Tara is really getting very close to being able to crawl. From a sitting position, she leans forward until she is almost on all fours, except for her right leg which remains tucked under her. From this position, she rocks back and forth as if she could skootch forward. If there is something in front of her which has really caught her eye, she will lay out flat to creep another few inches forward. If this doesn’t put her within reach of whatever she is seeking, she will either raise up on her arms and start rocking again, generally propelling herself backward, or simply roll over to her back and be distracted by the new point of view.

While it’s clear she’ll be crawling soon, I wonder how long it will be before she’s walking as well; she’s not pulling up on things yet, but her balance appears to be improving. Tonight, in addition to her usual standing while holding on to my hands, we did a couple dance moves–”stir the batter”, “make the pizza”, “rock the baby”, “talk to the hand”, etc. I’ll have to get some video once she gets the routine down a little better.

The one thing that is clear is that Tara is more adventurous than Anna was, so our babyproofing is really going to be put to the test this time.

In software engineering, there is a concept dating back to the sixties, called the “second system effect.” The second system effect is the second try at solving a problem, the one where you try to fix all the shortcomings of the first solution, and is generally doomed to failure. This is true because the second system is too ambitious too succeed. It suffers from “feature creep,” in which every little feature anyone could think of makes its way into the system, destroying any sort of conceptual integrity that might have been there. The added complexity makes it unstable to the point that it’s not usable or secure. The second system is dangerous, and to this day, you should never buy version 2.0 of any software program. Stick with 1.0 or wait for 3.0.

I have been writing software for a long time, and I generally try to avoid the second system effect by jumping directly to version 3.0. Actually, that’s not true; I generally write the first version in a quick-and-dirty manner, and quite often leave it at that. But if it is a piece of software with any importance, one that will be in use for a number of years, I find some faults with it. I think of all the things that are missing. Then I begin to write it again. The trick is not to finish writing it again, because I know it’s going to suck; I just work on a design and carry out the implementation until I see the warts start to bubble up. Then I stop, and try to learn what would have made the second version a failure. About half the time I decide that 1.0 wasn’t so bad after all, and the other half of the time I write the third version with less ambition and more wisdom.

The pattern of the second system is visible outside of the world of software. If you look at any situation long enough, you will see its flaws and shortcomings, and seek to remedy them. Do so with too much ambition and you will fail; in trying to please everyone, you may end up pleasing nobody at all.

At this time in my life, I’m facing version 2.0 of a lot of things and wondering at what point it will become obvious that I’m being too ambitious. There are a number of changes going on where I feel like I have an opportunity to start fresh, which is both good and bad. The bad part about starting fresh is the tendency to be too greedy. I have a lot more experience in the world of software with realizing when I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, and that it’s time to scale back if I want to succeed. In life, not so much. Sooner or later I expect the warts to start surfacing, and hopefully it will become more clear to me what really needs to be fixed, what solutions are worse than the problem, and what was best left alone in the first place.

Hello, this is Jennifer here. Finally I feel like I have something noteworthy to write about. Most people who know Anna also know her beloved Bear (that’s her name). Bear is a pink & white stuffed bear (who’d have guessed) that is about 10 inches tall and is very well loved. A few months after Anna chose Bear as her favorite toy (long ago), we set about getting a back-up Bear in the event that some awful fate should befall her. After searching far & wide, Dave managed to find 2 more Bears on E-bay (where else would you expect?) Now, Anna has no clue that Bear is actually one of a set of not-quite-identical triplets. Fortunately, we’ve been able to rotate through the bears without her noticing that one bear has a different color top than the others (pink vs. white) and that another has had minor surgery (thanks to Grandma D. for repairing a hole). Who knows, maybe she does notice but doesn’t want to say anything…

In any case, having 3 Bears has come in handy on a couple occasions when the current Bear was inaccessible. One instance was last week when Anna lost the privilege of having Bear at school for a day. I brought Bear to work to give her to Dave so he could bring her to Anna after school. Except Dave forgot Bear at work. Rather than spend 1/2 hour driving to fetch Bear, I had an idea. I convinced Dave to let me switch the Bears (the current one was in need of a rest anyhow) and tell Anna a little story to explain why the ‘new’ Bear was much cleaner and less tasty (per Anna’s observation) than the Bear she knew that morning….

After sneaking Bear into my van, I asked Anna if we should go get her. Anna was excited and ran out to the car. I got Bear out and presented her to Anna. “Bear went to the Spa to get refreshed and cleaned.” She bought it without a second thought. I felt a little bad about lying to her, but not too bad because Bear means so much to her…

For Bear’s second adventure, fast forward a day or two. I had gotten the first (dirty) bear back from Dave at work to smuggle home because I always have a bag at work. That day I happened to work from home that afternoon, so I had my bag open in our bedroom by my desk. Through the afternoon, I kept saying to myself, “I have to remember to put Bear away before Anna comes home.” Well, I forgot. Later that evening, while getting Anna ready for bed, she spotted the dirty Bear in my backpack with only the legs sticking out. “What’s Bear doing in there?” asked Anna. I quickly shut the bag and diverted her attention. I managed to get her off by herself for a moment or two while I dashed downstairs, grabbed the clean Bear, brought her upstairs, put her in my bag and hid the dirty Bear in my closet. This time, I opened the bag and pulled her out a bit. Just then, Anna finished whatever she was doing and was downstairs whining, “Bear, Bear! Where is Bear?” “She’s up here,” I called. I pointed out Bear sticking out of my bag. “What is Bear doing in there,” asked Anna? “She was looking for something in my bag,” I replied. “Oh, what was she looking for,” asked Anna? “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her,” I said. Fortunately, that was an acceptable answer and we went on about getting ready for bed…

I have always liked this picture I took of Anna in her “clown suit.” She was almost eight months old at the time, and I used this photo as the background on my computer for a long time.

Today, we finally had a little bit of cold weather so that it made sense to put Tara in the same outfit. Jen helped me dig up the same blanket and I took the picture in the same way as the original. Tara is eight and a half months old, and just barely fits in the clown suit.

I need to buy a garden hose. It was a week ago that I needed to wash off the screen off of a fan which we have had for a long time. The fan’s screen needed to be washed because it had pink paint all over it. The fan had pink paint all over it because it had last been used to circulate air in the garage when I was spray painting Anna’s desk, which had previously been Jennifer’s childhood desk, made for her by her grandfather. I can’t answer why I thought it was a good idea to have air circulating wildly in the garage while I was painting. Anyway, the fan was therefore pink and in need of a good washing.

The garden hose, which we keep reeled up in the front yard, spends a lot of time in the sun, inasmuch as it is on the south side of a house in San Diego. Sun is apparently very bad for hoses when presented in large quantities, and thus the hose was in very bad shape at the time I used it to clean the fan. It didn’t really appear to be in such bad shape at first, and surely it functioned in a hose-like manner for as long as I needed it to clean the fan. I had brought Tara out into the garage with me while I cleaned the fan; Jennifer and Anna were out on some sort of errand at the time. After I was done spraying down the removable parts of the fan, and cleaning by hand those that were not, I brought Tara inside to feed her lunch. After finishing lunch I kept hearing sort of a hissing noise which I discovered later was the water running. The water was running, of course, because the hose which I had left under pressure with the spray handle attached had ruptured and was now flooding the lawn.

It was nearly a week later when a coyote ate the neighbor’s cat. What, you say? Are you wondering why you’ve been reading about a fan and a garden hose, and suddenly there are coyotes eating cats? This pretty much sums up the feeling I had when I was awakened at two o’ clock in the morning by Jennifer. That I was awakened at 2:00am is, sadly, not a particularly notable event these days, but Jennifer is not usually the one doing the waking. She was standing at the side of the bed nervously asking if she should call the neighbor, because a coyote had just eaten their cat. Our neighbors have at least one cat, and really, the only reason we know this is because they have a second story cat door to let the cat in and out of the house. From one of their upstairs windows, there is a little ramp that leads down to their patio cover, and from the patio cover the cat makes its way to the ground and back. From our breakfast nook we would occasionally see the cat climb up or down the ramp.

Our house could scarely be located in a more suburban part of San Diego. Being that as it may, there is little flat ground in San Diego, so neighborhoods are created by lopping off the tops of hills, leaving a plateau of concrete surrounded by canyons, like the one that is about 200 feet from our house. Coyotes live in these canyons, and apparently they’re hungry.

Moments before Jennifer woke me up, she had heard a thump which sounded as if was inside the house. Upon investigating, she heard a noise outside that sounded like a cat and a dog fighting; our motion-sensing front patio lights came on, so that when Jennifer looked out the window she had an excellent view of a coyote with the neighbor’s cat in its mouth. We have previously seen cats sitting on the wall that surrounds our front patio. I had thought cats might like the wall because the black bricks retain some of the day’s warmth in the evenings, and the wall provides a good vantage point to scope out the neighborhood. I may need to post a sign later, because it appears to be a really bad place for cats.

The next day we looked around the patio and the sidewalk that leads to our front door, C.S.I.-style, and determined that the cat became cornered at our front door, and the thump which originally captured Jennifer’s attention was the coyote striking the cat. A struggle then ensued, leaving a trail of blood and fur from our door, down the walk, and across the patio, where the predator and his catch were then seen by Jennifer.

Now you know why I need, soon, to buy a new hose.

She did call the neighbor and was surprised to find that he had in fact lost three previous cats to coyotes.

Anna and I have been playing dominoes lately. We have a nice set of double-twelve dominoes, but the first thing we do is pare it down to double-six before we play. At first we started out with very simple rules: Anna always goes first, Anna can peek at the dominoes when she needs to draw, etc. Gradually we have been introducing more rules and are now playing something that is close to a real game. Hopefully by Christmas I can introduce the “mexican train” so that Anna can play with Grandma D. and Grandpa T. At this point we are still playing with our dominoes face up so that I can explain things to her. I think it’s sort of funny that she does so well with dominoes, but still can’t play Chutes and Ladders; she gets confused and loses interest, then only wants to hear the “stories” of what happened to the kids on the illustrations.

Last night while I was cleaning up the kitchen, Anna got out the dominoes and asked if we could play after she first built a tower. After I finished what I was doing, I came over and, seeing her neat little stack of dominoes in progress asked, “Can knock your dominoes down?”

“Not yet,” she replied, “after I finish stacking all these, then you can knock them down.”

“What? Did you say ‘knock them down?’” I shot back gleefully, holding my hand near the stack.

Anna started to grow impatient. “Not until I say!”

“Until you say what?” I asked artfully.

“What you can do.”

“And what will that be?”

Anna scowled. “I’m not going to tell you because you’ll knock them down.”

I hopped up. “Knock them down?!”

Anna pointed to the corner. “Go stand over there.”

We are especially so tired today because Tara had a really rough night. Between a cold that has her congested and some intestinal issues that have her even more congested, she was pretty miserable. Jen was up with her most of the night, and I was up with her from 3:30-4:30am, after which I couldn’t go back to sleep. During that time, Tara wouldn’t sleep in her bed, my arms, the couch, her swing, the sink¹, or the floor.

Nevertheless, she was a lot more chipper today than either Jennifer or I. Before dinner tonight she was standing while holding on to my fingers for support, then as she got herself steadied, she’d gradually let go of my fingers and stand for a half second or less before plopping down on her bottom or tipping over. Immediately, she would again reach for my hands so that I could help her to her feet again. She did this 15-20 times, and we even got some of it on video. As Jen got out the camcorder, Anna got out her digital camera to start snapping, but couldn’t get it to work, and at one point cocked her head to the side and said, “Hmm, my memory card isn’t right.” Girly yes, but geeky too.

Anna developed some sort of rash after her visit to the pumpkin patch on Sunday, and ended up coming home early from school (after today’s visit to the same pumpkin patch). We don’t really know what’s going on with it; could be new laundry detergent, a virus, itchy clothes, sun spots, sleeping in the sink²… who knows.

Between the poor sleep, a lousy day at work, sickness, and skin malady, I’m hoping for a quick return to normalcy; even going back to normal tiredness levels would be a relief.

¹ Actually I didn’t put her in the sink, but I may tonight if she does it again.

² Oh wait, that was Tara.

I have taken and uploaded Tara’s eight month picture, and made a flickr set of all her monthly pictures, and also went back into the archives to fill out all of Anna’s monthly pictures up to her 52-month picture (whew!).

Tara has yet another cold. This morning we went to Anna’s favorite, the Original Pancake House, where Tara behaved, but was mostly zoned the entire time. She achieved a milestone by sneezing out a good three-inch booger on at least two occasions.

Tara also made her first sign, the grasping motion for “milk.” Jen has been showing her the sign when she nurses her, and today I noticed that Tara did the sign when I was carrying her off to have her diaper changed and had her leaned back as we passed Jennifer. After the diaper change, she fussed and again made the sign when we saw Jen. We did signs with Anna, but she didn’t start signing back to us until about 11 months, and had pretty much abandoned the signs by 20 months or so when her verbal vocabulary outpaced her signing vocabulary.

This weekend I was the pinnacle of productivity. Yesterday I managed to get a lot of things done while simultaneously doing 873 loads of laundry. I’m fairly sure I haven’t been any further than the mailbox since Friday. Today, while Jen was taking a quart of change¹ to the Coinstar machine, I made a stack o’ crepes which will later this week be layered with a dairy-free duxelle and sausage for a couple dinners’ worth. This dairy-free diet which Tara has imposed on Jennifer is really getting to be a bummer. At the same time I was perfecting my spatula-free crepe flip, I was reading Pippi to Anna and photographing myself. Let’s see Alton Brown do that.

Tara is being fussy these last couple days because of some diaper rash and yet another cold. Poor girl. She did have a bright moment when we put her and Anna into the bathtub together; the two of them loved splashing together, though Tara is not accustomed to Anna’s long baths. Afterward, both girls napped poorly.

Tonight, C. is coming over, and we’ll go out for dinner… somewhere. I feel like a steak, Jen likes sushi. Somewhere with both would be ideal. The Sand Crab cafe could be good too.

In other news, Flickr must no longer be cool, because I’m all into it now. Most of the new pictures will be showing up there, so get yourself an RSS reader so that you can be magically notified when I put new pics up. I’ve been putting new ones up all week long, but I imagine that won’t last forever. Also, you’ll want to see the “Flickr RSS Widget” on the left sidebar, because it pops out a bunch of new photos when you click on it. I’m going to change the button graphic because “Flickr RSS Widget” doesn’t mean much to most people and “Click here for photos” would be more obvious. Click there for new photos.

¹ Apparently, a quart of change = $120. We don’t steal the quarters out of the change bucket.