Baby Pictures
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Saturday, September 09, 2006
Sisters
Here’s a more proper photo of Valerie standing in the crib, exhibiting her customary disposition…
And one of the two of them in their room. Sadie is wearing her cutely garish dress that is her Favorite Outfit Ever. She had caught sight of it in the clean laundry, insisted on wearing it and using the white part as a food catcher per usual, and then insisted on sleeping in it too.
To the degree that Sadie is… a bit odd… Valerie has been possibly the best thing ever to happen to her.
Sadie Loves New Clothes
Sadie models her new outfit and demonstrates that she has mastered “contemptuous.” That’s a denim overall dress, with a red T-shirt you can’t see underneath, and a red Pooh windbreaker she wouldn’t take off, or even allow to be partially unzipped without freaking. She selected matching red socks. To go to the playground she wore new shoes with heavy duty rubber treads that made climbing the slides easier. We get the best pass-along clothes!
Art Valerie
This is the result of my playing around just for giggles with a picture of Valerie that came out unusably dark. As in the first thing I had to do was brighten it by 45%. Ended up with something more like art than a photograph.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Mmmm… Pizza
Last night was pizza night; our normal Papa Ginos order of a rustic meat combo and large traditional cheese, with the AAA discount. Val got her first chance to gnaw on pizza bones, and her first taste of pizza cheese, which was also her first taste of cheese, which we decided after her checkup it was time for her to start trying. She needs the fat and calories even more than Sadie did.
Sadie hadn’t eaten to speak of all day, and kept refusing food. She’d woken up too early and had a cranky day. We gave her a primo piece of the meat combo, which she picks much of the meat off of, but she wasn’t that excited by it. My theory was that she wanted a slice of plain pizza, so I got her one.
To our amazement, for the first time ever she picked up the slice, held it like a big person and started taking bites point first. This called for the camera!
The camera all too often disappoints me by getting an awesome shot but making it blurry. I’ll take six pictures of one of them, get one that has a smile or is otherwise superlative, and the camera will have failed me just on that one. Focusing is automated, which also means it takes the picture when it’s good and ready so I miss an outrageous number of “snap it now before the moment has passed” shots. Sometimes video recording refuses to turn on at all, no matter how many times I press the button or how long I hold it down.
The first shot of Sadie with the pizza caught an uncharacteristic smile and was a great picture, but so blurry I wouldn’t ordinarily post it, and wouldn’t make a print out of it. I was so mad I decided to experiment with touching it up. I use Paint Shop Pro 5.
Here’s the fuzzy original (which actually isn’t as bad as a lot of the ruined ones I get):
Here’s the result of surprisingly little modification:
Click the pictures above for larger instances in a new window.
Still not perfect, but better. I was intrigued to see what I could do. Oh, she devoured that entire slice!
Friday, September 01, 2006
Tall Girl
These are her new pajamas, the color she selected, size 3T. Which turned out to be a closer fit than expected, though there is room to grow, and they stretch enough to avoid the usual problem of pants falling because she’s thinner than the clothing makers assume. She’ll get a couple more pairs, now that we know they fit and are comfy.
The second shot is her favorite perch, on the back of the couch. Though she also likes being on the couch itself once she has removed the cushions. Very strange.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Carb Girl
The third picture is especially significant in that Sadie hated potatoes. Even in the mixed veggies babyfood that included potato, she could tell it was there. It took McDonald’s fries to get her to eat potato in some form. Maybe it helps that Val’s first potato experience was fries from Mina’s.
Valerie also thinks toast, bread crusts and pasta, even plain, are wonderful. On the other hand, I am not sure she has ever disliked any food. Declared it “meh” compared to other things, sure, but not rejected. She also loves broccoli at least as much as Sadie did. The bread picture here was actually a bit of garlic bread crust from a meal of broccoli chicken al fredo, of which she’d also eaten the other components.
However well she likes everything else, carbs seem to rule.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Family Pictures
Here are some great pictures of several nieces and nephews.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
More First Playground Fun
When we first arrived, Sadie wandered around, checking things out, refusing so much as any hints of help by repeatedly saying “I do.”
Not “me do,” as my niece famously insisted to my mother about dressing herself when she was two. No, for Sadie it’s no talking at all except when things slip out, but with the correct pronoun or usage when it happens. Here she is, checking things out and getting close to using the actual equipment:
Here Sadie demonstrates the only proper way to reach the top of the slide:
Yep, the proper and efficient way is to climb up the slide itself. She used the big steps. She tried using the little steps closer to the slide, after watching another kid use them. She wouldn’t take my advice to use them; only witnessing a peer. Same with being reticent about going through the cage-like metal tube until she watched another girl go through.
She went down the little slide once, then it was big slide all the way. Eventually when the right combination of other little kids going over there but not as many people over all being there happened, she made a break for the big kid equipment and used the even bigger slide. However, it was in heavy use by others and she freaked because we stopped her from climbing up the slide and effectively monopolizing it.
Here she is, going down the big slide on the little kid side of the playground:
Finally, Valerie does not want to be little, and insists she can play on the equipment too, not merely swing or be held or sit in the stroller. Sheesh. We let her hang out on this two-tier platform like truncated steps, handy for adults to sit or to access the tubes. She climbed up a step and considered but though better of going into the mesh tube.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Swingers
Looking at the playground pictures reminded me I’d never posted Sadie’s first time on a big kid swing, back on July 22nd. Here she is with my grandnieces Katherine and Julia:
The strange thing was that she propelled herself, as if she had been born knowing how to do it. Except it seems less strange after seeing how she operated at the playground, watching what other kids did and learning, or getting her nerve up, in the case of the metal mesh tube, from that. She probably saw one of the other kids pumping her legs to go and emulated.
The funky safe swings in the little kid (red) section of the playground were a step backward for Sadie, but Valerie didn’t mind. Sadie also didn’t remember how to make herself go. The weird seats made it easy to push them without unseating them, so that was good.
In the last shot you get a good view of the bigger kid equipment, which little kids were also using. Sadie took it upon herself to join them for the last little while we were there.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Sadie In, Sadie Out
Ready for Launch
Sisters Impatient and Thoughtful, loaded in their stroller, ready to go for a walk.
Teenage Two Year Old
Good Posture Starts Young
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Classic Valerie
Nope, she wasn’t trying out for Blue Man Group: The Junior Edition. She’d found a rogue crayon of Sadie’s. Compared to that, how bad could it be to let her try the chili? Which she loved.
As of today she seems to have grasped and run with the idea she should grin face-wrenchingly for the camera, so she’s gone from serious in most shots to big smiles much of the time. This seemed more spontaneous, and is a classic picture.
Now if we could get her to sleep all night…
Monday, August 21, 2006
Six Months
Since Valerie is six months old today, here are some pictures, all from this month or very late July.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
It’s Not Envy
Crayons are also good for coloring your sister, captured here with one of her elusive smiles. Elusive to the camera, that is. They aren’t elusive at all, in general. She’s genial and jovial and all that, as I reportedly was at her age. Yet for the camera Valerie can make serious Sadie look jolly.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Pictures!
There are mass quantities of pictures of the family, including Sadie, Valerie, and most of their 16 first cousins and my three grandnieces, over on my brother’s front page currently, specifically in this post, this post, and this post. They are significant as these were two “must bring camera” events for which I idiotically forgot it entirely.
I’d hesitated to point them out earlier, as the original two posts had “straight of the camera” files sizes of give or take a megabyte for each picture, so it was noticably slow even with FiOS. They and all the new ones have been shrunk to more standard web page file sizes, so page load shouldn’t even be that horrible with dialup.
Go see!
Friday, August 11, 2006
Sad Val
Valerie is up to three real food meals a day, and pretty much thinks each new food she tries is Best Thing Ever and why were we holding out on her. Yesterday she tried peas for the first time, case in point. She’s now had apple, pear, banana, peach, mango/kiwi/apple, carrot, peas, sweet potato, sweet potato/apple, prune, squash, apricot, and quite possibly something I’m forgetting. She also eats oatmeal mixed into other foods. Courtesy of Sadie and a more casual attutude and ravenous hurriedness on her part, she’s also probably tasted and even swallowed things we don’t know about. Probably including peanut butter, courtesy of Sadie. Yesterday she approvingly sampled a Frosted Flake Sadie had dropped.
Yes, she doesn’t know she’s five months old and shouldn’t have the dexterity to pick up an individual flake and put it in her mouth. Let alone a sunflower seed. We got her some banana flavored puffs that will disintegrate readily and serve as a distraction. She loves those. When Sadie doesn’t steal them all.
This morning she tried a little real banana. When we did that to Sadie she thought we were nuts (real bananas and babyfood bananas are entirely different flavors). Valerie declared it yet another Best Food Ever.
She can’t get enough to eat. Yesterday evening we finally figured out that was why she wouldn’t stop fussing, and it took a big jar, a small jar, and some of the puffs to satisfy her. Though she was still unhappy that she got puffs while we got spaghetti, salad and French bread. Not Fair.
She seems to put all that food into height and motion. I call her the Squirminator. During diaper changes she makes Sadie look placidly cooperative.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
That’s Our Sadie
Playing intently with tools from the top rack of the cheap yellow toolbox, after she finally figured out how to open it, while her doll (who Sadie recently named Dee Dee) looks on.
I kept her out of the bottom section, let her play until she was bored, then disappeared the toolbox into the closet with the house toolboxes. The yellow one is supposed to live in the trunk of the Sentra, but that may be moot now (it could also use a few additional items). The truck got the toolbag instead, stuffed full, but I moved that to the Sentra one day when I needed tools before we even got out of the driveway.
Of course, she figured out how to open the toolbox by watching me open it earlier, as I lowered the seat on her tricycle, pointing out what the tools I used were called and how I was using them. Valerie was also fascinated by the demo.
Aha! Sadie’s in a growth spurt and now I know why. I told her she still needed a couple inches height to reach the pedals, even though she can sit on the seat now.
The kid is going to be one of those who will want tools - real ones - at an absurdly young age.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Da Girls
So what I’d really like is to spend my weekend with these two:
But I mostly have to spend it with these two:
Oh well. And off to it…
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Valerie’s First French Fries
And yes, she really was eating them, after sufficient mastication, enough to have consumed a couple good-sized fries worth. She was thrilled! Until she snagged part of an onion ring off the table and no longer wanted fries…
Monday, July 24, 2006
Happy Birthday
To my mother’s cool sister, my aunt Bea. She was the youngest, and my mother 2nd oldest, making the age difference small enough for me to remember Bea babysitting us when she was still a teenager, and I can remember her wedding reception, held around the corner from where we live now.
Here she is last summer, followed by a bonus picture of her son, my cousin Andy, and her first grandchild, Andy’s daughter Casey, taken on June 25th.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
A Body In Motion…
Monday, July 10, 2006
Outgrown But Not Forgotten
Mmmm… Squash
Which Valerie liked as well as apples, but maybe not as much as pears, which as you may know are the Best Thing Ever.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Million Mile Stare
“Autism spectrum disorders? What are those?”
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sadie Makes Fark
Sadie has been Farked. Learned via Jen, whose blog is the background of the picture in question. It’s the picture from this post.
I signed up for a Fark account so I could leave a comment telling people, well… this:
Just to let everyone know, that’s a picture of my daughter (not a boy, short hair at the time notwithstanding), Sadie, from a series I took and posted at Accidental Verbosity of her “reading” different blogs on my monitor. The one with Jen’s (Lintefiniel Musings) was probably the best of those. It was posted on July 18, 2005, so she’d have been just short of 10 months old at the time.
I just love a lot of these and will have to save them for her to see when she’s old enough to appreciate it.
Trouble is, it won’t let you comment for the first 24 hours after signing up. Sheesh.
Some of you might enjoy checking them out. They can be freaky, but mostly they’re quite cool and downright LOL amusing.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Valerie Gallery - Deluxe Edition
This is the “I’ve been remiss about posting Valerie pictures so guess I’ll try to catch up and be thorough” edition. Heck, she’s started eating real food - beating Sadie to the “I’ll grab the spoon and put it into my mouth myself” by a huge margin. As soon as she started, in fact. Twice in the high chair and she doesn’t really need towels to prop her up, weeks early. But then, she’s verging on sitting up by herself on the floor. She’s downright alarming in her hurry to do things, and her sheer strength.
Anyway, these are in order from most to least recent. Some are going to be similar to others to show subtleties of expression or activity. I amnot sure it keeps them from loading, for those with dialup who might want to see the main page without them, but all but the first couple will be “below the fold,” so click to see them all. We’re talking about 40 pictures, taking us back to when I last did a roundup, but making no attempt to go find neglected sets of pictures prior to that. Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
A Walk On The Howland Side
This is my great-grandmother, Sarah “Sadie” Margaret Tranmer nee Howland. She died in April 1971,around the time I turned 10. Which means she lived to be just short of 75; younger than I always thought. These are great pictures, exactly as I remember her, reflecting her personality. Reportedly she was a real wise-ass, could cut you to ribbons with her tongue, but would do anything to help you if you needed it.
She married James Edmund Tranmer, and they had six kids, my grandmother, Hazel Margaret, being the oldest. The others were Richard, Natalie, Ellery, Winona, and Shirley. Besides my grandmother, only her sister Winnie and one cousin, Dutchy, remain alive out of that generation.
My great grandfather was a rogue, so besides who knows how many local “milkman” spawn, he hopped the train, ran off and had more than one other family, including one in Connecticut that’s been in touch with my mother to compare information. He reportedly was involved in early computer systems for the government.
More stuff about Howland genealogy, at some length, follows the pictures…
So last night I’m going through these pictures I took of sheets of pictures my mother got from some relatives who are also part of the whole Howland lineage. Forever it’s been “known” that one of the Howlands married a Wampanoag indian woman, and she’s one of my ancestors a few generations back. Most recently my understanding was she’d have been my great-great-great grandmother. Yet looking at what I had on record for names, that would have made her Philena Haskins, which sounded not like an indian’s name. I called to ask my mother more about it, and she thought her name might have been Keturah, married to Malachi Howland, one generation back from Seth Howland, who was born in 1789) and Philena Haskins (who was his second wife). Trouble is, you go back too far and it’s not possible to have a picture like this:
Which may or may not be the ancestor in question, and may or may not be an indian ancestor in the Ashley line instead.
So I enthusiastically found Malachi Howland and Keturah, whose name in this case was Howland because they were cousins, not boding well for the indian idea. I gave my mother their entire lineage, available easily online, back to 1481. Then I poked around more and got suspicious about the fact that those two were listed as having no kids, not to mention that they moved from Middleboro to Manhattan, and that meant the lineage had to make its way back to Massachusetts. I found evidence that they had one daughter, but that’s it.
Later I found a near-match of our own lineage that I could match us to, with a totally different path up the Howland lineage to the same place. Starting with my great-grandmother’s parents and going down the generations of paternal parentage, that one went:
Seth A. Howland
Emily Martha Ashley
Seth Howland
Philena Haskins (2nd wife; 1st wife was Abigail Ashley, Seth A. was youngest of a grand total of 15 children)
Joshua Howland
Abigail Pierce (see paragraph below)
Joshua Howland
Mary Allen
Joshua Howland
Elizabeth Holloway (one source had her spelled Halloway, which is apparently wrong)
Samuel Howland
Mary Sampson
Henry Howland Jr
Mary Newland
Henry Howland Sr
Margaret Aires
John Howland
Emma Revell
John Howland
Agnes Greenway
John Howland b.1481
Agnes Agnette
The trouble is, if I went to the seemingly better source on overall Howland lineage up to a few generations ago, or less, depending, and come down from the top, I came up to the third Joshua being married to Phebe Chase, so I thought my conclusion was wrong. I also thought I had too long a break between a couple of the generations. However, it turned out that Phebe Chase was third Joshua Howland’s first wife, with whom he had four girls, including that same Keturah who married Malachi, and the online source I was treating as particularly comprehensive and authoritative made no mention of his second wife, Abigail Pierce, and their one child, the first Seth Howland. As for the dates, I’d noted them wrong when trying to get it straight on paper. In reality it all fits fine. Which allowed me to stop demonstrating, to Deb’s amusement, where Sadie might possibly have inherited her obsessive tendencies.
I still have no idea which one was an indian. If there was a picture, even a tintype, it couldn’t have been too far back. My great-grandmother had a picture displayed in her house, and I believe my mother said she claimed it was her grandmother or great-grandmother. Which would be Philena Haskins or Abigail Pierce, if it’s in the Howland lineage.
Finally, finishing off this post I started yesterday morning, here is my grandmother, daughter of my great-grandmother pictured near the top of the post, at the age of 11, and then 79 years later, this past Sunday, with Sadie looking as she talks with my brother-in-law’s mother, not pictured.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Valerie Sightings
I need to respond to a server emergency (or not; it appears my instructions to them worked), but here’s a pair of quick Valerie pictures. The first is with her great-grandmother at the 90th birthday party Sunday. The second is her exploring the “cave” under my desk, which is her favorite place to go. It’s as if she’s seeking a den.
