A Parkes Family Thanksgiving

Uncle Richard helps Adelaida and Elizabeth play with legos

We had a very special Thanksgiving last year (yes, over two months ago!), with a house full of several special visitors for the holiday. Adelaida's Mamaw, Uncle Richard, Aunt Laura, cousin Elizabeth, and cousin Sarah all stayed with us for a long Thanksgiving weekend. As always, we took lots of pictures and I wanted to share some with you here.

Sarah shakes Adelaida's maraca

We spent a lot of time just sitting around the house, letting the girls play with each other and playing with them. Both Sarah and Elizabeth enjoyed shaking Adelaida's maraca!

the three cousins play with legos together

Dale shows Adelaida the giraffes at the zoo

The weather was beautiful, so in addition to the normal Thanksgiving activities -- cooking, eating, and making turkey leftovers -- we also took a walk around the loop and went to the zoo for an afternoon.

Elizabeth loved pushing Adelaida's stroller through the zoo. She took it from each exhibit to the next, while Dale carried Adelaida

I'm not sure who enjoyed the zoo more, the kids or the adults. We saw an adorable baby orangutan, some surprisingly active rhinoceroses, a seal that swam directly into an underwater wall (ouch!), a very young Asian elephant, and a playful baby chimpanzee.

Uncle Richard, Sarah, and Mamaw look at the animals

The chimpanzee was the most fun, and we spent half an hour just watching the chimpanzee jump off a barrel, swing on a rope, and try to land on her parent's back. She fell so much, but was so fun to watch!

Aunt Laura helps Elizabeth look at the animals

The best part about the zoo was that it was almost empty. Very few people were there, so we had almost every exhibit to ourselves.

the men and the girls pose for a photo at the zoo

back at home, Mamaw and Adelaida play with the stacked rings

We had a great visit with the Parkes family and look forward to future Thanksgivings with them!

Dale's Program Lases a Missile

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Many of you know a little bit about the program Dale works on; for those of you who aren't familiar with his work, here's a brief synopsis, as I understand it:

The program is designed to shoot missiles out of the sky. Presumably, the missiles will be launched by bad guys and aimed at good guys. This works by having a very large airplane (a modified Boeing 747 that contains a laser instead of seats and such) detect a missile after it has been launched, track the missile as it flies, and shoot a very high-power laser at the missile to make the missile blow up before it reaches the good guys.

Sounds simple, right? Well, Dale explained to me that it is actually a very complicated problem, for several reasons:
1. The missile is moving, and the airplane is moving. So the laser airplane has to track the missile as both are moving, at different velocities and in different directions.
2. The missile is a pretty dark item -- it isn't as if the missile has headlights that the airplane can "look" at; instead, the laser airplane has to illuminate the missile in order to see it, and has to continue illuminating it as both are moving in the atmosphere.
3. The laser airplane is really far away from the missile (more than 50 kilometers), and the missile is pretty narrow (a few feet across). This is like seeing a motorcycle (without its headlights on) from over thirty miles away.
4. The laser has to travel across that distance through the atmosphere, rather than through a vacuum. Every molecule of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, and carbon dioxide that the laser encounters will distort the laser beam slightly, making it pretty diffuse by the time it reaches the missile. To compensate for this, the laser has to be extremely powerful as it leaves the laser airplane and Dale's group has to apply "atmospheric compensation" to the laser to correct for that.

More information about the program can be found here: http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/index.html or at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Dale has been working really hard lately to demonstrate that the laser can illuminate, track, and fire a high-powered laser at an actual missile for long enough to blow it up. And recently, they did just that.

Here is a video showing the airplane firing a laser at a missile. The missile is the really bright dot that starts in the lower left; the airplane is the bright double dot that starts in the upper right of the screen. You should be able to identify the laser. The video was shot in the infrared part of the spectrum; the laser isn't visible to the human eye.



By the way, this was a demonstration of the capabilities of the laser, with a missile that wasn't armed and was launched by the US, from the US, toward an uninhabited part of the ocean. No bad guys were involved in the making of this video.

And no, the laser cannot be used to pop popcorn. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius)

Walking!

Note: this post has two videos, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

One day near the end of December, Dale and I were sitting on the floor while Adelaida walked around a coffee table. I was sitting pretty close to Adelaida, and as she rounded the coffee table toward me, she let go of the coffee table and walked toward me, all by herself!

She had taken some independent steps before, but only when she was walking with me holding onto her and I let go of her. This was the first time she had let go.

We spent the next week trying to get her to repeat this amazing feat, and within two weeks she was comfortable enough walking that she'd walk from the coffee table to the sofa, or from the sofa to her music table. And of course she got lots of practice walking from Dale to me and from me to Dale.

Adelaida has a particularly adorable way of holding her arms up as she walks towards us; this often culminates in her falling into us with a squeal of enjoyment. Such fun!

Here are two videos of her walking to Dale from her music table. These were taken in the first week of January, and Adelaida wouldn't stand at her music table at all -- she was so excited to walk to Dale! She has gotten quite a bit better in the past three weeks and can end her walk by standing rather than falling into us :)





Adelaida is now officially a toddler.

One Year Old

(Yes, I know this post is quite tardy -- in fact, Adelaida is now over 13 months old! -- but wanted to reflect on our first year with Adelaida, our first year as parents.)

This is one of the first pictures of Adelaida ever taken. She was in the NICU, between 6 and 12 hours after being born. She had already removed her intubation tube and was breathing oxygen through a nasal cannula. She had electrical sensors on her chest and finger, and needles in her hand and umbilical cord so the doctors could draw blood and keep her hydrated through an IV. Her face was puffy from the medicine they gave me during the labor, and she was lying in an impersonal bassinet with electrical equipment all around her rather than in her momma's or daddy's arms. But despite all that, she is still smiling! This was definitely a sign of her very easy-going personality.

By the time she was four days old, Adelaida had been released from the hospital and was adjusting to her new home. This was her first Christmas Eve, a quiet day spent at home with us and the dogs, all of us adjusting to our new roles. This was also when I discovered I loved to dress Adelaida up! Doesn't she look adorable in her little black and pink dress?

One month after Adelaida was born, we had settled into a bit of a routine in which we did all the things we were going to do anyway, accompanied by Adelaida. I hadn't yet realized that I could leave her while I left the room (even for something as quick as taking laundry out of the dryer), so she accompanied me almost everywhere!

Dale and I became much more comfortable and confident as parents by the time Adelaida was two months old. She was also becoming much more confident as a baby and developing a personality all her own. She loved to look at colorful things and often fell asleep in my or Dale's arms. Adelaida also started sucking her thumb when she was two months old, so could soothe herself when she was upset. And, she was so adorable with her thumb in her mouth and her fingers around her nose!

Three months old is a wonderful age for any baby, but for Adelaida three months was a great age for several reasons. First, we realized that she needed more sleep in the evenings that we had been giving her. She was a much happier baby after getting an evening nap! Second, she was sleeping through the night more consistently, so Dale and I were also sleeping through the night more. What a difference a full night's sleep makes! Third, by three months old Adelaida had started smiling at us and getting excited when we made funny faces or did silly things. That extra bit of interaction made her such a fun baby!

When Adelaida was a little over four months old, she started going to school a couple of days a week. This allowed me to do some work toward my degree and introduced Adelaida to a world in which there were other children her age and caregivers who weren't her momma or daddy. From the very beginning, she loved her school and loved her teachers! I felt very comfortable with the school we had chosen, but still missed her during the day.

When she was five months old, Adelaida learned to sit up by herself. This opened up a whole new world to her and she loved to sit and play with toys. She was becoming a very independent baby, able to entertain herself easily. I still loved to dress her in adorable clothes!

In her sixth month, Adelaida began to babble and laugh -- both beautiful sounds for a baby to make! We often spent entire evenings just doing silly things to make Adelaida laugh. One of the things I'll never forget is Adelaida laughing while Dale held her upside down and nibbled on her ears. She thought that was so funny!

Although we had started feeding her a couple of months earlier, by seven months old Adelaida was becoming quite a proficient eater. She was able to both pick up finger foods pretty well and get them into her mouth! Adelaida has always been a very adventurous eater -- she will try anything we put on her tray and generally likes new foods.

When she was eight months old, Dale and I were ready for Adelaida to start crawling. She was also ready to crawl and frequently got frustrated with her inability to move toward a desired object. Although she couldn't crawl, she was beginning to be able to communicate with us. We had been using limited sign language with her almost since she was born, and at eight months old she started signing back to us. Her first sign was "nurse" and for about a week I was nursing her about once an hour -- I tried to nurse her every time she signed "nurse," and she was practicing signing pretty frequently.

Adelaida learned to crawl around her nine month birthday and it was so liberating for both her and Dale and me! Even more so than when she learned to sit up, crawling opened up a whole new world for her. Suddenly, she was able to see something she wanted and get to it, and she could decide which toys she wanted to play with (for the first time, she rejected a toy I set in front of her in favor of a different toy that she had to crawl to get to). This was a very exciting time for all of us. (And I still enjoyed dressing her in beautiful clothes!)

Crawling didn't last very long as Adelaida's preferred form of motion. Within a few weeks after she learned to crawl, Adelaida learned to pull herself to a standing position against furniture and liked to "cruise" along furniture and along the wall to reach her destination. At ten months old, she also enjoyed walking by holding on to our hands (a little hard on our backs, but she had so much fun doing it!).

Adelaida has never shown any stranger anxiety -- she has always been happy to be held by anyone (Dale, me, friends, family, or complete strangers) and isn't bothered by me or Dale leaving her with other people. For a while, I was concerned about this (Didn't she want us to be around? Did she even recognize us at all?), but soon realized just how wonderful a trait this was. After all, Adelaida never cried when we left her at school or with a babysitter, and she loved everyone we introduced her to. At eleven months, though, Adelaida started to get so excited when she saw either Dale or me, that we knew she recognized and loved us!

Twelve months seems like such a long time, yet our first year with Adelaida has flown by so quickly! Just a few days before her first birthday, Adelaida cut her first two teeth and began taking independent steps. She gets excited and frustrated (and displays both emotions strongly, although we see excitement much more frequently than frustration) and loves her momma and daddy. She can babble and communicates several thoughts to us using sign language. She has learned both how to grasp an object and how to drop it, and enjoys doing both! And she loves Maggie and Murphy, and they both love her. So much has changed since our first days at home with Adelaida, just twelve short months ago!

Merry Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve and we are in the midst of a family celebration!!! so I am not going to write much.

So much has happened since I posted last: Adelaida's first Thanksgiving, her first independent steps, second cross-country drive, first (two) teeth, first birthday, first family photos, and tomorrow will be her second Christmas! We are in Indiana and having a wonderful time being with our family -- laughing, staying up into the wee hours of the night, and eating way too much!

I haven't forgotten about all of my loyal followers and will be posting about all of these wonderful events when I return to Albuquerque. For now, a picture of Adelaida, with the promise of many more to come.

Merry Christmas Eve to all and have a wonderful Christmas and a fabulous new year!

Mastering the Stairs

Dale encourages Adelaida to climb the stairs

A few weeks ago, we decided it was time to teach Adelaida to navigate stairs. We put her on the staircase, with a very desirable toy one step above her, and encouraged her to climb the stairs to get it.

Nothing happened.

Adelaida is standing on a book, but still can't climb the step

Adelaida is a very short little girl, so I thought perhaps her legs were simply too short to go up the stairs -- the steps are as tall as her hips, so it would be like me trying to climb onto the kitchen counter: possible, but not immediately intuitive. We used really thick books to make the step shorter for her (thinking that she'd climb onto the book, and then onto the next step from the book), but she really didn't get the hang of it.

Adelaida enjoys standing on the stairs

I wasn't too disappointed by this, since I think it's more important for her to learn to go down the stairs than up anyway, so we switched gears and tried to teach her to go downstairs. This was quite a bit easier for her and she quickly learned to go down a step, but only when she was placed in the middle of the stairs to begin with. When placed at the top of the stairs, she didn't know to turn around and would try to go down head first. We worked with her going down the stairs for about a week and she got better and better. She took several tumbles during these practice sessions, but none that caused serious damage.

Then, one day when we were practicing going down stairs, Adelaida had gone about three-quarters of the way down the staircase and then suddenly went up one step! I couldn't believe it and tried to get her to do it again, but it was a fleeting skill. I had seen her do it so knew that it was possible, but she wouldn't repeat it.

The next day when I put her in the middle of the staircase, she went down one step and then up three steps! She had a new skill and was eager to try it out. She probably went up the staircase four times that day. Suddenly, I couldn't get her to go downstairs anymore -- all she wanted was to climb the stairs.

I often put Adelaida in the downstairs family room to play while I'm working in the kitchen. I can't see her, but I can hear her making noise and generally check on her periodically when she's in the living room. I was cleaning up after breakfast yesterday and Adelaida was playing in the living room. I could hear her playing with her Legos so wasn't too concerned. I walked into the living room to give her some more food, and couldn't find her -- she wasn't in the living room, she wasn't in the dining room, she hadn't crawled into the sunroom! I didn't quite get to the panicking stage when I heard a little squeak, looked up, and saw Adelaida three-quarters of the way up the staircase, smiling and waving at me.

foam flooring pieces provide a makeshift gate and protection from the tile floor

We don't have any staircase gates, but have been using her foam flooring pieces as both a gate at the bottom of the stairs (it won't keep her from going up the stairs, but should slow her down!) and as padding at the base of the stairs so that, if she does fall, she'll fall onto foam padding rather than ceramic tile.

Thoughts on Birthdays

twelve hours after her birth, Adelaida was in the NICU but doing well

In nine short days, Adelaida is going to be one year old. It's hard to believe that our first year with her has flown by so quickly!

Dale and I have been thinking for a long time about how to best celebrate Adelaida's first birthday (and her future birthdays, and future kids' birthdays!). We've heard from so many people that separating her birthday from Christmas is both important (having separate celebrations reinforces the idea that the child is special) and difficult -- especially with all our family and loved ones out of state, it becomes easy to think "I'll get this present for Adelaida for her birthday, but give it to her when I see her at Christmas."

two-week-old Adelaida snuggles with her Poppa

Dale and I both remember birthday traditions in our families when we were growing up, and they were not elaborate gift-giving or party events, but small, special family affairs: getting a special breakfast, or going with grandparents to a special event (without the siblings!), or getting to pick a restaurant for the family to eat dinner out.

Additionally, Dale and I are fortunate enough to be able to buy anything Adelaida needs and just about anything she wants, so saving a special wished-for item for a birthday present becomes less important.

two-month-old Adelaida, chilling in her chair

With all of these thoughts taken together, we've decided that we'd like to start a birthday tradition for Adelaida (and future children, of course) that celebrates the fact that she is a very special, very loved child whose birth was a joyous occasion for her entire family. We struggled with deciding just how to implement this idea, but finally came up with a birthday tradition that we think will be full of wonderful, lasting memories.

Adelaida and her daddy look at the giraffes

For her birthday, we are going to start a tradition of doing some family event and avoid the more common birthday traditions of presents, birthday cakes, and parties. I imagine that this family event might be as simple as going to the zoo or taking art classes or as elaborate as a ski trip or vacation at a dude ranch. The birthday child will get to choose his or her event (within some parameters) and help with planning the particulars, and of course the events will change with time and be age-appropriate for the birthday child.

almost-one

At almost-one-year-old, Adelaida has been enjoying going to the zoo -- she likes to see the animals and to hear them talk. We've been to the Albuquerque Zoo with her several times, but going to a different zoo would be a real treat for her. Since we will be in Indiana around the time of her birthday, we're considering taking her to the Indianapolis Zoo for her birthday event, if the weather stays nice.

I hope that special events like this will create longer-lasting happy memories that she will always be able to remember and know that she is loved.

Utensils

Note: this post has a video, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

Dale feeding Adelaida with a spoon, June 2009

Adelaida's eating habits have evolved over time. At first, we fed her mushed-up food with a spoon, then she graduated to long skinny foods that she could put in her mouth herself and chew on (green beans, steamed carrots, pumpkin slices, banana). She didn't know at first how to let go of the food in her mouth, so she'd eat 3/4 of the carrot and then start to chew on her hand. Eventually, she learned how to put bite-sized pieces of food in her mouth and let go, so she could eat all kinds of finger foods.

Adelaida eating finger food, November 2009

Recently, we've gone beyond finger foods and we are experimenting with spoon food again -- but with Adelaida controlling the spoon! She still likes to bang the spoon on her tray, so thinner foods like yogurt and applesauce go flying everywhere. It's quite a sight! So, we generally feed her the thinner foods and let her feed herself thicker food like thick oatmeal and cottage cheese.

This is a video of Adelaida feeding herself oatmeal. She's actually getting a lot better than she used to be!

The Quest for the Perfect Sippy Cup

I've been involved in a lot of "The Quest for the Perfect (random but very specific thing)" in my life, including:

The Quest for the Perfect Leather Bag (in Italy in 2000, I was a supporting member of this quest)

The Quest for the Perfect Crock Pot (last year)

The Quest for the Perfect Hair Clips (ongoing)

The Quest for the Perfect View (on the Routeburn Track in 2005)

The Quest for the Perfect Cuticle Nippers (I found them once, but can't find another pair!)

The Quest for the Perfect Spot to Propose (all over Europe in 2000 -- I was part of this quest, but didn't realize it at the time)

Most recently, I've been looking for the perfect sippy cup. I've purchased several sippy cups over the past few months, and each time I purchase one, I learn more about them and my criteria become more specific.

The first sippy cup I purchased was based on two factors: color (a very nice blue) and cost (it was very inexpensive). Adelaida looked at it a lot but her little hands were so small that she couldn't grasp it well.

it had handles, but Adelaida couldn't drink out of it!

The second sippy cup had handles. I thought a lot about the handles before I bought the cup and decided it was important that the handles be attached to the top of the cup rather than the bottom of the cup, so that they would always be aligned properly with the spout. Adelaida enjoyed playing with it, and even put the spout in her mouth, but the spout was so hard that she never even tried to suck on it and she didn't like it to be tipped up. I didn't like this sippy cup because it was difficult to clean: a small silicone valve had to be removed and both the valve and spout cleaned, which was not easy because they were so little. I vowed that the next sippy cup would be easier for her to use and easier for me to clean.

the straw sippy cups were hard to clean and hard to drink from

The third and fourth sippy cups (I bought a two-pack because I was certain they were perfect) seemed to solve these problems. It was a sippy cup with a straw in it. The straw was made of silicone, so very easy for her to manipulate, and she wouldn't have to tip it back to drink out of it. The problem was that she had to suck on it for a long time before any water made it all the way up the straw and into her mouth. Additionally, she had to clamp down slightly on the straw while she was sucking so open the valve. These sippy cups got a lot of use, but very little water was transferred to Adelaida's mouth. They were also very difficult to clean, with a straw that came apart in two pieces and a straw closure that had small crevices for food to get stuck.

The best sippy cup ever

Earlier this week, I was shopping and thought I'd just look at the sippy cups. They are all pretty cheap, and we do need Adelaida to be able to drink by herself at some point, so I bought yet another sippy cup.




I took it apart and love everything about it: it is easy to clean, doesn't have any small valves, has a soft silicone spout that is very similar to the bottles Adelaida already drinks from, has handles that are big and easy to grip (they are attached to the bottom of the cup, but there is a mechanism for putting the top on that ensures the handles will align appropriately), has a non-skid bottom so it doesn't fly off the table very easily, and even has a cover so I can throw it in the diaper bag and not worry about the spout getting nasty.

she can drink from it!

The best part was that I gave it to Adelaida and within five minutes she was drinking water out of it! She isn't very good at tipping it back herself yet, so I have to hold it for her while she drinks, but she has started holding it with me and I know she'll learn how to do it soon. And, she loves it! She smiles whenever she sees the cup and laughs after almost every little sip.

Quest completed.

School Pictures

Adelaida had her fall school pictures taken last month. Two things strike me about her in these pictures: she isn't smiling (I think she was too confused by the loud, weird noises the photographer was taking to smile) and her eyes look extremely brown.