it so often. As Delmar says, 'A man's not a man if he aint got land.'

Check out my bench-scale reverse osmosis system (the stainless steel stuff on the right). Also note the rust dripping down the wall from the scary metal trap door (maybe it was a coal shoot?). Our building has seen much, from making coke during WWII to studying coal mine tailings to now studying water treatment.

Other moguls are in our very near future.

hydrolicious

2010-01-23T14:03:00.006-07:00

The big freeze may be over, but we've entered the soggy zone. We've got melting snow, drizzle, fog, clouds, streams, ponds, and steam. Has anyone seen the sun?

But did I mention it's warmer now? In fact, it was so warm that we took Clara on a chariot ride through the cornfields. Below, you can see some snow, fog, and the wet road.

Clara was all snuggled up while sleeping in the chariot. The only time she got upset was when I was stopped to fix a flat tire.
Hard to believe, but this was Jill's first ride out on the farm roads since we moved here. All told, we probably rode 20 miles, a good start to our new family adventure riding. When we could see the scenery, Jill's reminisced on the rides of yore, like when she witnessed the slowest car-bike collision ever that led to a frivolous lawsuit against the young driver in which Jill was the key witness whose testimony was probably ignored though we never heard the outcome.
Great-Grandpa and -Grandma sent Clara some Christmas money, so she bought this multi-colored, striped sweater.
Finally, to get into our groove this morning, we tuned in to the Barry Manilow station on Pandora. The first 3 songs: Copa Cabana (Manilow), Hello (Lionel Richie), All out of love (Air Supply). Corn-syrupy sweet!

bright lights in a small town

2010-01-19T19:26:00.005-07:00

The final gifts that Santa brought us this year were new headlights for the bikes. We have generators located inside the front hub (Shimano DN-72, for those in the know) and had been using halogen headlights for the past several years. The halogen lights work quite well.

Photos of the beam patterns are poor because it was about 10 degrees and only mostly dark (I would have taken photos on an unlit road, but I feared dropping the camera en route.), and possibly icy when I took them. Anyway, here's the halogen beam on the wet/icy, somewhat lit road.

And here's the beam pattern from the new lights. Much brighter.
The new LED headlights (Lumotec IQ Cyo N) are just awesome. Not only are they way brighter, they have a standlight powered by a capacitor so that light still shines at stop lights.

In baby news, Clara just keeps getting cuter. She is interacting much more with us as well as some toys. And she can now do (make? bubble? blurb?) raspberries. On the other hand, she doesn't always sleep through the night lately, screaming for milk after about 4-6 hours of sleep.
With a face like that, we can't get too upset, can we?

frozen wits

2010-01-12T16:59:00.003-07:00

I don't think that the temperature exceeded 20 degrees at any point during the past week and a half. During times such as these, we may lack inspiration to bundle up and fight the cold outdoors. However, one must be careful after surrendering to indoor warmth. Another battle quickly ensues, the battle to maintain one's wits while trapped indoors.

Clara passed the 4 month mark without blog fanfare, I'm sorry to say. Sorry, Clara! Despite her advanced age, she's still a little thin on top. So we tried out a toupe, borrowing some hair from mommie. Nice, yes?

We rarely watch late night tv, but somehow we managed to catch a performance by Lady Gaga some time back. Internalizing her 'style' took some time, but I discovered my look if I ever see her in concert. Let's call it the 'punctual pirate'.
Let's also rejoice that the weather is getting nicer for the rest of the week.

big snow, can ride

2010-01-09T14:12:00.003-07:00

For my first 22 years, snow was a vacation event only. Since departing the Pacific coast, snow sometimes lands on my house, as 8" of the fluffy whiteness did this week.

While we were away, friends Rich and Nina shoveled our driveway and made a snowman family for us. This time, Jill flexed her strengthened-by-baby-carrying muscles and shoveled the whole thing herself.

We've seen lots of sunshine lately which warms the spirit despite temps rarely reaching 15 degrees. Bundled up between my coat and Jill's warm body, Clara doesn't mind the cold but does miss the sunshine.
Santa wasn't sure what to get me this year, so he let me order some toys for riding in the cold. These include studded tires (though the front wheel/tire in the photo was from Moscaline a couple years ago), ski helmet, goggles, and a couple items to be highlighted soon. Not the coolest look, but I'm warm and happy and not crashing.

I initially set up the Bianchi as a single speed with a 42-16 gear ratio, which gives the correct chainlength for the vertical dropout frame. After struggling through the snow, I changed to a 34 tooth chainring and added a rear derailer as a chain tensioner. Much better!

y feliz new year

2010-01-05T17:04:00.003-07:00

An advantage of not living in a middle-of-nowhere, paradise location is that family is not too far away. Towards the end of our Christmas vacation, the five remaining Smith family members visited MI for some more family fun.

The biggest excitement was playing Wii rock band. I avoided singing (no secret that I can't sing), but did play guitar and drums. Jill did it all. Drums were easily the hardest 'instrument' (no secret that I aint got rhythm). I didn't fail the medium level on guitar. Good fun!

We paid a visit to one of Jill's good friends from the olden days. Carrie's children were born a good number of years before Clara showed up. We had fun comparing our situations.
After returning the Urbana, we adjusted the jumpy chair to small person height and dropped Clara in. She thought it was okay.
Happy new year!

Mucho feliz Navidad

2009-12-30T09:03:00.005-07:00

We celebrated Christmas with gusto in Warsaw, IN. Jill's bro + family from Nashville, Jill's bro's wife's sister + family from TX, and we hunkered down at mom and dad's. Maybe there were 12 of us? Plus 6 MI relatives came for a day visit. Spanish, English, laughter, and some tears filled the house.

All but one of us got into the Christmas Eve photo, so here she is below keeping an eye on los primos.

Only two of the four small persons were mobile, so chaos was limited. If we all get together next year, the kids might have to dress in bubble wrap.

A small amount of very dry snow was available for our snowball fights. On the bright side, very little pain resulted from a direct hit with a snowball.

Don't be fooled by the smiley faces. Snowball fire awaits!

Call us mean parents, but we didn't get Clara a single gift for Christmas. The rest of the relatives gave her many gifts.

Finally, I know you're asking, 'Gee, they were in Indiana, I wonder if they played basketball?' I joined dad and 8 other Hoosiers for the weekly 5:30-6:30 AM Tuesday pickup game at Grace College. True story.

Merry before Christmas

2009-12-22T19:48:00.005-07:00

The first snow dusting of the year happened this week. Clara and I celebrated by playing outside in our jammies for 10 seconds. I had more fun, obviously.

After some consideration, I chose to not ride the studded tire bike to work, opting for my normal commuter bike with its better fenders and lights. I'll post a photo of the spikey bike when (if??) it really snows. The coldest temp so far on my way to work was 9 degrees F. By not wearing them, I learned that longjohns under the pants improves the sensation in the legs at this temp.

Some Christmas clothes were included in the great number of hand-me-downs that Clara got, and Jill has been quite happy to put Clara in them for this Christmas season.

Jill's deep thought of the day: babies grow so much faster than you'd (we'd?) think, and at no point in the future will the baby again be like she is now. Me: quick, let me hold her again!

Urbana people

2009-12-15T16:46:00.005-07:00

We've put lots of pictures of family (and of course the baby) lately. Now seems appropriate to show off some of the good people that actually live in this town.

First, there's not-far-away-neighbor Nina, Jill's during the day hang out friend. Not only did she ably and willingly watch Clara during Jill's 2nd shift today, but she met us for lunch yesterday at TBMRWBTSFC (the best mexican restaurant we've been to so far in chambana), El Charro on Green St. Jill and I took a bite of cow tongue from Nina's burrito. Quite tender and mild in taste--not bad.

Our church, located next to campus, has many college students. So we volunteered to adopt-a-student-or-2. Eric and Steven are underclassmen that live in the same dorm. Happily, they have time to join us for dinner about once per month between studying and playing video games. We made fudge. Steven (middle) is very tall.
We also joined a small group at church. We love the wide variety of ages, jobs, etc in the group. Clara is the youngest member.
I can't go through a whole post without showing off the baby. She is just starting to get the idea of how useful hands and eyes in combination can be.

3 whole months

2009-12-07T20:45:00.004-07:00

Another month surged past. Clara is 3 months old! Smiles are slightly more common and giggles happen occasionally, though we haven't caught those on film. We haven't seen any huge changes lately, not a bad thing. It's fun to hold her a lot and she can't escape.

Last night was the first accumulation of snow this year. I rode to work over a dusting of snow on the road. It was gone when I rode home.

Bike riding is different with Clara around, but happily I'm getting out there, despite cold temps. Mostly I take a 1 hour jaunt by myself. I did ride with the boys on black Friday (photographic evidence here) and have ridden with Tom a couple times on Sunday afternoons. On Sunday, we rode south into a 10 mph wind with 30ish degree temps, and I was happily comfortable. That is until Tom pipped me at the town limit sign. Curiously, I beat him up power climbs (term used loosely as these are not bigger than overpasses) and he beat me in the flat sprint. Psychoanalytical help for my lack of sprint is on the way.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-29T09:02:00.003-07:00

Guess what? Our camera has a black and white setting, and I like it.

Grandpa and Grandma K celebrated thanksgiving a day early with us because they left on Thurs. The food and time together were both excellent.

We heartily agree with what Chelsea wrote in a comment of the last post. We are so thankful that Clara has joined our family. What makes a great gift? Something you can't buy, can't earn, and don't deserve. The long wait makes it sweeter.

more grandparents

2009-11-23T20:55:00.004-07:00

Grandpa and Grandma K are in town to visit the baby for the first time. They kindly brought the CA weather with them, ending a string of rainy days.

You may certainly feel bad for them since they live so far from Clara. However, 2 other super fun granddaughters live in their hometown.
My favorite women are quite beautiful.
Clara's eyes are still a lovely shade of blue. Are they going to stay that color?
Since grandpa and grandma are in town, we picked Sunday to have Clara's dedication at church. We promised to do our best in showing her how to follow Christ. The church members promised to help us. Pastor Shannon conducted the dedication.
I still wake up every day amazed that Clara is our daughter. She brings SO MUCH joy to me and Jill, and we are so happy that family and friends also love and enjoy her.

Bonus blessing: she slept 9 hours straight on Sat night.