Over the last couple weeks, Tara has learned a lot of new words. I’d have to put her vocabulary at 20 words or so. She already knew mommy, daddy, outside, door, no-no, all done, night-night, and a few others. More recently she has added apple (meaning “some food I would like to eat”), please, here, ball, Anna, Augie, and she continues to learn new words every day. Also, she can sing “woah woah woah” (your boat), and “E-I-E-I-O”, and sometimes count as high as nine. I’ll have to look back at videos of Anna at this age and see how well she was speaking; I bet she’s on track to meet Anna’s benchmark of 7-8 word sentences by age two.

Since arriving at Auntie K.’s house, we’ve manage to do a lot of work and a lot of play. They just moved in a few weeks ago and there has been a lot of work to do on the house. Much has been done before we got here, and it’s certainly looking good now; we spent most of yesterday fixing up the front yard to the point that it puts our landscaping to shame, even though we’ve lived there for years. Tara and Anna helped in their own way, then got some serious sprinkler time.

Today was a day of recreation; golf for the guys and shopping for the girls. My game was about as good as one could expect considering that I had not swung a driver since before Tara was born. I tried it exactly once, resulting in the ball going almost totally sideways from the direction I was swinging. I then tee’d up another ball and hit it with my 5-iron nearly 200 yards straight down the middle. I could have saved a lot of weight if I would have left those darn woods out of my bag.

Jennifer and the rest of the girls managed to go about halfway through the world’s busiest Ikea before the children imploded. I’m very proud that Jennifer was able to come away empty handed. That’s self-control right there, folks.

Anna has been making great strides in escaping her fear of dogs. At this point we no longer have to keep Augie penned up, and Anna is getting pretty close to being able to play with her.

After a week in residence, we bid farewell to the lake house, the lake, the fish, and the worms. It was a very relaxing week, and we really enjoyed seeing family, and eating way too much of my grandmother’s cooking. Anna had to bring a bag of tortillas along for the road.

We are now situated in Auntie K. and Uncle T.’s house, and actually have a proper broadband connection! All hail the Internet. Moreso, I no longer have to enter my blog posts on a 12-key phone keypad. All hail the proper Keyboard. Grandpa K. and S. have also arrived, so I’m sure there are some sort of family-oriented things going down in the next week. I just don’t know what they are.

We also had yet another celebration for my birthday. I haven’t made a big deal about my birthday, either as a event to be mourned or celebrated. Auntie K. seems more affected by it than I am, since she is a number of years younger than Jen and I, but close enough that the fact of our aging makes the fact of her aging all the more imminent. It is what it is.

This being the Vacation of Personal Growth for Anna, in which she has expanded her glittery pink Princess World to include things like swimming in the same water with fish and touching worms, she has continued to petting dogs. Anna is very afraid of dogs, but has now spent a full day in the same house with Augie, who is like a dog, only much smaller. Augie is a very affectionate, active little doglet with a penchant for licking faces. Anna still can’t be in the same room with an unfettered Augie, but she is warming up to the idea. Note that the photo of Augie to the right is actual size.

But the end is in sight. I have been working every free moment to meet a deadline on Tuesday. Jen has been watching the girls while I have been working late nights, late mornings, late afternoons. At this point, I still have more work to do than I have time to do it in, but I believe I can present something reasonable.

Yesterday, Anna had her second dance recital. Photos will be posted soon.

This morning I just realized that on my upcoming trip to Washington DC, I’ll have a chance to attend a meditation session led by Tara Brach, the Buddhist teacher who inspired my daughter Tara’s name. I’m very excited for the chance to meet her and bring her a picture of my little girl.

Today is Father’s Day, an Jennifer just arrived home with Starbucks, so I’m going to go enjoy my day and hopefully I’ll have more chances to post in another week or so on vacation.

Anna had a blast at California Adventure on Saturday. Actually, as soon as we got into the hotel, she was so enthralled by the idea of being on vacation, and being in a hotel room that she didn’t want to go into the park at first. Tara was all ready to go, grabbing her shoes and standing by the door. By the time we finally had everyone ready to move out, we could tell it was going to be a short day. Tara slept 20 minutes in the car and would not nap in the room, and Anna went without a nap entirely, but our one objective was dinner with the Princesses. We had time for one short ride before dinner. Anna was very excited about seeing all the princesses at dinner; as we sat down she could see them roaming around and talking to people.

Our first visit was from Ariel, who didn’t talk (in character) and only stopped for a short while, but left Tara with a lipstick smooch on her forehead. Snow White was very friendly and chatty, and got Anna to open up a little bit. Cinderella was very charmed by Tara, who started waving to her immediately, and when asked if she was having a good time, started nodding emphatically. Dinner was good, so for the entertainment value I consider it money well spent.

Today, Anna and Jennifer are at Disneyland, and Tara just woke up from her morning nap, so I’ll be going over to meet them shortly.

Update: Shortly after I arrived at the park and met up with Jennifer and Anna, they went off to hear storytime while Tara and I walked around in a zigzag-like manner for many minutes before a ride in the stroller followed. We met up again, and Anna started to feel a little nauseous, probably as a result of her diet of juice and goldfish crackers. We all went back to the hotel for lunch and Tara’s nap. Anna still doesn’t seem to be inclined to nap, and one of us will likely head back to the park shortly.

The hotel seems to have T-Mo wireless broadband, which is working pretty well, so I’ll start processing and uploading the rest of the photos from this morning.

Tara turned fifteen months yesterday. Lately she has been changing so quickly it’s hard to keep track of it all. She is just constantly in motion: getting into stuff, climbing on things, talking to inanimate objects. She can speak the following: Hi, bye-bye, uh-oh, night-night (nigh-nigh), all done (aw duh), Mommy, and Dada. Further, she can sign milk, food, help, all done, and bath. She whines when she doesn’t get her way, and in starting to defend herself from her older sister. She can climb up and down the stairs, and pretty much anything else with steps, such as stools and her slide.

Anna has been having a rough go since Jennifer got back from Singapore. On Thursday, she fell and whacked her knee pretty hard; she still has a big bruise on it. Also, she fell yesterday while at hip-hop dance class, whonking her elbow and complaining about it to the point than Jennifer took her to urgent care to have it looked at. It’s fine. Then, today she got her five-year shots, plus blood taken from her finger. She was totally nonlinear for a good half hour. At this point she has one good leg but the rest is in pretty sad shape. Hopefully the rest of the week will turn for the better.

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.

Today was one of those lazy yet unexplicably satisfying days in which I got nothing done, but enjoyed myself nonetheless. After cooking breakfast, my friend R. came over with his newish motorcycle, which he let me ride. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, but have always wanted to try. It was a lot of fun, if a little scary, but I totally want to do it again. There are motorcycle safety classes available which don’t require that you have your own motorcycle; I think I’ll try again to sign up for one.

Later, we made a family trip to the library. Both kids had a ball. Anna loves books and it took about three minutes for her to have an armload of books ready to check out. Tara just liked walking around and looking at all the people, but eventually discovered that she was surrounded by thousands of things which were on shelves instead of in her hands or in her mouth or on the floor. Of course, she endeavored to remedy the situation despite my best efforts.

Tara continues to amaze me with her comprehension of language and of the world around her. Her signing continues to improve, and she is also imitating more of our speech. On the way to the library, Anna asked me to hand her some books to read on the way. I did so, and after a pause, prompted, “What do you say?” “Thank you,” replied Anna, followed by Tara, “Hey too.” I’ve got to get some of her talking recorded… it’s so cute.

After dinner, Jennifer put the girls down while I cleaned the kitchen; after she came down, we sat on the living room floor and watched Dr. 90210 before heading up to bed. Net to-do items done for Saturday: zero.

This has been yet another “too busy to blog” week… so much going on and yet no time to write about it. Last night I was finally so exhausted that I went to bed before the kids did; Jennifer put them both to bed and I was out by 7:30pm.

Tara is now officially a toddler. Walking is her preferred means of getting around, but she still has the uncertain, could-fall-over-at-any-time stagger that is at once cute and hilarious. I have some more video to post at a later time.

I forgot to mention that a couple weeks back Jennifer upgraded her awful Sony DSC-T1 camera–which is really cool up until you try to use it, or look at the pictures it took–to a Canon A610. The Canon is bigger but faster, more usable, and it takes vastly better pictures. Pay attention, folks; more megapixels doesn’t mean better picture quality; but bigger sensors and optics do. You just can’t fight physics. The new camera should help her bring home some good pictures from Singapore when she goes at the end of April.

Anna has been something of a challenge lately. Yesterday, she got up on the wrong side of the bed and things went downhill from there. I was at home in the morning, preparing for a teleconference I was hosting, and outside my office door I could hear all sorts of raging going on. When I picked her up from school, she was moping in the corner. Her teacher hurried right up to me to warn me what a foul mood she was in. Apparently there was some incident at snack time that got her all upset, and though I don’t remember the details, it was yet another instance of Anna getting all sideways when the unexpected happens. She has much difficulty coping with the unexpected.

I am back on the Atkins diet again, as my weight has gotten out of control. I had a lot of success, losing over 50 lbs in 2001-2 on Atkins, staying stable for a couple years, and lately gaining a bunch back. I decided to take control and get back on the wagon before I give it all back. Having done it before, I’m confident I’ll be back down to a reasonable weight by July. I’m glad that Tara is eating normal people food (albeit cut into small pieces), because cooking for three different diets is hard enough.

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?