Ben's Rube Goldberg machine

Ben has been watching the following video on youtube a LOT.



He's been designing his own "fancy machines" in his head. The following one might be difficult to build--it involves blasting off in a space ship and dragging Saturn back to Earth, for one thing. I think the Earth blows up at some point, too. But most exciting: it involves compost. I think we've been in Berkeley too long...

Eleanor scoots!

Eleanor has figured out how to scoot on Ben's underused scooter, and she can really go.

The Tea Party Riot of 2010

Eleanor really enjoyed the tea party we had this afternoon, and protested its end vociferously.

Another video of Eleanor singing.

On the way back from Yosemite

In the car on the way back from Yosemite. Not a great video, but it does capture Eleanor's unique voice these days. Very toddler-Tom-Waits.

Negotiations with Ben

It's very hard to get Ben to do anything these days, so I tried hard-nosed bargaining combined with battery-operated bribery. We'll see if it works tomorrow.

Ben and Eleanor play in a fort we built in the living room. Kindly ignore the marker scrawled on Eleanor's mouth...

The Scooting Giraffe

Eleanor on Thanksgiving, scooting in her Halloween costume.

Old film of Mom, Dad, and Chris

We just digitized this old 8mm film from 1970 of Mom and Dad playing with a not-yet-walking Chris. At the end is a shot of Snowledge under construction, with Dee and Randy Kuerzel.

Ben's 4th birthday, in the car

We were waiting for Mom to get back from the bakery on Ben's 4th birthday. Eleanor sings a version of Happy Birthday that features a minute of whispering, so turn your volume up.

Walking, five days later...

Eleanor walks!

She took her first steps this week. Today she walked across a room. Here, she applauds herself while walking outside.

This is how Eleanor sleeps, roughly half the night. Thus, Melinda types one-handed very effectively.



















Eleanor's favorite place is standing as close to Ben as possible. Ben puts up with it some of the time, and wants to be left alone some of the time.

Celebration

Moments after CNN declares Obama the winner, Ben celebrates by dispensing an inordinate amount of scotch tape. Owen jumps, Palomi jumps and tootles.

Ben was a robot. When he got overwhelmed with the attention, he turtled and ate candy from the interior candy chute. Eleanor made a very fine chicken.

Trains

Eleanor crawls!

Her first crawl steps were last week, and now she gets across the living room in a few seconds...

Ben's TV Ice Cream

Ben spent yesterday laying unusual eggs. Here he serves breakfast, and explains the concept of "TV ice cream eggs".

Ben sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame

He prefers alternate tunings on the ukulele...

The surf at Point Reyes

We drove to Point Reyes National Seashore last weekend with Palomi and family to enjoy a freezing, windy beach. Ben loves the ocean, and refused to get out despite the cold.



Oh, and a giant yellow crab came out of the water and chased Ben around. He now talks about this incident as if it actually happened... Oh, and it is, of course, a flying crab.