curiousLee

Been nesting

Well since my last post here 15 months ago, we moved into a new house, fell into a grey fog at work which lifted suddenly on 6/22/06, and our daughter took on and beat epilepsy. So aside from some travel, I've been nesting at home. Here on this blog, I retreated to the right sidebar where I've still been moblogging, photoblogging, and posting links. I did a little bit of cleanup in the blog template today, but what I need to do next is hire a freelance developer to fix the dry rot in the code, add some new features, and perhaps apply a new design.

curiousLees on the road

Update 1/3/05: I'm back-dating this post so my December blog archive won't be totally empty, and it's time I started posting my high-quality photos here again. I've done more shooting than ever in the latter part of this year.I also really need to start pushing up notes from the innovation-related work I've been doing at AARP.

I'm still hampered by not having much time to sit at a desktop computer since we don't currently have Internet access on weeknights (see below), and work is really busy. But better than leaving this blog completely quiet, I've been finding bits of time almost every day to post from on-the-run my moblog at hiptop Nation using my new Sidekick II.

The biggest change in the last two months is that since November 23rd, Cianna, Amy and I have been living in my mom's basement apartment in Langley Park, MD on weeknights, which has cut our commute from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. by 2/3. My mom takes care of Cianna during the weekdays, so this made sense. From September through October this year, we were averaging 15-20 hours in the car each week, and what didn't dawn on us for a while is that since Amy and I work together in the same office, we were effectively losing double that amount out of our family time. Now our commute each way from the Maryland suburb to D.C. is about 35 minutes.

My mom's telecom wiring is shaky so we've had trouble even connecting via modem, and now we're many hours into having Verizon help us get a DSL line functioning. Hopefully we'll have that and WiFi up in a couple weeks.

We will continue this routine until next spring when renovations on our house in Baltimore will be completed and we can sell it to move to a house close to D.C. We've considered northern Calvert County and are currently looking in the Silver Spring area. We're open to considering other areas too.

Another big event: Cianna turned one on November 27th. We couldn't bring all the family members together in one place, so we had a party at my mom's house a couple days before, and met up with Amy's folks in Western Maryland at the Rocky Gap Resort. The birthday party at my mom's house was after Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and his wife. Cianna really enjoyed all the attention as you can see in the 39 second, 1.4mb QuickTime movie clip linked to the thumbnail image at right.

That weekend, we drove up to Rocky Gap Resort and State Park to meet up with Amy's folks. The large man-made lake offers some spectacular views of the surrounding hills, and there are hiking trails all round the area (we're pictured above on one of the lake roads).

We were going to have another birthday party with cake for Cianna in the lodge at dinner, but older lady that she is now, she fell asleep! Daddy's photo opportunity denied, but I made the best of it and produced the photo shown here.

I'll post about work and other travels in another entry...

Little Fall Lee

It's been a while since I've posted a baby photo here—there are many in the moblog—so here's 11-month-old Cianna playing in the leaves at Patterson Park from a couple weekends ago. Healthy and happy are Cianna's default states in days that are now marked by a growing tooth count (6), increasingly coherent babble, longer minutes standing on her feet and a love of the world that I hope will last a lifetime.

Spoon view

When I made this macro shot of our reflections in a shiny spoon Sunday morning at the Hotel Monaco's restaurant Poste, I wasn't thinking about the Mirror Project. I haven't submitted to or visited the site in a long time, but I see they recently reached an amazing 25,000 submissions, and they have a section of photo themes of which one is on spoons. I think I'll submit this mirror photo for a change.

Baby kisses Baby Doll

I finally closed a small rip in the time/space continuum by bringing our baby daughter Cianna to meet Rachel Whang's Baby Doll. Baby Doll is a plastic doll that Rachel photographs with all kinds of Baltimoreans (including our Mayor) and in various local hangouts. Rachel, who is co-owner of Atomic Books, posts the photos to Baby Doll's Blog naturally.

Rachel e-mailed me back in May 2003, about a week after I returned from many months of working in New York City, about posing with her doll. I hadn't heard about Baby Doll's Blog, but I was happy to meet up with her to be photographed with the doll. It was massively freaky that I was asked by a reader of my blog to pose with a baby girl doll before we made the general announcement that Amy was pregnant—and two weeks before the amnio test came back with news that we were carrying a girl.

Cianna had to meet Baby Doll. I drop into Atomic Books every few weeks, but either I didn't have baby or Rachel didn't have doll. The two finally met earlier this month, and Cianna, as an encore to her meeting the Elvis statue down the street, planted a kiss on Baby Doll. I don't dare stage a meeting of Cianna and Baby Doll at the Elvis statue. A tiny black hole might form and devour all of Hampden.

Footnote: I finally fixed the domain redirect so that www.CiannaLee.com points to the Family section here. I haven't been able to build a page for that domain, but one day, I'll archive all the curiousLee and hiptop Nation posts about Cianna under her domain.

Clinically cute

The Olympic sport of choice in the curiousLee household is watching Cianna's first teeth grow. At close to nine-months-old, these two little white nubs are late arrivals. Many babies have two lower and four upper teeth by six months. As a change of pace from the cute kid portraits, I'm going clinical with this super-macro photo taken while Cianna was asleep. They call the arrival of baby teeth "eruptions," and I think the color palette and lighting in this photo of Cianna's mouth are evocative of volcanic activity.

Some links for my own reference:

Tooth Eruption Pattern Chart
Teething: A developmental milestone
Teething Tips
Songs & Poems About Teeth
Baby Teeth Key to Repairing Human Tissue

Baby toy ops

Last weekend, I documented the operational modes of my daughter's Sassy Aquatic Bobber toy.

Above Baltimore

Here are photos from yesterday's ride on the Port Discovery HiFlyer Balloon. In addition to the higher quality images posted here, I moblogged the boarding, takeoff, view from the top, and landing from my Sidekick. The weather was excellent, and there wasn't much of a wait. It's been a little over a year since I took my last ride, and that was at night.

The HiFlyer is one of the most enchanting attractions anywhere, and very unique in North America with only one other installation in Niagra Falls. I dearly wish they could overcome the bureaucratic hurdles to get these set up in other cities. One in Brooklyn to take in the view of Manhattan would be very nice. Baltimore's installation has been struggling since 9/11 in addition to downtime from bad weather and repairs. So I highly recommend visiting the website to get hours and fees to plan a visit in support of this wonderful experience. The balloon will operate into October, and hopefully return next year.

Update 7/17/04: The balloon was grounded today when a mechanical failure stranded 15 passengers in the air for 90 minutes during high winds. There were only minor injuries. See the AP story on the WBAL web site and my moblog photos of the breaking news on local TV.

My first Father's Day

Cianna isn't looking at the lens because she sees herself in the flip-out LCD monitor of my digital camera. We had paused in front of the Baltimore Public Works Museum after lunch to enjoy the gorgeous weather. More about the day on hiptop Nation ...

 

Kissing the King

She was supposed to be smiling for the camera when Cianna turned and planted a smooch on Elvis! I could almost hear the lyrics to Your Time Hasn't Come Yet Baby (pop-up ads, but the audio is worth it). This impressive statue of the King stands at the entrance of Cafe Hon in Hampden where we had brunch this morning. We thought a trip to Hampden was appropriate as we opted out of the Honfest yesterday, and instead went to see Shrek 2 (loved it!) during the babysitting time Amy's sisters gave us. Cianna has been kissing us on the cheek in the last few weeks, and also has taken to kissing her dolls and stuffed animals. So sweet.