There are worse things in life...

(with apologies to Robert Frost - I had to stop for pics of these "swung" birches near home)

OK, so this post is a bit delayed . . . it turns out we've been busy as you'll see.  New England got a bunch of rain and ice/sleet overnight last Thursday - in our neighborhood, the trees and bushes are glazed, not merely frosted. I haven't seen this level of small-to-medium damage in previous storms, and in fact there are a significant number of large trees and big branches down.  However, further west and north there are serious downed limbs, trees and power lines, and well over half a million households in MA/NH lost power for a significant amount of time.

Our friends Brian and Edith, from a couple of miles west, didn't have a lot of damage, but they didn't have power either, until Sunday afternoon.  Neither did Brian's workplace in Littleton, although Edith's work is on generators in much harder-hit Worcester.  By Friday afternoon, their house was in the low fifties, not to mention dark and without running water (they have a well with an electric pump).  The solution?  Party at Christi and Adam's for the weekend . . . they brought over their spoilable foods and an extra Guitar Hero guitar, and we rocked it even hahdah for most of the weekend (as well as getting xmas trees, setting ours up, cleaning up their yard and draining their pipes, Edith getting some work done, and Christi and Margot surviving lingering colds).

In the end, B&E's power came back Sunday afternoon, but Brian had drained the pipes Saturday afternoon to prevent a burst in the 15-degree overnight temps.  So, Monday was refill-and-monitor day for their heating system.  Since I haven't heard sob stories, I guess everything went OK!

Other folks at work were in a similar boat or not as lucky.  Multiple people had three- to five-day power outages, lots of downed trees/branches, and even significant roof damage from falling limbs.  Hang in there, folks!

What we do While Dad's at Work

Play with expensive camera gear!


Initially, Margot picked up my big camera, held it upside-down and pressed her face to the back. I exercised more restraint than usual by not just running straight for another camera to take a picture with. So, here's a reenactment that has the expensive camera gear well supported by my grownup hands.

Mess!

As I've mentioned, Margot likes to clean things. She has even been known to repeatedly spill something so that she can wipe it up. If I don't get her a paper towel in time, she will just use her hand. It's all the same to her as long as that spill is gone.

Well, today the concept took a big leap forward.

While walking in the kitchen with her favorite mustard bottle (another story) and eating a biscuit, Margot tripped. This was distressing because 1. the mustard bottle went under something and 2. the biscuit left crumbs on the floor. Once I had safely rescued the mustard, Margot jumped to her feet and grabbed for a kitchen towel while exclaiming today's new word "mess!". She then came back and proceeded to "wipe" the crumbs up with the towel.

Ok, so she needs some work on her cleaning technique and should probably be taught how to use the vacuum soon, but her new vocabulary was most impressive!

Directionally challenged

After months of saying "up" for both climbing up and climbing down things, Margot has switched to using "down" all the time (pronounced "gow!"). This led to special frustration tonight when Adam was holding her, but she wanted to be held by me so she plaintively cried "gow!" and then was super frustrated to find herself held by no one. Ahh, the frustrations of learning!

For all her fans out there, here is Margot being unimpressed with a chocolate cookie sandwich from Hi Rise in Harvard Square. There's no accounting for taste.

Don't get used to it, Dad!

It seems worth documenting, since it probably won't happen again.

Margot has just indicated that she actually listened to something her father said to her.

With the cold weather, our heat is on, so the radiators get hot. We've been trying to teach Margot not to touch them so that she won't hurt herself. This morning, Adam pointed at the radiator, said "hot", and told Margot not to touch it. But, he says lots of things to her, so I didn't think too much of it.

Fast forward to this afternoon. While Margot and I were upstairs, she pointed to a radiator, looked at me and said "hot!" The look on her face was a mingling of stern in the touch-that-and-you'll-be-sorry way and educational as if she were talking to someone to whom she expected to need to explain things a few times. This was an awesome moment for showing how quickly she's learning new things as well as showing how low her expectations are of my ability to do the same thing. Believe me when I say entirely without irony that parenthood is amazing!

Glamour Shot

While I'm at it, here's one more recent shot of the car, in summer mode. I'll post something from a past or oncoming winter in the next month or three, to give you an idea of the difference a few months makes.

Onset of Autumn - more pics

Sad Days of Autumn

I love autumn in New England - crisp, clear days; slanting light; changing foliage; wood smoke on the breeze. However, for those of us who also love certain convertible, front-engine/rear-wheel-drive modes of transportation, there are sad days in the fall - like the first real frost telling us that soon we'll have to live through another five-plus months of keeping our heads inside the windows, so to speak.

Last week one morning I found the calling cards of cold-weather-driving on my soft-top: frost and fallen leaves. I think the end is near.

(Technical notes: you're not supposed to move the Miata's soft-top when the temperature is less than 45 or 50 degrees - the vinyl gets brittle in the cold and can crack. The soft-top is permanently attached to the car, but for the winter I fold it back into the open position and use a detachable hard-top with better headroom and heat retention, and a significantly larger rear window. I also put on snow tires on dedicated steel winter wheels, which improves my chances in snow and ice to "possibility of survival", and lets me use dedicated performance tires in the summer instead of all-seasons.)

(Procrastinatory note: last year I tried to squeak by on one too many "last nice days", and only got to put on the hard-top and snow tires on the first weekend of January in an unseasonable 60 degrees.)

Margot vs. Daddy's Art

We went to visit my parents recently - Uncle Bill and Grandpa Bob are in town!  More on that later...

Since my old toys are now Margot's toys at my parents, Daddy got to make an awesome tower of blocks.  I mean, it was like, twelve hundred feet tall.  Or, three.  But very rickety.

Margot wasn't that interested while I was building, but became interested once I was done, and dealt with Daddy's creation appropriately.

(Video has sound . . . I tried to cut it down to a quiet level.)

Words!

I'd post video, but I can't find the cable to get the magic moving pictures off of the camera. So, you'll just have to take my word for it that Margot has mastered language.

On her first birthday, she could say "hi!", shake her head "no", and make a sign for "more". Each of these were subtle and humorous. For hi, Margot will hold her hand up to her ear like she's on the phone. No was only used correctly 75% of the time. We frequently were heard to say "by no, you mean yes" when feeding her something she really did want. And more was an interesting case of "I want more food, but not the kind you're giving me" and was signed repeatedly while accompanied by a face that said "what sort of idiot are you for giving me more cheerios".

A month and 10 days later, Margot's vocabulary has exploded! She has added:

- ball (bah!)
- up - This meant both up and down for a long time. After repeating "you mean down" enough times, she will sometimes say "gow" for down, but she says it in a tone like she's only humoring your crazy belief that up isn't appropriate in that situation.
- buh bye (frequently waving her hand towards herself while she does this)
- apple (her new word for food, which almost never ever means she wants an apple)
- pointing at her mouth to indicate that she wants food, frequently followed closely by the word "apple"
- puppy (pronounced pup-oh)
- cracker (quack-ewh)
- cookie (cuh-cooh)
- she pats her head and says "ca" when she wants her hat
- she pats wherever she wants you to sit, like next to her on the couch, on a pillow on the floor, or on a rock in the yard
- she twists her torso back and forth when she wants to dance or hears the word dance

And, today Lisa has taught her that "shoe" is the word for those things Margot is obsessed with. This kid will spend hours reorganizing our shoes, making creative piles of them, and carrying them over to anyone who is nearby.