Jake's Weekly Video Pick

This week's video is from the Pipettes, a current British band pretending to be a 60's girl group. This one's animated, which is probably why Jake loves it, but in their regular videos they also have coordinated polka dot outfits and dance moves. They're fun. Jake likes to watch this video over and over and over. "More ABCs!"

Here is Jake watching the video intently:

Here is Jake clapping when it's over:

Fun with Excel

This chart (click chart for a full size version) compares the growth between Jake and yours truly from birth to 18 months (stay tuned for the 2 year update). It was actually much more difficult to put this together than I thought it would be. First, my baby book, containing all my growth charts (and amusing anecdotes) had gone missing for the past two years. We looked everywhere, but we weren't sure whether it was at our house or my parents house. Well, I got a fun surprise on my birthday when my Mom wrapped it up and gave it to me as a present. Apparently she'd finally found it at their house looking for something else, proving two Motherly Axioms about lost items:

1) You are least likely to find something when looking for it
2) You will always find something in the last place you look for it

The third Motherly Axiom about lost items, derived from the "Retracing Your Steps" Theorem, did not apply in this case.

Technically, this was trickier than I thought because Excel has a lousy web-export function that doesn't include standard notations that are required to make Excel graphs useful. I added the labels in Photoshop and smoothed out the lines which looked very chunky from the Excel export. Also, I couldn't find any easy way to resolve the time scale irregularity on the x axis. Excel treats each data point as equally distant from the previous data point, but the doctor visits are not on regular time intervals, decreasing in frequency as babies grow older.

Anyway, Jake has obviously grown faster in the first 18 months than I did. His height appears to be evening out a bit, but he still has a good 3 lb on where I was at 18 months. I must have been a skinny kid because Jake's always been right around the 50th percentile for weight.

Next month we'll have the exciting 2 year update to this chart!

Sadie's birthday present

Sadie was a little restless last night -- not really crying, just fidgety. We brought her into bed with us around 9:30 and she finally drifted off and slept until 6:30! Her first full night's sleep!

Happy Birthday to Me

Here's a picture from my birthday five years ago. This picture is actually from April 28, 2002, which is eight days from my birthday. Ali had surprised me with my first digital camera, a Minolta s404. That year, we were planning our wedding in NJ and a honeymoon in Asia. Now we plan morning activities for Jake and Sadie, which is just as fun. We took the family to Huong Que (Four Sisters) in Eden Center in Falls Church for a great Vietnamese birthday dinner.