A blog about a kid. I like her.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

She's Out Standing in Her Field


15 Months, 26 Days

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Taking a Walk


15 Months, 26 Days

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Fine Italian Dining


16 Months, 10 Days

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Jammin'


Tonight Aletheia discovered what Daddy's iPod does. It was a profound experience for the kid.

16 Months, 17 Days

(You know, she's going to look at this picture when she's grown up and laugh about what antiquated technology iPods are. I'm sure all her music will be stored in subcutaneous implants that play directly in her brain or something.)

Staring Down the Camera


16 Months, 15 Days

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Belated Birthday Gift


Sorry for the long hiatus! I took a trip to California to pick up a car I bought on Ebay (and which the seller subsequently refused to sell, leaving me to walk to a motel and fly home again the next day...long story there) and then I flew to North Carolina to close on our new house and do some painting before we move the furniture in next month. Anyway, I'm back now, and should be doing regular update for a while.

Yesterday we received a package containing Aletheia's birthday gifts from Uncle Kasey and Tia Maria. This nifty outfit was one of the gifts, and it fits her perfectly, even though it's a 2T and she's only 16 months old. Aletheia's really tall for her age. Thanks for the gifts, guys!

16 Months, 15 Days

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Up From The Depths, 30 Inches High


A full shot of the terror that was the Allisaurus. Notice the cookie clutched in her right hand. Allisaurus is a prodigious feeder, terrible in its hunger.

(By the way, catching the reference in the title is worth 3.8 cool points.)

15 Months, 28 Days

Extra Points for Style


Notice the look of satisfaction on Aletheia's face as she perfects her two-fisted cookie ingestion technique. Excellent productivity, and very little down-time. She's a toddler efficiency expert.

15 Months, 28 Days

Dinosaur Food


Nana Freda made things better with a very liberal application of cookies to the situation. She has a PhD in Psychology, so we have to take her word that this was the best course of action.

15 Months, 28 Days

It's Not Easy Being Green


Halloween was a little bumpy this year. One of the adults dressed as Batman really freaked Aletheia out at the church party.

15 Months, 28 Days

Jack O'Lantern


My entry to the pumpkin carving contest this year. I won a free night bowling. Instead of using it, I've just decided to roll my pumpkin toward the judges when they aren't looking and see if I can knock one down.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Concerned


15 Months, 15 Days

Saturday, October 27, 2007

How People Get Here

These are two weeks' worth of Google search queries that led people to our blog:

aletheia pronunciation
aletheia pronounce
gone baby gone
aletheia pronounce
pediatric dentist
first dentist or first dental or 1st dentist or 1st dental or first trip to the dentist
before haircut
large head size for 15 months
aletheia name
aletheia update
aletheia name
Apparently this is one of the most popular destinations on the internet for finding out how to pronounce Aletheia (see the Aletheia Name FAQ linked at the bottom of the page). We also provide reassurance to Mommies of large-headed infants who are going to the dentist for the first time while Daddy skips out to see a child-abduction movie.

And they said the internet didn't do any practical good for people.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Allisaurus


Aletheia and her mommy at a Halloween festival. Aletheia was really tired and didn't stay long, but the church party is this Wednesday and we'll try to be sure she has a good nap before it starts.

15 Months, 24 Days

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Gone Baby Gone


I snuck (sneaked?--I never know) out for a movie tonight and saw "Gone Baby Gone." Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite mystery writers and I remember devouring the novel in one sitting the day it came out. That was almost a decade ago, and I haven't read it since, so the details were pretty fuzzy. I just remembered thinking it was the best of the series, and the movie has been getting outstanding reviews. So I went.

The plot revolves around a little girl being abducted. A little girl with big brown eyes and light brown, almost blondish hair.

Once upon a time, that didn't bother me. But that was then. I'm glad the theater was almost empty tonight.

It's hard to watch that sort of thing without thinking about how I would react if something happened to Aletheia. I'm a minister, and theologically I'm more or less in the pacifist camp, so I hope that I would try to move toward the forgiveness and redemption of the offender.

My brother, on the other hand, is a great big cop, and he went to police academy, not seminary. So, just a note to any potential bad guys out there. You mess with Aletheia, and you'd better hope that I have time to save your soul before Uncle Kasey tracks you down. Dental records might not be enough to identify you when he's finished.

Just so you know.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Still Doing the Sideways Smile


15 Months, 9 Days

We bought a Halloween costume tonight for the kid. I think you'll like it.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

First Trip to the Dentist

If we were really good parents, we probably would have taken Aletheia to the dentist around her first birthday, just to make sure that everything was going well with her incoming teeth.

We're not that good.

I was feeding Aletheia lunch last Friday when she jerked in her chair and screamed, clearly in pain. So leaned in and opened up her mouth and saw this:

20071012 Aletheia APOD

I'm not a dentist, but to my untrained eye, that looked bad. Really bad. Here's the close-up so you can get a better look at the badness in her mouth.

20071012 Aletheia APOD m

I thought she had maybe broken a tooth, because she took a bad spill in the church nursery recently and split her lip. So I called every single dentist in our town right then, and--get this--not a single one was working that day. None of them. It must have been the Greater Southwest Dental Conference or something. I briefly flirted with the idea of taking her to a dental clinic across the border--and there are some really good ones there--but decided instead to take her to a pediatrician just to get a professional opinion.

Dr. Herndon isn't a dentist either, but he thought it looked bad. Really bad. Using his magical doctor networking skills, he managed to get a call through to a pediatric dentist, who agreed to see Allie on Monday.

Long story short--the tooth is fine, but somehow her gums got really infected--probably as a result of some damage to the gumline in last week's fall. So, antibiotics and wait for it to clear up. Good news over all.

Then yesterday was the aforementioned 15-month check-up, and our regular pediatrician took a look and said she had never seen that happen before. So, altogether our kid has above-average height, a freakishly big head, and a bizarrely rare infant gum infection. I'm sure she deserves some kind of ribbon, but I'm not sure what color it should be.

15 Months, 9 Days

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

15 Month Check-up


It's pretty obvious what's happening in the picture, so I'll spend our time together telling you about Aletheia's 15-month update.

The stats:
weight--23 pounds (about average)
height--32 inches (85th percentile)
head circumference--19 inches (a whopping 99th percentile)

Our daughter has a freakishly big head. That's important in her particular case, because it's being used to contain her massive, massive brain. She's way ahead of average on verbal acuity and fine motor skills. At least, that's what it said in the note Aletheia wrote for me.

Assigned reading: "Big Head, Smart Baby?"

15 Months, 12 Days

Monday, October 15, 2007

Rocking Together


Memaw and Pawpaw came to visit us today, and Aletheia spent some fun time rocking beside her great-grandmother.

15 Months, 12 Days

Friday, October 12, 2007

Reading Again


15 Months, 8 Days

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Welcome Interruption


While I was trying to get a good picture of Aletheia in her new rocking chair, the kid decided that the camera was much more interesting than the rocker and ran up to hang out with me for a while. Here's a simple, unglamorous candid shot of Aletheia in mid-laugh. She was looking at herself on the camera screen and having a good time.

15 Months, 3 Days

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Current Vocabulary List

A couple of months ago, I was a little worried that we weren't seeing more signs of language acquisition from the kiddo, but since then she's really blossomed. Here's the current list.

1. Dada
2. Mama
3. Ut oh (used mainly when she drops something)
4. Wow! (whenever she's excited about something she sees)
5. 'Men (Amen, after our evening prayers)
6. No! (Her generic answer to anything she can tell is a question. The result is often pretty funny, so I think she does it to make us laugh. When she really means "no" she combines it with a vigorous headshake.)
7. Hi! (She's getting pretty good at this one.)
8. Agua (Water, but mainly used in reference to her bath. Yes, the kid's bilingual. The lady who watches her on Wednesdays speaks Spanish and taught her this one. It's a lot easier to say than 'water' and it's a pretty handy word to know.)
9. Duh (Duck, in reference to her rubber duckies)
10. Die (Diaper)
11. 'Nana (for both a banana and her Nana Freda)

Those are the ones we are sure about. She's made noises that seem like she's trying to say "hello," "thank you," and "I love you," but without clear l, k and th sounds it's hard to say for sure.

Words and phrases that she clearly understands when she hears them:
"Show me your..."
tongue
teeth
mouth
nose
hair
ear
eye
foot
toes
hands

sit/stand
up/down
chair
nap
smile
come here
eat
food
milk
phone
bath
stop

All in all, that's pretty good for a 15 month old. We're not worried about language acquisition any more.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Rock On


Aletheia likes climbing up in our chairs so much that I thought I'd get her a chair of her own. She's really taken to it, although she likes standing in it as least as much as she likes sitting in it.

15 Months, 3 Days

Monday, October 08, 2007

Upward Bound


Another week without many updates. I had a conference in Dallas this last weekend, and I took Aletheia with me so she could spend the weekend with her Grammy and Granddaddy. It's interesting being a father flying with your infant daughter. Lots of fairly obnoxious comments from strangers.

"I bet she's a real handful."
Not really. She's pretty calm and usually refrains from making unflattering assumptions about the people in line with her.

"Are you flying alone?"
Congratulations! I see that the cleverly designed android in my arms didn't fool you. Yes, I am flying alone.

"Are you taking her to see her mommy?"
Actually, I don't know who her real mommy is. She was left in the video store where I work, right in between "The Bad News Bears" and "Leprechaun IV."

Okay, I didn't actually say those things, but after a while the weird comments started getting pretty annoying. When my wife flies with Aletheia, she gets comments like. "Oh, what a precious little girl." "Are you going to see Grandma?" "Didn't I see her on a blog somewhere?"

I wouldn't have thought that Daddies flying with their kids would be that unusual these days, but I guess I was wrong.

Today's picture was taken at Aunt Lisa's house up in the mountains. Aletheia scrambled up on top of the table on the back deck. She was very proud of herself.

14 Months, 26 Days

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Airing Our Dirty Laundry


Mater Aletheias walked into our bedroom the other day to find Aletheia playing in the laundry basket. All kinds of things are fun when you're 15 months old.

14 Months, 25 Days

Monday, October 01, 2007

Basket Case


Emptying out the basket (which normally holds her wooden blocks), sitting in it for a while, and then refilling it--Aletheia's new favorite past-time.

14 Months, 22 Days

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Video: Laugh in the Bath





Daddy makes silly quacking sounds and Aletheia dies laughing.

I'm really going to miss these days.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Happy Girl


14 Months, 21 Days

Monday, September 24, 2007

Profile in Bath

20070924 Aletheia-16 APOD

And, as a special bonus to you, the same shot as a two-tone poster.

20070924 Aletheia-16 APOD graphic

14 Months, 21 Days

Friday, September 21, 2007

Pay Attention to Me!


I was minding my own business when she decided to run over and climb onto the couch with me--not that I mind! I wish everyone was so happy to see me!

14 Months, 11 Days

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ladybug Dress and Hat


14 Months, 13 Days

Monday, September 17, 2007

Unsteady


I'm out-of-town again. (Man, that seems to happen a lot these days!) But I think I've got enough recent ones to keep up the blog for a few days. This is another in an occasional series of artistic photographs of my daughter's tongue.

14 Months, 11 Days

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Stand Up and Smile


14 Months, 11 Days

Friday, September 14, 2007

Sidelong Glance


She grabbed my external flash again, so she has a superbright belly in this picture.

14 Months, 11 Days

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Her Favorite Book


14 Months, 10 Days

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Portrait, 14 Months, With Remnants of Breakfast About the Face


14 Months, 7 Days

Monday, September 10, 2007

Laugh Hard


Aletheia had a huge laughing fit after her supper tonight. She just couldn't stop. It was a lot of fun.

Now, in other news--we are moving! The trip we took to North Carolina last month was to visit a church there and talk about joining them as the new pulpit minister. It seems to be just as good a match for us as we had hoped, and we have gladly accepted the job. We'll stay in New Mexico through the end of the year, and then start in NC by mid-January.

In spite of our excitement about the upcoming move, it's going to be difficult to leave all the people that we have loved here. The next three or four months are going to be big, eventful ones for our family.

14 Months, 7 Days

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Weekend Away

All three of us are going on another short trip this weekend. I'll post as I can.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Reading


Aletheia is 14 Months Old!

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Invocation


"Almighty God of Bath Tub, who dost cleanse us with thine refreshing waters, I pray thee bless this thy humble servant, who wieldest this washcloth. Might our eyes remain free from soap, even as our bodies are freed from dirt. Amen."

13 Months, 29 Days

A Tub for Two


Nine-month-old cousin Alyssa came to visit Aletheia this weekend. I never realized how dark-complected Aletheia is until Alyssa came to visit, but--wow, what a contrast. They had a good time playing together today--lots of laughs.

13 Months, 29 Days

Friday, August 31, 2007

Protest


13 Months, 27 Days

Light and Dark


This picture was a happy accident. I have a simple external flash that I set up sometimes to fill in the light in indoor pictures. I had set it off to the side, but Aletheia saw it and walked over to pick it up. I snapped the picture anyway, and really love how it turned out.

13 Months, 27 Days

Learning to Feed Herself


13 Months, 27 Days

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Smiles at Lunchtime


13 Months, 19 Days

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Emotional Range


Aletheia seems to have become a lot more expressive in recent weeks. Her smiles are broader, her laughs are louder, and her frowns--well, they're pretty intense. Sometimes we think she does it as a joke. She'll get a really concerned look on her face, and then when we react to it, she'll burst out laughing. I didn't expect that she would be emotionally gaming me while she was still in diapers, but she could just be a prodigy.

13 Months, 19 Days

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Touching the Rail


For that extra feeling of security in the night.

13 Months, 19 Days

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Baby Einstein


Post-breakfast, strawberry-sticky hair.

13 Months, 19 Days

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Portrait in Black and White


Okay, a lot of portrait photos this week. I can't help it. She's very pretty.

13 Months, 16 Days

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Turducken


I think the thing that covers the bathtub faucet is supposed to be a duck, but I don't think ducks have that weird crown thing on their heads. So it looks more like a chicken to me--a chicken in the last stages of death from the Ebola virus, spewing liquids out its beak with incredible force.

But I just tell Aletheia it's a sweet little duckie. She doesn't need to know everything that goes on in her daddy's head.

13 Months, 16 Days

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Mind the Gap


Here's another one where Aletheia lunged for the camera. It's off-center and out-of-focus, but we captured a great smile--one so big you can see all of her front teeth, and the sizeable gap between her incisors. We use it for extra storage.

13 Months, 15 Days

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Closeup in the Bath


13 Months, 11 Days

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I'm a guy with a small daughter and a big bookcase. You can reach me at gate42b(AT)yahoo(DOT)com

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diapers since July 19, 2006