Christmas Fashion Show 2010: Casual Division

I did not anticipate the sheer breadth of outfits that would present themselves this past Christmas season. So for this first holiday post (ironically posted after the holiday season is over) here is a selection of casual Christmas outfits.

Here we are decorating Little G's first Christmas tree. All in all, I think she enjoyed the experience.


And in its natural habitat, we see the the Holiday reindeer. Little-known fact: reindeer need to be restrained in a 5-point harness, for their safety and the safety of those around them.

Another little-known fact: most reindeer are actually Christmas donkeys with antlers and fuzzy costumes.
This was Little G's first Christmas present, a few days before the holiday. For those keeping track at home, yes, that is a stuffed Opossum.


And here she is on Christmas morning, enjoying her first pile of presents. Well, maybe "enjoying" is a bit strong. She's intrigued by the paper, at the very least.Stay tuned for another post covering the fancier side of Christmas.

Christmas Fashion Show 2010: Fancy Division

I'm trying to remember how all this started. One day back in October, Hollie and I asked each other, "What will our daughter wear for Christmas?"

Our first thought was this dress, given to us by one of Hollie's childhood friends before Little G was born:

It's cute, it's red, albeit not terribly Christmas-y. And based on Little G's ever-lengthening frame, she wouldn't be able to wear it much (if at all) past the holidays anyway. She wore it to my office Christmas party.

But of course, we realized that having just one dress probably wasn't going to work, since we'd have multiple parties and functions through which to parade our daughter. So we got this cute sweater dress from Old Navy.
You'll note that the tights, socks and bolero are the same for each of those dresses. It's important to have versatile separates, or so I've been told by various and sundry fashion reality shows. We had planned for her to wear this to my parents house on Christmas Eve, but that changed, as you'll soon see. Instead she wore it to a housewarming for some friends.

In any case, the purchase of that cream-colored sweater dress opened the floodgates. All of a sudden, dresses were raining down on us, like manna from heaven, or, you know, rain.

First Hollie's sister surprised us with this little number, which you may recognize from Little G's session with Santa. I really liked the tights.
Hollie had actually planned for her to wear it again at her office Christmas party, but when I ran it through the washer and dryer (my mistake) it shrunk a bit. I will swear, though, that in addition to the dress shrinking slightly, Little G grew an inch between December 5 and 16, rendering my drying mistake slightly worse than it might have been.

So, the morning of Hollie's office party, she went shopping and found this getup, which turned out to be a pretty big hit, both at the party and with Hollie's family late Christmas Day.

The addition of the leggings from the elf outfit really completes the look.

I'm not exactly certain when it happened, but at some point, my mom decided that she was going to buy Little G a Christmas outfit, and so instead of wearing the sweater dress on Christmas Eve, she wore this.
It's like she's Santa's Little Helper, so long as the only thing Santa needs help with is holding down small objects by laying on them. She's sitting rather nicely with my grandma in that photo, illustrating that baby + plush collar = no neck.

Lastly, Hollie's mom bought Little G a dress for Christmas dinner at their house. Admittedly, she wasn't awake for much of it, but she looked fantastic nonetheless.
So there you have it. What was one dress became six. It's like the loaves and fishes, except with infant wear.

Baby Talk

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I get a lot of my information, parenting and otherwise, from the Internet. It's a dicey proposition, given the extraordinary amount of worthless stuff out there, but as a former business reporter, I like to think that know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. So I've found a few sites about child development and parenting that I regularly review, as questions arise.

A few days ago, for instance, Little G started acting a bit out of sorts. She still slept through the night, but she was extra cranky before bed, before naps, or just out of the blue. Over the last three months, she's developed a few patterns for sleeping and eating, and we've taken some solace in the fact that we can plan our days around those things. But these little fits have been throwing those plans right out the window. Additionally, she really seems to be a happy little girl, so the fact that over the last few days she didn't seem as happy gave us pause.

Our reaction? To the Internet!

Turns out, as babies go through growth spurts (which the Internet tells me happens at approximately 7-10 days, 6 weeks, 9 weeks, 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, etc...), they sometimes need to sleep more (or less) and eat more (or less). As confusing as that sounds, at three months old, it does provide some comfort in knowing there's a reason she's out of sorts. Granted, there's not much we can do about it, but at least now we know something we didn't before.

But the cool thing about all of this is that many resources tell you to look for marked changes in skills or behavior once the growth spurt is over and the crankiness wears off. Major milestones are sometimes crossed right after a growth spurt. Last night, after a reasonably crank-free day at home, Little G decided that she was ready to chat the night away.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, Little G tell us about her day, with embarrassing (to me) asides from yours truly.



I've watched that no less than eight times today. It's tough being a proud papa.

Christmas FTW!

Christmas isn't quite here yet, but we're already having a great holiday season. I managed to get most of the house lights up the weekend after Thanksgiving, despite regular breaks to defrost and play with my daughter. Hollie got just about all of the interior decorations up at the same time. We tracked down (with some help from my dad) a Bedford Falls Christmas village and set up a nice little tableau.

With all that in mind, we decided that after Hollie got off work on Saturday, we'd risk taking 12-week old Little G to see the Wanamaker Christmas Light Show. There's no way for us to know for sure, but she seems to have a pretty long gaze for an infant, and, no surprise here, she likes flashing lights. As long as we could keep her calm and fed, we assumed she'd be fine at the light show.

And lo and behold, she was!
The show started at 5pm, which is just about when she wakes up from her afternoon nap these days. She woke up a few minutes before it started, and stared at all the people around us for a while. Once the show got going, she shared her attention between the gathered viewers and an area of space in the general direction of the lights, which as far as Hollie and I are concerned is a rousing success.

But the real test was yet to come. On Sunday, we were going to get pictures with Santa.

Things that didn't quite work out:
1. Naptime: We tried to do schedule the visit to Santa right after she had eaten, which is usually happy time. Unfortunately, we neglected to consider the soothing nature of a full belly and a short car ride. She passed out and we had to wake her up to get her on Santa's lap.

Things that worked out in our favor:
1. Line Timing: We walked right up to Santa with no one in front of us. About a minute after we chose our portrait package, there were three or four families behind us.
2. Great outfit: Hollie's sister bought us the little elf costume, which looked fantastic against the red suit.
3. Nice Santa: We didn't actually take that long to get the picture taken, but Jolly Old Saint Nick was a good sport during the three attempts to calm Little G down enough to get a non-crying picture.

All in all, we were really thrilled.

Oh right. I suppose you'd like to see the picture.
And now the bragging... Man my kid is cute!

Smile, Like You've Got Nothing to Prove

There are a bunch of important milestones that you think about as a parent. And there are just as many reasons for monitoring those milestones. For health, for development, for bragging rights; all of these come into play at one time or another.

But for me, for a while at least, the biggest milestone I was looking forward to was this: the smile. It's selfish, I know. For the first couple of weeks, infants aren't much more than living luggage. Feed 'em, clothe 'em, change 'em, rock 'em to sleep. The whole cycle is very one-sided. But a smile, that's a two-way exchange. She does that, and she's giving something back to mom and dad.

So when she first started smiling a few weeks ago, I was thrilled. Babies are often cute, and they don't come much cuter than Little G, but when that smile comes, it just amps the cuteness up to 11.

Trouble is, now I want to share that cuteness. And smiles, wonderful though they may be, are fleeting. By the time you get a camera switched on and ready to go, boom, no more smiles. And so began the quest to capture the elusive smile. It was a very long quest.

Here's an early attempt.
Yeah, nothing. I swear, she was smiling a second before I took this shot.

Then there are the times she's smiling, but then gets immediately distracted, sometimes by the camera itself.
Hey! What's that? Not a smile.
The cute factor is upped by the cowlick, but still no smile. Then we got a little closer. This is more of a smirk.
Finally, this Saturday, I noticed that the smiles weren't so fleeting. Each one lasted a little bit longer. Voilà! Just before we left the house to go to the Wanamaker (Macy's) light show.
And no, the search for a smile doesn't account for my 3-week silence here on the blog. But I hope a bunch of pictures absolve me a little bit.

She Can Hear Music

Though I am by no means an expert on pop music, I am, as noted elsewhere, a fan. And though I realize she's not getting much out of it from a musical perspective, I really enjoy exposing Little G to different kinds of music. A few weeks ago, when I was just trying to keep her calm for a few minutes at a time while Hollie took a few minutes to herself, it was dancing in the living room along to various mixes I had already put together in iTunes.

Lately, as she's become more focused and responsive, I've been been using my iPhone's speaker to play music while I'm changing her clothes or diaper. She really enjoys laying on her changing table anyway, so I hope she connects that positive feeling with the music I play while she's there.

While my recent Twitter updates haven't reflected this, most of the music I'm playing is by female artists. It wasn't conscious initially, but I'm doing it more and more on purpose. Again, I know she can't grasp it now, but I'm hoping that on some level I can musically inoculate her against the crappy, sometimes offensively bad, pop music she's bound to encounter in the future. I'd like her to know that for every Katy Perry out there, there's a Regina Spektor. For every Avril Lavigne, a Sleater-Kinney. For every Taylor Swift, a Marketa Irglova. It's not that there isn't a place for disposable pop in everyone's life, it's just that you can have your fun without sacrificing spectacular vocals, killer lyrics, and fine craftsmanship.

It's like the difference between a fast food meal and one prepared at home. One uses crappy ingredients to produce something that's appealing in the short term, but doesn't provide lasting nutritional value. Yeah, it tastes good, and it'll get you through the day, but if you try to eat it for every meal, you're not doing yourself any favors. The other is produced with care, from high-quality ingredients (at least the way I do it), and not only tastes great, but provides a balanced, attractive meal that you'll want to experience again and again.

Yeah. Horrible and great pop music is just like that.

As it pertains to girl groups, some of my bias certainly comes along with who I perceive as better role models, sure. Both groups trade in risque themes, but what makes a group like The Pipettes better role models (in my opinion) than The Pussycat Dolls is that the "girl power" theme that runs through the music isn't just a put on. The Pussycat Dolls use sex appeal solely as a means to sell music. The might produce a good hook for a single, but there's no real empowerment to their music. The Pipettes, on the other hand, might wear short skirts and sing about one-night stands, but they let the lyrics do the heavy lifting. Nary a stripper pole to be found at a Pipettes show. (This particular argument is a bit early in the forming, since once Little G can understand lyrics, I'm going to steer her as far from all of this as I can.)

Anyway, I'm an optimist, so I'll just go on acting like I'm making a difference until Little G is actually capable of telling me to lay off. I'm going to cook and serve well-balanced and tasty meals, and I'm going to serve up quality pop music. What she does with these lessons, that's ultimately up to her.

As long as it gets her dancing like this, I can't say that it much matters.

Which, incidentally, was in response to She & Him covering The Beach Boys "I Can Hear Music."

Revenge of the Word Nerd

Yeah, yeah, I've got a 2-month old daughter and I'm writing a post about word geekery. Sometimes you need hobbies!

So yesterday I heard a story on NPR about the Oxford English Dictionary. Scintillating stuff, let me tell you. And I'm not being sarcastic; I really liked the story.

You hear every year about new words that get into the dictionary. Most of these are related to pop culture or technology. I remember a couple of years ago when "Doh!" was added, and "blog" made the list not too long ago.

But for every word that gets added, there are some that fall out of favor and get dropped from the dictionary. It's not a one-to-one ratio, but it happens. And it's totally understandable. The Oxford English Dictionary contains more than 600,000 words. I've heard different numbers, but the average English speaker uses 1200-2000 words on a regular basis, and typically, that's about 10 percent of the words he understands. So you figure that the average person only knows about 200,000 words. (In case you're wondering, I have no idea where I fall. I wouldn't even know how to figure it out. That would be one heck of a vocab test.)

No wonder then, that the dictionary drops a few now and again. But where do these words go (Aside from the latest edition of Balderdash)? I hate to see knowledge of any kind just fall away. Luckily, folks marketing the Oxford English Dictionary in Kuala Lumpur aren't the sort of people to just let that happen. Thus, www.savethewords.org was born. They put together a list of these out-of-date and disappearing words, just so no one forgets their small contributions to the language. I'm a little late to the party on this, as geekdad linked to it last August, but it's worth pointing out nonetheless.

And so, while I'm not an inveteratist, neither do I wish to be considered a foppotee. So I will engage in no further quibbleism and get right to the point.

Do your duty to the English language and adopt one or more of these obscure, but sometimes awesomely insane, words. I'm taking frutescent and pessundate, because I like describing things as similar to shrubbery and very strong verbs.

Words may go out of style, but being a smart aleck never will.