My first tripologue

Mommy says that whenever we go on a trip we have to write about it for everyone. Since having me visit the family was the big reason for this trip, it's up to me to write about it.


My first plane flight. Having a bottle on takeoff and puffies on landing sure made things more comfortable.


Shortly before this trip I learned how to pull myself up by grabbing onto furniture. I loved to practice my standing while playing with my table so Grandma and Grandpa got me a table to use at their house so I could keep practicing.


Even while practicing my crawling I can stop to pose.


Normally I love going out to restaurants, but all the noise at Rainforest Cafe scared me at first. One I got used to it, it was pretty good.


Mommy and Grandma sure love to shop. We went to three different malls during my visit! Here we're stopped at the food court at Yorktown.


I really liked my tour of Mommy's hometown. Here we're at the local train station.


Watching the trains go by is such fun! I love the breeze.


I think we came on this trip just to eat. Mommy has so many favorite Chicago foods. Here we are getting Vienna hot dogs at Portillo's.


Right before this trip I got the hang of the pincer grasp and started feeding myself puffies. Everyone was so impressed. Just think what they'd say if they could see me eat now!


By the end of my Chicago visit I had really figured out this toy. If I pull the purple lever, it plays music and the wheel spins. I love to put my fingers on the wheel and feel it move. I also found the spot on the bottom where the balls go when the leave the table. I'm so smart!


Of course there's only so long I like to play with one toy when crawling is so exciting.


Bye bye, Grandma and Grandpa! Thanks for a great visit!

Tropical update.

It's looking more and more like an eh wind event and a major rain event. Rain projections for Richmond from the NWS:

* 8:00p tonight to 8:00a tomorrow: 1.3"
* 8:00a tomorrow to 8:00p tomorrow: 0.9"
* 8:00p tomorrow to 8:00a Friday: 2.6"
* 8:00a Friday to 8:00p Friday: 3.4"

So, we're looking at about 8" of rain in 48 hours -- and 6" of those are in the final 24. Can we say lots of localized flooding, again?

Phew -- we were so close to giving Benjamin that name.

If you choose to believe the current NWS predictor model, our friend Ernesto will make a nice swath through Central Virginia sometime Friday as a tropical depression. (The original update this morning had it as a tropical storm while hitting Virginia, which was crazy; it's a weak tropical storm already, and it's not over water for most of the projected path.)

Boring music update. (As in the update is boring; not so much the music, I hope.)

Since moM asked me yesterday how the whole composing thing is going, and since Kim was surprised when I told her just how many pieces I had currently under review by publishers (and perhaps rightfully so), here's where I am today:

Pieces that are published and in print: 3
Pieces that are published and out-of-print: 2
Pieces that have been accepted for publication but aren't yet published: 8
Pieces that are self-published through SMP: 5
Pieces that are under review by publishers: 27
Pieces that are ready to be sent to publishers or contests but for various reasons I'm holding onto for the time being: 5

For those not wishing to do the math themselves, that's a grand total of 50 -- and that's not including a bunch of little things I did while I was a handbell director, and the two dozen pieces I have partially finished (ranging in completion from four measures to two-thirds of a piece). So that's not so bad.

This post will only make sense if you are Ed or Annie.

The U.S. wins the bronze! The U.S. wins the bronze! The U.S. wins the bronze!

"Fifty, Nifty United States," or "Cribbing from Kaly via Beth-Annie."

Kim is the family leader with 42 states and D.C.




I am in a less-than-close second with 36 states and D.C.; I'd have Georgia and Washington, too, except I refuse to count states that I've only changed planes in. It's possible I went to Louisiana on one of our family trips to Texas -- I know we've been to Texarkana, which is awfully close -- but I don't think so.




And then there's Benji.




Regarding countries: Benji has the U.S. I have that plus Canada, England, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. Kim has all those plus Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

For the love of circles

In the last week or so Benji has become quite interested in shape sorting. He has several sorting toys (different shaped blocks with some sort of bucket or box with matching shaped holes) and used to just play with them by eating the blocks. Recently, however, he figured out how to get the circle shape in the round hole. Sometimes he tries to stick other shapes in the round holes to no avail. But mostly he plays with the circles. I keep working on the word circle when we play with them and point out other circles in books, toys, the house, etc. Sometimes it seems like he understands when I ask "where's the circle" but I'm not completely sure if it's understanding or accidental.

He's also started playing more with his stacking/nesting cups. He's not very into stacking them, but he likes putting them inside each other. He also likes putting the circle from one of his sorting toys inside the round cups. And he sometimes puts the balls from yet another toy in the cups. Unfortunately, when he puts the ball in the smallest cup it gets stuck in there until we can work it free. It's pretty amazing to watch him starting to understand the similarities among many round items!

And speaking of round things, he also likes wheels. He was really more interested in wheels about 2-3 weeks ago (now it's shapes in general) but he still likes wheels. He'll turn his cars upside down and spin the wheels. Or he'll push the button on his train to make the wheels turn and put his fingers on the wheels to feel them turn. He doesn't seem to get too much out of rolling toys across the floor, but I'm sure that will come with time. In the meantime, his cars get thrown off the high chair tray, just like all his other toys in the high chair (incidentally, he seems to prefer when his toys land on the floor more than when an adult catches them).

It's so much fun to watch Benjamin learn about basic concepts -- shapes, wheels, gravity.

Iowa State: 3-5.

Looks pretty likely to me through eight games. Here's ISU's football schedule followed by the AP ranking of the team (if they're in the top 25) or the Sports Illustrated ranking (if not):

Toledo (61)
UNLV (92)
at Iowa (16)
at Texas (3)
Northern Iowa (Div. I-AA)
Nebraska (20)
at Oklahoma (10)
Texas Tech (25)
at Kansas State (68)
Kansas (66)
at Colorado (37)
Missouri (39)

Sports Illustrated predicts a final 8-4 record, which seems very, very optimistic to me -- I'd be surprised if ISU can pull off two wins vs. Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Colorado, plus Missouri isn't a gimme. 7-5 or 6-6 would be my guess.

Do you know what's stupid? Stupid poison ivy.

So early Monday evening, I noticed that I had a few strange mosquito-bite-looking marks on my upper arm. By late Monday evening, I had a whole bunch of strange mosquito-bite-looking marks on my upper arm and chest. By early Tuesday morning (say, 1:00), I was quite confident my steroids had not knocked out my poison ivy, and, a week-and-a-half after getting rid of it, it was back. By later Tuesday morning (say, 3:00), I had run out of my poison ivy medicine from my last adventure and went to Wal-Mart to buy some more. (From what I saw, the employee:customer ratio at Wal-Mart at 3:00a is about 4:1.) By even later Tuesday morning (say, 5:00), I had a much worse itch then I ever had with my original poison ivy, though oddly enough without any of the blisters I had originally.

So, of course, I called my doctors' office as soon as it opened (with this red, itchy over about 40 percent of my body) and got the earliest available appointment. After waiting for nearly an hour -- how can you be that far behind for a 9:15 appointment?!? -- my NP walked in, looked at me for about a minute, and said, "I'll bet my next paycheck that this isn't a poison ivy outbreak." While my first outbreak met all the usual poison [fill in the blank] signs -- blisters all gathered together, a relatively slow progress, etc. -- the itchy welts I had now was more systematic of an allergic outbreak, probably either food-related or somehow related to the poison ivy (while not a poison ivy outbreak, per se). Or, heck, both -- could be the poison ivy caused me to be allergic to something that I didn't use to be.

Anyway, it made little difference, as the treatment was pretty similar to a poison ivy outbreak: 12 more days of oral steroids, except now with an antihistamine Zantac kick. On the plus side, after two hours of taking the Zantac, my welts and itchyness went down to probably 15 percent of their peak, and they've oscillated between that and close to itch-free in the 30 hours since then. On the perhaps-even-better plus side, none of the steroid side effects I felt during the first course have come back so far. (I slept very normally last night.) Either I'm getting used to them or I'm counting my unhatched chickens.

Also, the poison ivy in the backyard has been sprayed with stuff that will supposedly kill poison ivy. We shall see.

---
Assuming we're still living here in five years, Benjamin will be one of the very oldest kids in his kindergarten class. I'm not quite sure what I think about that.

More neighbors

I still don't have photos of all of Benjamin's virtual neighbors meeting him, and I'm afraid they may not exist for everyone, but here are a few more.


Uncle Josh was so busy either making funny faces at Benji (which both of them seemed to love) or trying out his new camera with the "practice baby" that I didn't get any photos of Uncle Josh and Benji together. Thanks to Beth for sharing this one.

"Auntie" Megan came to visit and meet Benjamin right before Memorial Day. Somehow I forgot to get a photo of the two of them during our one-hour quick meet at Ikea in Minnesota. So I shall cheat and use this photo of Benjamin's neighbor.


Benjamin was quite fond of Megan's glasses and silly faces.


Not pictured: Kaly, Alex, Kelly, Andrew, Great Uncle Mike and Great Aunt Lana, Great Uncle Mark, and the crew from lunch at Olene's.

Do you...YouTube?

So. I've made four movies, three of which are doing nothing right now except sitting on my hard drive. (The fourth is apparently sitting in a box somewhere in the Richmond Movie Picture Co-op, and I'm working on getting it on my hard drive.) I have decided that I should do something with these films to allow (even if no one else cares) people I know to see them, so I am going to start loading them onto YouTube. My first film, "Agnes: She Is Missing," is now up, and I'll try to get some more in the next couple of weeks.

The people in my neighborhood

It seems like all of the regular readers and commenters know Benjamin quite well, but he had never met most of you all until our recent Midwest vacation. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of everyone, but here's a quick trip through our Midwest vacation and the people in Benji's virtual neighborhood.


Benji has found a new friend in blog commenter Lisa, who had actually come out to visit Benji before he was born.

Kim and Lisa say goodbye after a quick get together, while Benjamin seems distracted by the scenery at Rainforest Cafe.

Uncle Dave and Benji learn about the physics of the "busy ball popper" toy.

Grandma and Grandpa take Benjamin on a tour of Mommy's hometown.

Gramma shows off the Ames municipal band to Benji and teaches him how to clap.

Aunt Beth practices her baby entertaining skills.

Benjamin shows Grampa how to use all the buttons on the computer keyboard.

Benji and Daddy relax on Olene's sofa while everyone else eats lunch after church.

Benji likes Chipotle.

He had about two-thirds of a carnitas taco yesterday. Yes, really.

Do you see what I see?

"Common cold'll fool ya. Whooping cough'll cool ya."

At 11:00 this evening, I will be one week through my 12-day stint on oral steroids. The pluses: All the blisters I had on my arms from the poison ivy -- and there were scores of them -- are completely gone. My itching is down to about 5 to 10 percent of its peak, and I now have relatively long stretches where I don't have the urge to scratch anything. My rashes, which were on my stomach, face, and legs as well, are starting to fade, if ever so slightly. The negatives: I slept no more than 90 minutes last night, and even my best-night's sleep on the steroids was less than five hours. My skin is extraordinarily tender where the rashes are -- if Benji just brushes against my arms, I'm in pain. I'm fast-tempered and poor-tempered. But at this point, I really don't have much choice other than finishing the treatment, so.

There's much happier news about Benji, but let's not spoil the announcement(s) by linking them to poison ivy. Tomorrow.

My poison ivy hymn arrangement.

In between my nightly bouts of marginal sleep -- partially due to the poison ivy, partially due to these blasted steriods -- I managed to write what I think is a pretty swell handbell arrangement of "Wonderful Words of Life." Volume's a bit wonky on this piano realization, particularly the louds, but otherwise it's not too bad. Take a gander ...