Three Years in Three Minutes

Music: "Baby," Devendra Banhart

Dave would like you to know that he chose the music.  Nice work honey!  We make a great team!
Also, happy third birthday to our lovely little one.  I think it's hilarious that you tube chose this still form the middle of the slideshow as the thumbnail, and in it she looks very worried indeed.

Enjoy!

From the Archive

I was digging around in Picasa trying to find the little video of Clio at her dance performance, when I discovered that you can filter by media type: voila, all the little videos I've taken with our canon elf, all in one place! I just gorged myself on these little snippets of our past life, and this one was just too good not to share.

Eleri is about 5 months, Clio is pushing 2 1/2. I forgot how obsessed Clio was with Bear Hunt, and how she used to make us read it again and again. It's amazing that we now have all these tools for remembering.

The Return of Video

The girls have been watching some of the little videos on this blog lately, and I find myself simultaneously thrilled to have captured Clio's sweet little 2-year old voice and shamed that I have been so neglectful of keeping up with the live-action footage. We never seem to have the video camera on hand when something worth capturing happens, or, if one of us is able to locate it, it is likely out of battery or needs a new disc.

The other night at dinner, I grabbed our little canon elf, which we rarely use but is great for uber-short movies, and grabbed a few moments of the kids.

This first video captures some of Eleri's unique communication style (for the first time, I understand the pediatrician asking parents to distinguish between the words their children can say and those that could be understood by a stranger). The second captures Clio's tendency to copy Eleri when Eleri is getting a lot of attention.

Three!

Music: Woody Guthrie

Perhaps I Should Mention

Eleri is crawling.
She figured it out about a week ago, and as Dave puts it, it's not exactly elegant, but she gets where she needs to go. I caught some wobbly action on tape a few days ago, and finally won my battled with Windows Media Player this evening to resize the thing.

Disclaimer: I have a cold. Apologies for the gross sniffling that is much of the soundtrack.



The memory card filled up just before Eleri looked back at me, sat up with her treasure, and laughed. A lot.

Calling the Shot List

Clio used to love having her picture taken. Lately, it goes more like this:

Or she does her best to seize control and turn the tables on us, like this (you can ignore the middle 10 seconds or so where I try to get her to sing "The Grand Old Duke of York," which she does very well when she's in the mood):




But the other day, Eleri flopped across her lap to get her hands on a book or two, and Clio thought this was so hilarious, she demanded that I get out the camera.


And then she proceeded to ham it up, like this.

Sister Act

So many posts, so little time. I'm supposedly multi-tasking right now, organizing blogposts while I print out the papers I need to grade; somehow, the blog part is taking over despite the paper-grading being on a deadline.

There are both events to report on (more from the Queens County Farm, a trip to the Prospect Park Zoo, the relatively uneventful change to a Big Girl Bed, Clio's first pee in the pottie, etc.), and issues to air ("On firing your babysitter," "On wondering if you want to be a stay at home mom," etc.), but I am suddenly SO exhausted, my brain SO muddled, that for now I'm going to rely on video to tell the stories for me.

A little context for this one: Clio wanted me to take a picture of her with her sister. While she was trying to get it all set up, I surreptitiously recorded the action with the video function of our digital camera. You can hear Dave whisper, about halfway through "Are you recording this?" Oh, yes. I will say, Clio's effect on Eleri seems much more pronounced on video than it did sitting right in front of her. My favorite part- and I'm pointing it out only because it is easy to miss- is at the very end, when Clio is "helping" Eleri. If you listen closely, you can hear Clio say "push...push" as she does indeed push the pacifier into her sister's mouth... perhaps a little less gently than we might like.

From The Archive

November, 2007. Clio wants Strawberries.
It's shocking how much they change in a year.






In contrast, this morning at breakfast Clio wanted a "big fork." When I said no, she said, "Daddy, when you finish with your fork, you give it to me, okay?"

Dancing Queen

I'm posting backwards today: feeling at a loss to tell a complete story or offer background (we went to the Queens County Farm for Apple Fest with Zoe, Dylan, Marcus, and their parents- more on that soon), I am, instead, offering up the more manageable fragments.

Like this: there was a country band at the Farm, and Clio stood completely transfixed as they played one classic after another, then clapped vigorously between songs. I think we may have found her genre: whenever we have K Rock on in the car, she says "no songs" and insists we turn it off-- clearly we're tuned to the wrong station, because here she stared down the band and refused to leave the area until we bribed her with promises of a special lunch (sausages and fries--with "saucy"-- courtesy of Zoe's grandpa). What a great excuse to get out my old country albums!

At first Clio was so absorbed in the music, she didn't even want to dance, but Dave got her up on his feet (which she proceeded to stomp), and she was a convert.


(There is video of this, but I made the classic Heather mistake of filming it vertically, so I'll spare you). I kept wishing I could dig deep and remember a Tush Push or some other great line dance I learned years ago, country dancing with my parents, but we settled for more of a white-man's overbite.

Clio settled for the classic kid dance called running circles round your parents.



Nonny and Papa, is she doing you proud?

Young at Heart

One of the great things about having young parents is that your kids have young grandparents, still able to play pretty darn hard. I was thinking about this yesterday while Grandpa/ Pete was busy inventing "partner soccer," an excellent game where a grandparent holds a toddler in the air and swings her legs to kick the ball. (Clio fell over herself with delight, and demanded to be swung around "again!" and "again!").

Then, uploading some pictures from the last week, I remembered this great little clip of Clio and Nonny. I must say, I didn't realize Nonny was quite this fearless. As Dave said watching the video, there's a lot of room for error. But as you can see, Clio was also delighted to be an airplane and also demanded to do this over and over "again!!"

(as an aside, and in keeping with my musings on second children, take a look at Eleri, hanging out on the couch "by all herself," as Clio would say.)

Presents

Clio recently figured out the whole concept of presents. Needless to say, she was thrilled when the postman delivered a big, beautiful box of gifts from Great Granddad and Great Bonnie. She actually did very well with the idea that some of the gifts were for Eleri, too, and later, when she went back into the box of ribbons and bubble wrap, showed me "Eleri's box," which did indeed come with a very special set of ceramic baby dishes for Eleri. (Clio uses the bowl from the adorable enamelware baby set that Great Bonnie gave her as a pouring device in the tub.)

Clio's favorite new item (so far) is this charming fabric umbrella.



I missed it when she picked up the umbrella and said "This is my umbrella. Good bye, I'm going to Titi's House!" (Titi's House is Day Care), so here I am trying to recreate it. In my haste, I forgot, once again, that video does not go vertical. There must be plenty of other idiots like me out there, though, because Windows Movie Maker has a "video effect" that rotates your movie the perfect 270 degrees.

Happy Birthday from the Duggans

Brian and Maud really know how to do birthdays. Not only did they send Clio an adorable wood cradle for her baby Stella (great for a 2 year old, perfect for a 2 year old about to become a big sister), they also left a message singing happy birthday. I put it on speaker phone and it completely delighted miss Clio.

Then, to add to the fun, they emailed us a "making of" video.

Here's Brian, Maud, and cousins Finn and Lucia making their birthday tribute.

Playing the Building

Creative Time's newest installation opened May 31 to huge crowds and rave reviews. A project by David Byrne- yes, of the Talking Heads, but also a visual and sonic artist who dabbles in books- Playing the Building installs an old church organ in the historic Battery Maritime Building on the southern tip of Manhattan, hooking up the keyboard to the columns, girders, and water pipes of the historic space by a system of pneumatic tubes that allow anyway to literally "play" the building.

You can see more about the project (and see pictures from opening) on our website here, read what the New York Times had to say here, check out the Village Voice here or New York magazine here or NPR here, read about it on David's blog journal here and get some dish on The Bwog here, but I know the opinion you all care most about is Clio's.


As soon as she walked in to the ante-room, she declared "I like it!"

Dave got in line to play the organ, and Clio and I walked around the 9,000 square foot space listening to the grunts and creaks of the old, lovely, skylit building. Some of the organ's more powerful notes sound like tubas or thunder, and Clio was a bit less sure of those ("Sounds!" and "Noisy.") but all in all she gives the project the thumbs up.

Eventually, she took a stab at playing the thing herself.

She spent most of her time reconfiguring the seating arrangement, but luckily Grandma recently taught her to play the piano; otherwise she might have missed the point entirely. The sound is not at all good on this little video clip, but if you listen closely, you can hear that Clio is playing the "flutes," and Dave is playing the clunkier girders. You can also see a more professional video on creative time's aforementioned website. But then, that one doesn't feature Miss Clio Grace Peterson.

Laughter is the best Medicine

I just figured out how to resize the AVI video files taken on our little digital camera to be small enough to upload to the web. Hooray! Just to warn you, this may (or may not) mean a video extravaganza.

To start, I love this little video of Clio and Grandpa the day before his surgery. We just got a letter saying he is feeling 100% better after the tube was removed from his nose, and I hope this little reminder of his weekend with Clio boosts his spirits as he starts treatment next week.

Going on and Egg Hunt

We were thrilled to have the company of Abe, Amelia, and their parents for Easter brunch. (Okay, so when we planned the brunch it was really intended as a farewell to the Kwongs, who leave us for San Francisco tomorrow, and we didn't realize it was Easter.) Still, it made our day to have a family play date, and we did "set up" an Easter egg hunt for them.

Because eggs for toddlers basically need to be hidden in plain sight, we couldn't prepare in advance. Dave wanted to take the kids out of the room while we hid the eggs, but it turned out to be easy enough to "hide" them right under their noses. They actually did get into it, and eventually found them all- with a little help from their parents, aka the cheering section.



We also didn't have much to put IN the eggs, because none of these kids really eat candy, and my ideas (grapes, raisins, etc.) would have just made a mess. The kids didn't much care- they just wanted to show them off to each other - but Dave got a little creative with one special egg for Clio, nonetheless.

The Colors of the Rainbow

I've been thinking about the possibilities of video lately- thanks to Isaac's dad, Sam, I was invited by the folks at Babble to throw my hat in the ring for a new, sponsored video blog; they were looking for a video-diary style, with mom and child both figuring prominently in the narrative. As a writer-in-the-basement-in-my-spare-time, I was thrilled by the invitation; as a mom about to expose herself (and child) to a broader public, I was less so, so I turned down the opportunity (with thanks).

Really, video is not my thing- I don't have the best eye, and I'm more about reframing a moment into something meaningful than manipulating its meaning as it's happening (more hind-sight than of the moment), but I love that the invitation made me to think differently about the possibilities of the medium. Like last weekend when I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling fan, and I could hear Clio reading books down the hall in her room, I wished I had the video camera. It was a slice-of-life that said as much about me and our family life as it shared news of Clio with friends and family.

This video is none of the above. It's straight Clio, doing her thing. Also, it is the most unflattering possible angle of me (thanks, Dave) - so much so that I almost did not post it here. For the record, here at the 5-month mark I am definitely showing, but my thighs etc. are not nearly as inflated as this video might lead you to believe. (I had a post up my sleeve about my current stats, the recent "pop," and the fact that the new baby has become really active over the past few weeks, and so on, but I guess I've sort of blown it here, in just one sentence.)

I suggest you just focus on Clio. And Marni, who looks adorable in her "Mrs. Shapiro" tank top.

Pizza: A Love Story in 2 Parts

I made a MAJOR error in parental judgment the other day, when I mentioned the word "pizza" to my pizza-obsessed toddler before I even got it out of the freezer. Clio is so enamored with pizza, she has taken to calling all tasty foods after her delicious favorite (e.g., frozen corn = "pizza"). Here we are talking about pizza, before I employed every distraction tactic in the book while the oven preheated and the pizza baked for an excruciating 21 minutes. (toddlers don't understand the concepts of "almost," "not quite yet," or "soon.")



Finally, Clio gets to sit down to lunch. Now, because I am overenthusiastic about art-directing these little videos, and because we often take video on our regular camera, I tend to forget that you can NOT take video in the portrait layout; normally I would do everything possible to cover up this foolishness (and did in fact find open-source editing software through a google search, which I downloaded and learned how to use all by myself), HOWEVER, for some reason when you flip a video from portrait to landscape it's 5 times as big as it was to begin with and therefore too big for youtube, so you're gonna have to watch this one sideways.

It's mostly the audio that's pertinent anyway.



And for the record, the coordinated plate, bib, and sippy cup is a total coincidence.

A Hat Goes on Your Head

Who's Teaching her this stuff, anyway?

Like mother, like daughter

At long last.... video! (We hope- thanks Christine for giving us the scoop on embedding youtube videos.) Check out Clio at dinner yesterday. She had a bunch of berries (hence the purple halo all over her face), and got maybe a little crazy on the sugar. Also, she's recently gotten way into her tongue. Here goes:



Now, here's me, the day after our wedding, at Marshall Field's waiting to close out our registry. Note the similarities:



I swore that video would never be viewed by anyone. You see what kids can make us do?