A few old vids

I've now been pestered by enough of you to get off my butt and actually post. Nothing like some private insults to motivate a person. Well done!

This weekend we took an impromptu trip to Big Sur. I've been hearing great things about it but we never seem to have the time to go. It's an amazing state park about 2 hours south of Mountain View where mountains, ocean and a small river intersect. Our plan was to drive down and stay the night in a cabin or motel. Unfortunately every room < $1000 was booked because there were three weddings going on. We ended up just deciding we would just hike for the day and sleep in Monterey Bay. There is apparently something big going on in Monterey Bay as well because we called 8 hotels before deciding that the entire city was also booked. At this point it was 7pm so we decided to simply drive back home. Since we weren't going to spend any money on a hotel we decided to spend it on a nice meal. The closest 5 star yelp reviewed restaurant was a japanese sushi joint named Ichi Niki. It lived up to the "icky" portion of it's name. We spend a good deal of money and neither Stone nor Glen ate much of anything (I only ate because I felt obligated to). As we got back onto the highway Stone started complaining. I assumed he was hungry so I got off to get some fast food fries. As we were driving to Jack in the box we saw a neon "Vacancy" sign. Hallelujah! We are currently in a swanky upscale motel located between "Del Monte Liquors" and "Asian T&A video showroom". The room is clean and the neighbors are quiet so all in all we made out ok. Tomorrow we will actually get a full day in Big Sur. It should be awesome.

A view from near Big Sur

Since the title of this post includes the word vids (and since I have a couple that have been collecting bit errors) I might as well throw some up. This first video is at our good friend Carrie's apartment. Since she doesn't have kids of her own she decided it would be an awesome idea to teach Stone to say "No". I'm starting to question our friendship because of this. :-)

On a similar note this video shows how Stone now reacts when he doesn't get his way. While it's nice that he doesn't have Angelman syndrome I do miss the pre-desire age when he was easily distracted.

Just read happy scappy hero pups seven more times!

Since we spend a fair amount of our free time hiking I edited our July hiking clips into one video. Stone is actually starting to hike a fair amount now. He has some minor issues getting over large roots/rocks but that is to be expected. His main "problem" is that he wants to explore the world rather than hike. Today we were hiking along a mountain side with wind blowing up from the ocean. Stone was much more interesting in dropping handfuls of sand and observing how it interacted with the wind rather than just putting one foot in front of the other. It's completely understandable but hiking at .0001 mph can be annoying. I finally was able to get him to ignore the sand by holding an animal cracker at his height. He would chase me down to get the cookie. Watching him try to pick up a moving object was rather amusing. He had no problem matching my average speed but he would take at least 30 secs to get his hand to match my hand's speed so he could grab the cookie. Once it was in his mouth he would stop walking and revert into explore mode but he would then run to catch up to me after he swallowed it.

I could go hiking or I could sit here and dissect the flowers...

This final video is one of my favorites. Sundays in Mountain View typically involve a trip into town and a walk to the farmers market. The Hong Kong Bakery has some amazing sweets (if you get whatever is fresh). This video is of Stone eating a cream filled pastry for lunch (be sure to watch the ending). Good times.

Dancing, Hiking and Pedicures

We try to get Stone to go on an extended walk at least once a weekend. Recently we went to a Japanese garden where Stone was amazed by the bamboo "forest" and wooden bridges (a long time favorite of his). Pay attention to his bridge crossing skills dramatically increasing in the following clip. Nothing says "perhaps I should attempt to slow down" like a welcoming stone path:

We have found a fantastic bar in Muir Woods called the Tourist Club (http://www.touristclubsf.org/). It's a German style boarding house with a nice deck and at least two German beers on tap located right above the Muir Woods valley. It's become a standard outing whenever we have guests. In order to get to it you must take an awesome 20 min hike through the redwoods. Highly recommended. Stone tends to walk in the beginning and get moved to the backpack when the dropoffs get too step. I attempted to shoot video of the hike but my camera doesn't sample from the sensor fast enough so I end up with Jello vision. You do get an idea of how awesome the hike is though:

Speaking of visitors Heather just stopped by last week for the SF Pride festival. Google was in the parade so we joined 400 of my fellow coworkers and marched down Mission Street. Everyone was trying to get Stone to wave at them. He would exploded in laughter when they all waved back. It was a great time. We did find out that his nails were a bit long after he drew a bit of blood while riding on my shoulders. He wouldn't sit still for me to but his nails but Heather was able to give him his first "pedicure". Stone was amazed with the emory board thingy:

Stone's favorate TV show (after Sesame Street of course) is "America's Got Talent". This is mainly because they constantly show young kids doing dance routines. Whenever these segments are on Stone dances around the living room. He started off doing ballerenia style twirls with his arms out but has recently started to squat down and walk in time with the music. I happened to be absentmindedly tapping on a soda bottle and he started doing this dance to it. I tried to make a steady (abet boring) rythem, grabbed out the phone and got this shot of his current dancing style:

Stone has a new favorite restaurant food: Salsa! He likes spicy salsa as long as it has other flavors. His interactions with salsa tend to follow the same pattern. First he is minding is own business eating chips. At some point he sees that mom and dad are dipping their chips before they eat them. In order to be cool and grown up he does the same. About 4 secs after the salsa hits his tongue his eyes get huge and his lips start to pucker. He then almost immediately redips the chip and just starts eating the salsa straight. Here is a clip taking after a good 5 mins of salsa binging where he has reduced his chip to about one square centimeter but is still using it to get more salsa in his mouth:

A bunch of videos

Stone officially has his first word: Cheese. It sounds like "Che" instead of cheese but he is constant. He doesn't realize he can say it to make it appear but every time we bring out the mozzarella he says "Che Che!" This word was quickly followed by "Jew" which we are taking to be Stone for juice. Cheese and grape juice are apparently the finer things in life according to Stone. Who are we to argue?

Now it's time for some videos!

We've been hiking every weekend with Stone since we got here. Here is are two videos of him hanging out among the redwoods:

We also recently went geocaching with Chase, Chris and Carrie. Stone may not have been the best searcher but he did have a ton of fun:

Although Stone hasn't master the art of English he tells a great story:

Unfortunately he gets overly excited from time to time and doesn't pay attention to where he is going:

We went on a 5 mile hike with Stone last weekend. At the halfway point we stopped at "Frog Lake" which didn't have any frogs in it but it apparently had very tasty dirt:

We have a walker

Stone is officially a walker. He's been walking for a couple weeks now but he's finally gotten to the stage where he can start doing damage. Downhill walks always follow the same progression:

1. "Hey this is easy"
2. "Man I'm going so fast"
3. "Dear God, why is the ground coming towards my face at such a high rate of speed?"

He is learning to avoid step three by bailing out at the last minute. He is also suave enough to play off these radical changes in direction as if they were done on purpose. Observe a recent walk at the SF botanical garden:

The ocean is no longer a fearsome foe of doom but an awesome plaything. The last time we went to the ocean he hung onto us (or Dan) for dear life, terrified by the tide's three inches of death. This time he was trying to run into the surf. We decided a more controlled ocean experience was best:

On a completely different note Stone has made remarkable strides in the vocab department. He is now able to point/grab the correct body part when we say "Where is your (eye | ear | head)?" Quite impressive. I'd go so far as to say he is eighteen to nineteen years away from college at most.

Playing in the park

We spent the afternoon at the park while waiting on laundry to dry. At one point Stone decided he was thirsty and started drinking from the fountain:

He also spent a ton of time crab walking around the wooden plank bridges. Unfortunately he now has about 10 splinters in the top of his foot. I think dad's "kids don't need shoes" statements are now null and void. Any tips on how to get them out without getting kicked in the face? Also anyone know a good eyeglass repair shop in the Mountain View area?

Beginnings of tool acquisition

Stone has recently starting becoming interested in tools. He spends his meals grappling with the spoons and forks we give him. Most of the time they are oddly shaped drumsticks but every once in a while he uses them to stab food. This week he figured out how to free the sippy cup's straw from the evil plastic lock of doom. Unfortunately he doesn't understand that the straw was locked up for a reason and thus drains the sippy cup whenever he leaves it on its side (IE after every sip). Mom also claims that he is really into stacking wooden blocks. I've only seen them used as percussion instrument or a tool to smash Daddy's face in so I guess I'm going to have to take her word on it.

My photo gallery (http://neversphere.com/g2) should be getting updates much more frequently. I just installed a phone to gallery upload program which lets me upload pictures as I take them. I also just got an eyefi sd card for my camera so photos are automatically uploaded from my normal camera whenever I'm in wifi range. It's rather spiffy. If I only had photoshop on my server then I'd never had to use my desktop for photography.

I know it's a bit late but here is a short movie of Stone's first birthday:

I figure I might as well use this whole internet thingy to post some videos of Stone. It's kinda amazing how quickly he has grown. Here is a video from just a two months ago:

Here is one from about 5 mins ago:

In two months he went from barely crawling around and being able to only grasp things with his whole hand to flying around on the floor (when not standing) and being able to pick up objects with just a thumb and finger.

First steps

Facts:
   My memory is rather poor
   My son is maturing at an alarming rate
   I'd probably like to keep a record of his first years so I can look back upon it when I'm 64
   Relatives and friends would like to keep up with Stone as they live out of state
   I hate repeating myself

It seems like I'm going to have to start writing a blog again. Since I don't have exams or anything requiring massive amounts of procrastination I probably won't be posting as often as I once did but I'll try to throw something up from time to time.

Previous milestones:
Crying
Breathing
Recognizing his eyes could be controlled by pure thought
Realizing his hand weren't a malicious entitiy out to get him but could also be controlled by pure thought
Determining that smiling was the best way to ensure he was not dropped off at an orphanarium
Using newly acquired eye-hand coordination to put most everything in his mouth

Most recent major milestone:
First steps
I wouldn't call his first steps graceful. They were more like as a frantic effort to defeat gravity and not smash in his face while he moved upright from the couch to the ottoman. It worked and was awesome.

That's all for now.