Thanksgiving 2008

The Dinner--thanks to the cooks!

After dinner--guitar hero!

And pool!

Vanya and Yoda.

Vanya and Becky take care of Amelia.

Grandmother wonders what happened to news papers.

Becky and Sergei look at themselves in the photo booth.

Olya, Liz and Anna!

Grandmother and Amelia

Maggie and Heidi

Amelia likes chewing on mobile phones.

Anna and Amelia!

Sasha guards Amelia from the 5 dogs that were with us this Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2008

This is Amelia playing pool.

And here is another one...

We have been enjoying an amazing Thanksgiving with Heidi's aunt and uncle and their 6 awesome kids. Grandmother and Grammie are here too and they are having tons of fun holding the baby.

On a non-thanksgiving note. Amelia has begun to roll over when I try to change her. Well, it really is more than that because even though I am holding her legs, she is so flexible that she can twist her head so it is face down. Then if I pick her up she is upside down AND backwards. This situation comes with an added level of difficulty depending on whether she is pre or post cleaning.

Yoda Update

Yoda is coming home today! His fever went down and he has started eating and drinking again. He is still limping so while they don't know for sure what caused this problem, it is likely inflammation of some kind - a pulled muscle, etc... He has to be kept "quiet" so we are bringing our crate and short leash to Thanksgiving weekend to TRY to keep him calm around his dog friends...wish us luck :) Hopefully he won't be back in doggie ER as a result of overexertion anytime soon!

stair climbing

Our little stair climbing monkey. I got so wrapped up in taking this picture that I almost didn't catch her when she began to topple off the side of these stairs. Almost--I did catch her.

Amelia "says" hello

Amelia "says" hello, Part 2

Our Yoda Baby

This morning when we woke up Yoda was not himself. He wouldn't eat or move. So we took him to the vet and he's been there all day and has to spend the night. He has a high fever that won't come down and his blood counts are high. The doctor thinks it's either an infection or inflammation so they have him on antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medication. They think he's feeling better because he has started eating a little bit and barking at other dogs... But we are lonely without him and can't wait for him to come home, hopefully tomorrow.

The exciting part will be when we travel to Katonah for Thanksgiving to visit family and there will be four other active dogs there. We're supposed to keep Yoda quiet...so we'll have to lock him our bedroom. Poor little guy. This should be interesting...

We'll keep you posted on his progress!

OSU v. Michigan

We gathered yesterday to catch up with old friend and watch the OSU v. Michigan game. While the game was so-so the company was great. We had tons of food too. Ane and Charlie and Jim travelled the farthest so we wanted to make sure we thanked them especially.

Now that I think of it Tucker and Liz came all the way from Boston so thanks to them too.

Well, Matty and Heidi drove an hour so they deserve some thanks too I suppose.
And Lesley and Nesbitt stopped off and gave us another baby gate (I never knew that you had to gate almost every door) so thanks to them too.

And we should also thank Kaileen and Leslie who drove from Concord. Which isn't that far but is still a 1/2 hour trip because we live in the sticks.

Grandpa's Hobby Horse

This horse was made for Amelia by her Grandpa Crumrine. She really seemed to enjoy it.

A New Camera

Yesterday was a big day here at crumthekid -- we (actually, Heidi) purchased a new digital camera, which means it will be a day or two before we get new pictures posted as we figure it out. I am very proud of myself for the purchase. On Friday, I accidentally broke our other camera - does anyone ever do it purposefully? Anyway, I had placed it on top of the tv and when I was NOWHERE NEAR the tv it slipped off the top and fell about a foot and a half. And it was broken forever. So, I went to Concord Camera to see if I could get it fixed and was told it would cost more to fix our 5 year old camera than it would to get a new one. So, I bought one that can be dropped from up to 5 feet and still survive the fall. Our friend Gooch pointed out that since I am just over 5 feet tall, I can successfully drop it while photographing and it will still make it. I hope not to do this, but knowing my klutzy nature, it's a good safety net. This camera can also be submerged in up to 15 feet of water - again, don't know when we'll do this, but we could drop it off the dock at Lake George and it would not be ruined.

Be patient in waiting for some new pictures - hopefully we'll surprise you and figure this new camera out soon!

A Cold Day

I believe she is saying, "Are you seriously going to make me wear this contraption you call a hat?"
Amelia is in love with Yoda. She has figured out how to crawl all over him and he doesn't mind because she provides him with extra food during her meal times...
What a happy girl!
Yoda is starting to look annoyed...He started to stand up and Amelia slid down onto the floor and found it to be lots of fun.

Our little crocodile

Today Amelia showed us that she got a new tooth. This means she is up to FIVE teeth, three of which have arrived in the past 2 weeks... that explains the constant fussing yesterday :)

Heidi's Day of Challenges

I got up at 4:30 to the sound of Amelia crying, the sound of cats banging on doors and a dog barking. But while I was happily working, Heidi spent the entire day with cats going crazy, a nipping dog and a cranky baby.

Some pictures of the day...

Amelia approaches!

But wait she notices a wonderful book. Making Standards Useful by Bob Marzano. Of course she takes a moment to check it out. (And why not? Teaching about standards and narrowing the high school curriculum is of critical importance.)

Eventually though she realizes that she is reading it upside down and moves on to chewing on more wood chips--a daily activity as much as we try to prevent it.

What more can I say about the cats and our computers. Toonces, here, is quite comfortable in my computer bag.

And if you are wondering about pictures of crazy Yoda--he could not be caught on camera today--that's the kind of day it was.

8 Months!

Teeny tiny little peanut...


what a nice little conehead...It was quite a trip for her to get out...
Amelia's first picture.
Waiting for her dinner with her Mr. Roger's Neighborhood trolley
Amelia turned 8 months old today. This means that she has been "out" as long as she was "in." She has gotten even better at crawling just in the last few days and seems to get happier by the day as she realizes how much there is to explore (ie-get into/create messes). To mark the occasion, there are 3 pictures of Amelia the day she was born and there are 2 of her this past week. Enjoy!

She's getting into stuff now...

Amelia realized yesterday that she could get into things... last night she crawled around the kitchen and particularly enjoyed Yoda's empty dog bowl. Today she spent a lot of time standing at a rocking chair and pulling clothes off it and then chewing on the edge...and then she found the cat door and stayed there investigating for about a half hour. The video below highlights that discovery.

Veteran's Day, Part II

In his previous post, Tom mentioned my grandfather, Enoch Perkins, who was one of several veterans honored last night at a book party by the Concord Monitor. As Tom said, he wrote a detailed and fantastic journal as a B-17 bomber pilot during WWII and our family has always cherished it. The Concord Monitor ran a selection of his diary last year on Christmas Eve as a part of their We Went to War Series. This great series included mostly oral histories of local WWII veterans. It has since been compiled into a book and one of the veterans they chose to include was my grandfather. He has his own chapter complete with pictures and we are very excited - but sad that he didn't live to see it because he would have been so happy that his story was included.

If you are interested in reading the selection that was in the paper and in the book, click here

Veteran's Day

Well, you don't say happy veteran's day now do you.

When I was very young but older than I'd like to admit I once thought, "What will we do about Veteran's Day when we no longer have Veteran's of foreign wars. Because obviously we won't keep fighting wars, will we?"

How naive indeed. I did have a couple thoughts on this day that take us out of the realm of cuddly babies, adorable dogs, and photogenic but annoying cats.

1. I don't want to encourage sending more people to war but I do wonder about the situation in Darfur. In the days when we can stop fighting land wars what will we do about these situations. I don't have the solution at all--I just wonder how we can stop killing without sacrificing even more lives. More situations like this will inevitably arise--what will we do about them?
2. I like this quote which is actually from the West Wing but very true.Republicans want to double the size of the military and send them nowhere. Democrats want to cut the size of the military in half and send them everywhere.
   

And the real point of this post--I want to thank two specific people for being veterans.

3. First of all my Dad who served in Vietnam. I often worry that I missed something of life by never having any service connection. But I suppose that's what you do--try to live up to your dad while not noticing the good things that you do. I think about my dad's service about once a week and I am always impressed by it. I remember a night long ago when I lived in North Carolina and my friend Lincoln and I talked for hours about how our dads had been in Vietnam and we had gone to college and had fun and then were bumming around the country in the years after graduation--not going to war.

4. Finally Heidi's Grandfather. He served as a pilot in World War II. He passed away a few years ago but he is being honored tonight by the Concord Monitor. He was recognized as part of a series that featured Americans at war. Before he died he compiled a book of pictures and memories of his time at war. He was a great writer and an excellent photographer so it is a great way to remember not only him but the time when our country was in the war.

That's all of the dedication stuff.

Amelia and the Lion

Here is a video and some pictures of Amelia playing around in the Lion room.

Safety

This is probably the 35th in a string of realizations for me that everyone who has kids already knows but, here we go.

Heidi was out with the girls.

Home alone I thought I would try to both monitor the baby and accomplish some tasks that Heidi wanted me to work on. So I moved to what we call the Lion Room because it has a very old lion rug in it. (Long story but we were not involved in the shooting of the lion.) This is the room where we fold laundry so I put Amelia down on the ground and, while watching her, began to fold my stuff. (I just put Heidi's stuff in a pile because I do not understand how to fold a bra. She really appreciates this nuanced approach to laundry.)

I could elaborate in many paragraphs about what went wrong but for those of you who are reading this whilst ostensibly working I will go with bullets. Here is what went wrong:

• She crawled under the couch and found the electrical cords that I thought I had hidden from her.
• She crawled over to the stove and picked up some charcoal bits.
• She got underneath the throw rugs and began to cry.
• She crawled atop the lion rug, quite cute, but then began to try and tear out and eat the lion's hair.

After stopping all of these things in a very safe and fatherly manner I decided that we should move to another, safer room. We headed to the TV room where I knew that we wanted to install rubber bumpers on all of the sharp edges. This room is set up for Amelia so I figured that I could do both. I unwrapped the bumpers and peeled off the double sided tape that would apply them to the edges of the counter tops and the like. I looked right at Amelia and she was happily playing with a soft, kid appoved toy.

The thing I did next took 15 seconds.

I applied the bumper to the coffee table. When I turned around Amelia had one hand inside of the box that the bumpers had come in. That hand was held fast by the tape that originally held the box shut. The other hand was feeding the backing of the double sided tape into her mouth.

In teacher lingo this is called experiential education. I had heard from Heidi that it was impossible to do anything at home while keeping the baby alive but I have never experienced it. Well Heidi, now I not only know about it but I undersand it.

Uh Oh!

We were all trying to take a Sunday afternoon nap on a cold wet New England Sunday. We put Amelia down and I dozed off for about 15 minutes. She was squawking the whole time so I told Heidi to sleep and I would go get her. When I turned into her room this is what I saw. She has never stood up in her crib before.

And look at that last one. She is so happy.

In total this week she figured out how to crawl and how to stand up in her crib--great.

The Yoda Chronicles

Today Amelia and Yoda and I went to the park to swing - one of our favorite things to do. Yoda found ANOTHER dead animal - this time a mouse or a mole or something - and carried it around in his mouth. Fortunately he put it down himself and we left. He was banished to the backyard for an hour while I hope he "cleaned out" his mouth by chewing on grass and sticks or something...

She stands up!

Amelia's latest favorite activity is to pull herself up to standing at this toy. Today, she pulled herself up and then walked it across the room. She only stopped when she got to the porch door and couldn't go any further. She likes this more than crawling -- she did four crawls today. But why crawl when you can walk?

Yoda tried to eat a....?

For those who may recall Yoda eating a snake a few weeks ago, I can inform you today that he has topped that story. This afternoon after a nice long walk we came into the yard and he reached down and grabbed something "fuzzy" in his mouth. At first all I could see was a fuzzy 6 inch tail. As he mouthed it more I saw the legs and arms hanging out the other side of his mouth. I pondered running into the house to get the camera.

It gets better. I am standing there wondering what I'm going to do because I have Amelia in the backpack and don't really want to touch a dead animal. I then hear, "Mrs. Crumrine?" I look up and there are 5 Obama supporters walking in the front yard who thought they were just going to ask if I voted. Instead, they helped me pry the dead animal from his mouth - and then I let them use our bathroom. The nice girl who did the dirty work took a picture of Yoda to remember her encounter in Barnstead . These poor folks are from the big city of Boston... bet they thought they were only going to talk about Obama all afternoon...

more baptism pictures and a cute video

Picture 1: Amelia's banner: We had each of Amelia's grandparents, godparents, and aunt/uncles make a patch for her and we are very excited how it came out. This hangs in the church for a year and then we will bring it home and keep it in her room for her to remember her family and her baptism.

Picture 2: Amelia and her Aunt Jenny - godmother extraordinaire from Chicago. Jen and I (Heidi) lived across the hall from each other when we went to school in Rome - became fast friends - we traveled all over Europe together - and are still the best of friends 10 years later. We were so happy she could come be with us and that she got to meet Amelia.
Here Jen and I attempt to get Amelia to giggle...she likes the ah-choo sound, so that is the noise you hear in the background!

Baptism

We had a little wind machine going her e to make Heidi's hair do that. The baptism was a great day and Grammie made tons of awesome food for all of our guests. We were so honored to have Heidi's dear friend Jenny fly all the way from Chicago to visit us. She is a pediatrician and literally left work and immediately got on a plane. She was here for 24 hours and will be back at work tomorrow. Cool!

We were also so excited to have god parents Margie Emmons, Matt Emmons and Tim Rich make long trips to participate in the big day.

We also very happy to see Heidi's sister Becky and her friend Ashley.

And our hearts were with Susan and John and David and Heath who were not with us today.

















Matty with Amelia.

Amelia's First Halloween!

In this video, Leslie tries to get Amelia and Michael to sit still for a picture... didn't quite work out, but it was pretty cute!