Winter’s over and we’re back to our regular 75 degree sunny days, though it has been getting cold at night. It certainly makes it difficult to think about Christmas even though it’s only three weeks away! I can’t believe it’s December already. I really need to take a picture to send out for our Christmas cards. I’m thinking it will just be the girls because I don’t see us all getting a good picture together without a lot of digital editing taking place; there’s just too much motion going on for that sort. It’s really unfortunate, too, because the girls are absolutely the cutest things ever, as demonstrated in the video to your right. Jennifer and I were poking through some videos from her camera the other day, and there’s a couple of real crack-ups in there. I really wish there was a decent camcorder on the market that recorded compressed video and which did not also cost a zillion dollars or suck. It seems that the < $600 camcorders that use DVD or hard disk or flash cards as media have nowhere near the quality of $299 mini-DV camera. I need to do downloading in faster than real time, because there is absolutely nothing cool about waiting. Maybe next year.

Speaking of gadgets, I’ve been keeping my eye out for the next cool phone. My trusty Nokia 6600 has been everything I’ve wanted in a phone, except that it could use a better screen and camera, and I would like an external media slot. Nokia’s Symbian smartphones are the only ones I have seen that don’t either have a horrible UI (ie. Motorola) or are horribly unstable and/or locked down (ie. Windows Mobile, Palm). Thus, I only really care about new Nokia phones like the N80, which is like my phone, but adds a 2-megapixel camera with flash, secondary video conferencing camera, Wi-Fi, external card slot, and kickass screen. Nokia will also introduce a couple smaller models as well before my Cingular contract is up. I’m aware the iPhone is supposed to come out soon too, so I will wait to see what that looks like as well.

It was a really good thing to be able to fall back into the regular work week today. The nanny got her car problems straightened out, and I was able to get into the office and start getting caught up on what I was already behind on before I had to unexpectedly take a day off from work. Tara is feeling better today; her fever is gone and she’s not coughing as much as the last couple days, but still has a hoarse voice. She has been so cute lately that I captured some lousy video on my phone just to get something to post, so please enjoy.

Update: somehow I had borked the audio on the movie, but it’s fixed up now.

Here’s a short clip of Tara running around the kitchen and getting into the pantry. I had to bleep out Anna after she sklonked her foot on the wastebasket¹.

Tara runs around the house like this pretty much nonstop.

¹ Because she was naming someone, not because she was swearing.

Now that I have the in-browser streaming video thing figured out, I’ll have to include some more movies on the web site. This video of Anna at 23 months shows just how well she could talk at that age. We started her doing sign language at around 8-9 months, and she started signing back to us at about 11 months. For a while it was a real novelty to our relatives. By around 18 months, she was speaking so well that she began to drop signing as a means of communicating, and has all but forgotten them. By two years, she was speaking in sentences of 7-8 words.

Tara has not been nearly the chatterbox that Anna was. This morning, as I got out the camera to get a picture of Jennifer nursing Tara–who is almost completely weaned–and Tara would occasionally pop off upon hearing the shutter click. As I set up for another shot, she looked over at me and said “Hi dada!” It was as clear as a bell; after we recovered a little bit and talked to her some more, Jennifer asked Tara to say hi again, and she said “Hi daddy.” How cool is that?

Tara has really started walking quite a bit this weekend. We had her tottering back and forth between Jennifer and I, and she could take 5-6 steps pretty reliably. Later, she was rising to her feet unassisted, and walking around on her own, sometimes taking 10-15 steps, and occasionally turning around. Crawling is still her preferred method of getting from point A to point B.

Last night she was so excited about walking that she cried when we picked her up to take her to bed, and tried to claw her way back to the ground again.

If you can’t see the movie, try the MPEG or WMV versions.

Tara is continuing to eat solids, having started today with green beans. She appears to like them quite well… she downed two ounces today between two feedings, and is becoming more familar with the following four-step process:

1. Open mouth.
2. Food goes in.
3. Close mouth.
4. Chew and swallow.

On occasion she proceeds directly from step 2 to step 4, blorting the contents of her mouth onto her bib or pants. Another popular mistake is to become distracted by something shiny after step 2, later to be surprised that there is something in her mouth. On the other hand, she managed to keep her hands away from the spoon and her mouth for almost the entire feeding. Previously, all would go well for the first five minutes or so, and then a face-painting contest would break out.

In other news, Anna has her friend C. over to spend the night. I have said previously that having a friend over to play is almost less work than just the one child, because they entertain each other. Apparently I was insane when I said that. Actually, it’s not quite so bad, but Anna and C. are behaving more like siblings now, so the host-and-guest manners have pretty much faded away. To top it off, there was a bathtub incident in which… well, let’s just say everyone had to get out while the water was changed. I’m going to have to bookmark this post for when Anna gets older and attempts to date…

Update: I have put together a short movie (approx 10 MB) of Tara’s first feeding. It took me a while to figure out which Metallica songs go with rice cereal…

Tara is starting to imitate. On our trip a couple weeks back, she demonstrated to my sister-in-law how she would return fire when some stuck their tongue out at her. Last night, I taught Tara how to blow raspberries. She picked it up right away–the kid’s a prodigy, I’m telling you. There we were, lying in bed, blowing raspberries at each other for a good five minutes. Tonight, I went to get her up from nap, and she started right away as soon as she saw me. Finally, after dinner, I was able to capture it on video for your viewing pleasure.

Although we didn’t go today, I put up a movie of Anna at GTC Academy making a tumbling pass on the runway trampoline.