From Crawling to Walking

Just about one month ago, Eliana took her first few tentative steps without holding on to anything. I think she made it three steps before plopping over. As the following video shows (taken this morning), it didn’t take her long to figure out the concept once she got used to the idea. She also demonstrates a) her disdain for having her hair tied up out of her eyes, b) her constant desire to go into the bathroom to play, c) her equal desire to grab at the camera.

One-Liner Updates

It’s been a while since I’ve updated on our nearly-14-month-old. Here’s a quick bullet list.

First Birthday

Eliana’s first birthday was last week! I haven’t had a chance to write anything since then, though. So, some quick updates.

Unusual Traffic Tie-Up

I had a rather unusual drive in to work this morning. Everything was fine until I was one exit away from my workplace. Suddenly, three lanes of traffic ground to a halt. Sighing, I made sure to stay in the far right lane, so I could take the next exit and wind my way in through the backroads, not having any idea how far up the traffic jam started.

Much to my annoyance, some ignorant drivers decided they were more in a hurry, and started driving up on the right shoulder of the road, thus shooting past me. But then confusingly, the third car that did this suddenly braked to a real quick stop next to me, then put on her blinker to come over. The driver pulled in behind me. I found this odd, as the exit wasn’t for another quarter of a mile or so.

Much to my surprise, I then saw what was causing the tie-up in the shoulder. Walking in the shoulder of the road came a man, leading what looked like two miniature horses on leashes or reins, one in each hand. He was just casually walking along, the horses (half the man’s height) trotting along beside him. As soon as I passed him, traffic immediately opened up in front of me.

Thinking about it after the fact, I was reminded of our trips to Scotland, where out in the Highlands you can be driving along and suddenly hit a “traffic jam” as a herd of sheep are being led up the road from one farm to another. At least this incident wasn’t quite that bad, but it’s still quite an usual sight to see in this area.

The Sweet Spot

Today, I’m home with a sick baby. Yesterday morning at 9:30, she had a doctor’s appointment. Just her usual well-baby checkup. Doctor said she was fine, blah blah blah.

At about 12:30, Rina got a phone call from the day care, asking her to come over and pick the baby up, as she had a fever of 101.6 degrees. So much for Rina getting any work done that day….

Happy Burnstein Night

Tonight (January 25th) is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland. Traditional Burns night dinners consist of bagpipes, haggis, merriment, and other traditional Scottish foods. We, however, celebrated slightly differently. Today, in amongst other activities, I made bagels for the first time since we had our new kitchen built. I’ve made them a couple of times before, but not since construction started, and that was more than 6 months ago, so this was kind of a big deal for me.

Tonight, we had a completely non-traditional Burns Supper. Haggis is, by kosher default, fairly hard to do due to the inavailability of ingredients (finding lamb stomach in the grocery store is hard to do anyway). So, as mentioned above, I made homemade bagels today, and we topped them with Scottish smoked salmon, to make a blend of Scottish and Jewish cultures: lox and bagels with cream cheese for dinner. I topped it off with a couple of readings from Robbie Burns’ poetry from a book I bought one time when I was in Scotland, and a dram or two (or maybe more, I lost track until I finished the bottle) of single malt from Scotland, and that was our celebration. One of these years, I’ll be organized enough to invite friends over to partake, but this year it was just Rina and me (Eliana had gone to sleep an hour before). Maybe someday I’ll also be organized enough to make more than salmon and bagels; I wanted to make shortbread this year, but got distracted enough that it didn’t happen. Ah well.

In baby news, we had formal pictures of Eliana taken today, as a) she’s as cute as a button, b) her 11 month birthday is tomorrow(!), and c) she can sit up, stand up propped against an object, and can laugh or smile practically on cue. Such a happy baby, thank God; the only times she gets cranky are when she’s tired or hungry. I’m certainly not one to blame her, as I get cranky for the same reasons….

Eliana Updates

A few quick updates, since it’s been a while.

Over the Christmas/Hanukkah holidays, Eliana achieved real crawling. Not the wiggly shuffle she’d been doing, but up on hands and knees and heading across the room. It’s almost time to put up the baby gate by the stairs now.

Then, our New Years weekend was an interesting one. Not only did Eliana have a cold that made her keep waking up sounding rattly, but she decided that, after a 4 month break, this would be a good time to get some more teeth. Four of them, to be precise. In one two-day span. Needless to say, none of us got much sleep that weekend.

This past weekend, we hit yet another milestone: standing in earnest. Anything she could lean against (furniture, boxes, people), she’d try to lean on to stand up. Unfortunately, this also means that cribs are apparently now for standing, not for sleeping. Or, as was the case this evening, standing followed by falling over, making a “thump,” and screaming. She’s been put down to sleep yet again, maybe now she’s sufficiently motivated to stay in position and let sleep overtake her. One can hope….

No time recently to process and upload more movies. Hopefully sometime soon.

Home Movie Time

I finally got around to transferring off the movies from the camcorder I bought about a week before Eliana was born. We’ve been taking random movies here and there, about a minute or two each in length. So now I get to start uploading Web-capable versions of them to share. The quality isn’t the best, but I’m told it’s about the best I’ll be able to do.

I’ve currently uploaded the first two to Google Video. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll have to go to the blog website itself to see them.

Media Relations

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this previously here, but I’ve been a long-time member of the UMBC Symphony Orchestra. I counted a week or two ago, and I realized I’ve been with them for 17 years now. Since I started in high school, that means I’m pretty sure I’ve been a member longer than my life before I was a member. It’s funny how it’s the little things that make you feel old….

Anyway, our conductor heavily promoted our concert this past Sunday at UMBC (and it worked, we probably had our largest attendance ever), and several of us “community members” were contacted for interviews leading up to the performance. I’m quoted on an article on UMBC’s main homepage (here). And an article’s coming out in the Catonsville Times this week, too; they also interviewed me, so I might appear there as well. (UPDATE: Article can be seen here)

Another thing I stumbled upon last week. I was looking for a flyer regarding our concert so I could hang it from my office door at work to advertise it, and so I just googled generically for the orchestra. To my shock, on the first Google page was a link to Youtube. Someone apparently filmed a short excerpt of one of our rehersals last year and posted it to the popular video site. Scary….

Off to Daycare

Today we have a special guest author: Rina shares what happened yesterday as she took Eliana off to daycare.

This morning as I was driving to work, I heard some cute little noises from the backseat. I turned off the radio so I could hear these adorable sounds. Soon as I turn off the radio, Eliana gets quiet. Then I realize — she was “singing” to the music! I turned the radio right back on and the little sounds started again. What a great way to start the day. But it gets better . . .

After I dropped Eliana off at Day Care, I ran into the Center’s cleaning lady. I gave her a big smile and wave. She stopped me to ask, “How is Hallelujah doing?” I was a little surprised that she knew who my daughter was. I told her that Eliana was great — real smiley this morning. So the cleaning lady tells me that Eliana ALWAYS smiles. She visits her every day during her lunch hour just to see her smile. I’m crying just writing this. How unbelievable lucky am I?