Yum

Try this. We've made a couple of those cakes in the last week and a half, and they are vachement bon.

Daily Sophie

She's spending a lot more time with her eyes open, taking everything in.

Spooky ooky

I want my MTV

Not yet, fortunately. For now, it's princess movies.

This was taken Saturday, the one day a week when the kids are allowed to watch TV (at least in theory -- we've let the rules slip a bit since Sophie came.) The boys were hogging the big TV, so Emma made do with the airplane TV and headphones.

Dividing the plunder

After the church Halloween party last night:


It seemed like they had received enough candy to last until Christmas. By lunchtime today, however, Ethan had nothin' but wrappers left. Good thing we'll get another go at it on Tuesday.

Hey guys, let's take a picture of all of you together in your Halloween costumes!

Hmm. I guess we'll have to try again on Tuesday.

katamari damacy

 

Yawn

Did you yawn when you saw this photo?

Sleeping

IMG_0775b, originally uploaded by parker family.

Sophie

IMG_0791b, originally uploaded by parker family.

We took some more photos today. Blogger has been giving me grief, so I did a run around through flickr. Yay for flickr. If you click through the link I think you can download the large size of this and the other images I'll post today (if you're so inclined).

Where's Judy when we need her?

Judy, we took about 100 pictures tonight, and this is the ONLY ONE that came out kind of in focus. We'll have to wait to take some more until Saturday, when we can do it during the day with better lighting.

The 100 were worth it though, because this picture's a keeper. We are in love with that little double chin.

Emma suddenly seems very, very old

All Sophie, all the time

Her brothers and sister adore her. I picked up Ethan from a birthday party today, and the first thing he said when we got in the car was, "Is Sophie awake at home?" He wanted to go home and hold her. Here's Andrew holding his little sister:


Here she is after her first bath. We tried to comb her hair.

Sophie's home!

Check out that crazy hair!





I'm holding her as I post this. We're so excited to have Ginger and Sophie home.

 

Weighing in

8 pounds, 5 ounces. 20.5 inches long. And very fuzzy.

 

Happy birthday Sophie!

She came a week early! Ginger was amazing, and both she and Sophie are doing well. More photos to come.

 

Be vehwy vehwy quiet. I'm hunting for wabbits.

Ah, fall. The season for:

• Watching the leaves change color.
• Carving pumpkins.
• Finding severed rabbit heads in your backyard.

Yep, that's right. A SEVERED rabbit head. Our yard has a fence, so we're not sure how a random rabbit head came to rest on our lawn. My theories:

1. It fell from the sky.
2. Terrorists left it.
3. The bunny's head fell off, and the body hopped away.

Do you have a theory? If so, leave it in the comments.

I'd rather chop up baby mice with a shovel than pick up a severed rabbit head. I couldn't look at the thing. The removal operation was quite a sight--Ginger was on the deck about thirty feet away, directing me as I tried to push the head into a paper bag while avoiding direct eye contact with the bunny. After a couple of tries, Ginger got fed up, walked over business-like and put the head in the bag. No nonsense.

I would have done it with a few more tries. At least I carried it to the trash like a big boy.

Our yard is a crazy, wild place. Yesterday, Ginger called me at work to tell me we had a mouse stuck between one of the basement windows and the screen. Mice have been eating away the screen outside one of our basement windows as they try to escape the cold. Although they can apparently eat through metal, they can't eat through glass (yet).

Off and on through the afternoon yesterday I wondered what I was going to do with the mouse when I got home. Leave it to rot as a medieval warning to other trespassers? Pull the screen back and let the mouse escape? Fortunately, by the time I got home the mouse was gone. Maybe it left us the rabbit head as a token of appreciation.

The tooth fairy is going to run out of money soon

He was brave and let me pull this one out, so now it is waiting under his pillow instead of in his small intestine.

More news about TV

Check out this article. Some researchers think autism may be directly linked to television watching among kids younger than three years old:

"The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders."

That seems hard to believe. Is television really causative, or just related?

An interesting aspect of the article is the ill-placed ad for PBS halfway down the page: "The best programs on TV. Period." Du'oh.

UPDATE: More here.

Check out the anagram genius

Enter your name here.

My name translates to "Rat killer poet." Hmm.

Ginger is "Grrr! A keen pig."

Question

Ethan: Dad, are you a dummy?

Me: What?!? No. Why?

Ethan: Then why did Mom get a book at the library called "Blogging for Dummies"?

Best Christmas present ever.

I saw this on Neatorama today.

Ouch.

It was very cold and windy in Indiana today, and Ethan's face got chapped as a result.

Tonight after dinner Ethan decided to soothe his chapped cheeks and lips by going into his bathroom, squirting out a few pumps of hand sanitizer, and applying the hand sanitizer (approx. 97% alcohol) directly to his face. Ouch. Judging by the sounds he was making, it must have hurt A LOT.

After a couple of minutes he seemed to be okay. Nevertheless, we sent him to bed tonight with a face slathered in Lubriderm and Vaseline.

Another geography quiz

This one lets you compete against other players in head-to-head competition.

Couch potatoes

Saw this today:

Three out of four American homes have more than one television. Seventy-seven percent of American sixth-graders have a TV in their bedrooms. The average individual American watches television for roughly four hours a day, and the average American household watches over seven hours of television a day. According to one study, television accounts for nearly 40% of the average American’s free time.

Our Ethan...

...is always on the move. Ginger and I were looking at the photos we took of him outside over the last few days, and realized that in every one his hair is sticking straight up because he's running. Or he's just a blur:

The one exception:

Feets of strength

Poor Ginger. This is what 2 hours of primary did to her feet today:

Hopefully Sophie will be here soon!

Don't hide your jealousy.

It's supposed to snow here on Thursday.

Snaggletooth no more

He lost his second tooth of the week! Fortunately, he realized he was chewing on this one before he swallowed it. It came out at school, which is very LUCKY, because he got to go to the nurse's office. Everyone who loses a tooth at school gets a green plastic treasure chest from the school nurse. Unfortunately, Andrew's treasure chest, with the tooth inside, is still sitting on his desk at school.

Not that he believes in the tooth fairy anyway.

"My little brother had not eaten voluntarily in over three years"

A new camera

My birthday present from Ginger arrived today. I'm very excited. By the time I got home from work there wasn't much light left, but the first attempt turned out okay anyway. I'm looking forward to moving beyond the "auto" settings.

Our poor kids don't know what's coming.

The power of the mind

I found this paragraph at this site. Even though the words look like nonsense, you can read it if you try:

"I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt."

Missing

Does anyone know where Andrew put his tooth? It fell out while he was eating a snack at school today, and where it ended up is a mystery. This may be the second tooth that he has swallowed. One minute it was in his mouth, and the next minute it was mysteriously gone.

His other front top tooth is almost ready to come out, too. We're not sure how he's going to eat when that happens.

Maybe with all the teeth in his stomach, he won't need teeth in his mouth anymore.

Emma claims her toes taste like frosting and strawberries.

Hmm. We'll take her word for it, I think.

When drawing scary monsters...

...the artist must make faces to summon his muse.

Life of a second grader

Homework, even on weekends.

Weird...

...but fun little game. The kids loved it.

Top 10 kids' names in the UK

Sigh...

"TOP TEN BOYS' NAMES

Jack, Joshua, Thomas, Harry, James, Charlie, Oliver, Callum, Daniel, William.

TOP TEN GIRLS' NAMES

Jessica, Grace, Olivia, Emily, Ruby, Sophie, Chloe, Lucy, Katie, Ellie."