Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Took Lucinda down to the park to see the Rose Parade today. We watched about a quarter of the parade before she got restless. Still, she liked the marching bands and the horses. On the way home, we stopped to meet some of the horses before they were loaded on their trailers. This was the first time Lucinda had seen horses close up, and she was a bit frightened, as they were much larger than on TV.

Today was Lucinda’s first haircut. She got a certificate, and we got a little bag full of hair to save for posterity.

Lucinda is starting to speak. She has a few words that she uses. She says “googie” when she wants a biscuit to give to the dogs. She can also answer yes-or-no questions. She says “aye” or “no”. She says “no” a lot now. Stan is working on getting a program to record what she says, so that she can have a multimedia web site.

Lucinda goes to day care up the street at Step By Step (www.npssinc.com/child.htm) two days a week. This gives her a chance to play with other kids, and also gives Mommy a well-deserved break. Today she graduated out of the Infant Room, and into the Young Toddler Room. Our baby is growing up.

We took her to Adventure City (www.adventurecity.com) today. This is a theme park in Stanton that is geared towards very young children. We rode the train, the carousel, and spent lots of time at the petting zoo. Lucinda liked the zoo the best. She seems to really like animals of all kinds.

Daddy is starting to let her play with the computer. He installed a little X-windows program called ‘oneko’ that creates an animated cat. The cat chases the mouse pointer around the screen. Lucinda doesn’t try to put the mouse in her mouth any more, but she still doesn’t quite understand how it moves the pointer on the screen.

Lucinda has figured out how to stand up in her crib and reach the light switch. She can turn the light on and off now. It’s getting harder to get her to go to sleep now, since she knows how to turn the light back on after we’ve turned it off.

Lucinda is currently 24 lb (10.9 kg) and is quite the walking and climbing dynamo. She is getting into everything. She has started to say a few words, like “Dada” and “baba” and the like. Unfortunately, she is still unclear on the concept, and uses “Dada” to refer to all men.

We took Lucinda to KidSpace Museum today. She enjoyed climbing around and playing with the balls and such. She will probably like it even more when she gets a bit bigger. We will probably have to get a membership, since it’s a good place to take her, and it’s very close to our house.

Lucinda’s first birthday party. Her birthday was actually yesterday. Grandpa Schwarz visited on his way up to Berkeley for the Chemists’ Reunion. Today we all had a birthday party for Lucinda at the Tarantino’s house. She currently stands 70cm [27.5"] tall.