New Words

Viv was outside in the sandbox today when her grandma asked her if something was cool, and Viv stated that it was indeed cool. She then pointed out numerous other cool things in the sandbox. So, here's a list of cool things that Viv says so far (besides the obvious- mom, da-deet, ga ga (grandma) and the like):

pillow (pilpil)
lamp (actually, she just signs it)
couch
blue, red, green (pronounced 'nee'), purple (purpur), yellow on occasion
up/down- or maybe up/green since down is 'nee' as well
cracker (caca)
cookie- actually sounds like cookie, except don't open your mouth to say it
pretty much all animals at the zoo- (sound and/or sign)
pajamas (jamjam)
fish food (fi foo)
banana (nana)
fan (fa)
dinosaur (aieee)
ball
puppet (pupa)
play-doh (pay-du)
bead (sounds just like blue for some reason)

I'm sure there's a bunch I'm forgetting, hopefully Alice will fill in some I've forgotten.

On another note, We took Abby out for a long walk tonight expecting to be dragged all over hell and back. Much to our surprise she did a great job and actually listened to us. However, after getting home we put her out back and about a minute later she was trotting around the front room wagging her tail at me. She'd hopped through the back screen door, using the convenient hole she'd put it in it. Looks like we still have some work to do.

This is kind of strange, but Viv and Elmo appear to have the same expression in this picture:

Dizzy

Viv has taken to spinning around in place until she makes herself dizzy.



Abby seems to be working out pretty well so far. We need to work on getting her not to jump up, but hopefully that won't be too hard. At any rate, she passed the big test today- which was whether or not she was too much trouble for Kathy to deal with when Viv is outside.

Here she is...

This is the newest (potential) member of of our family, Abby:


She's 18 months old and her owner is having some health problems and decided she wasn't able to give her the time she needs. She came home with us today and we're gonna give her a few days to see how she does with the Gorilla (Jamie) and how well it works with Viv and Kathy. She's a very sweet dog but is still a bit on the hyper side.


I'm not sure what's up with her in this picture:

Sad and Unexpected News

Lunar had seemed a little out of sorts for the past couple of days, but nothing all that unusual. This morning he was fairly lethargic and breathing a bit roughly, so we decided to get him into the vet. He was his normal pissy self getting put into the carrier so Alice thought all was more or less OK. She got to the vet and checked in and sometime between when she signed in and when she got in to the vet, Lunar had passed away. We're still not really sure what happened. He's had a heart murmur for a few years but the vet never considered it a big deal. Anyway, it's been a bit of a shock and Alice is obviously pretty torn up about it.

We buried him the backyard next to Bear and Angus.

More News

Since Bear and Angus passed away Alice and I have tossed around the idea of getting another dog. We'd come to the consensus that we really don't have the time it takes to raise and train a puppy properly so we'd kinda given up on the idea for now. Then, we were told about a young black lab whose owner has to give her up because she's having some health problems. The lab is 18 months old and grew up around kids- we're going to meet her on Saturday and see what Viv (and her parents) think.

Some Geeky News

I've been pondering for some time as to whether or not to shift the blog off the current site and host it locally (on a computer I actually can beat on when it screws up). I've been loathe to dedicate a whole machine to the task due to the cost, energy consumption due to 24 hour operation, and general pain-in-the-assiness of it all. That being said, I've discovered that my answer to the problem has been sitting here for a year now. We have this little thing called a network attached storage device- it's a little wireless thing-a-majig that controls some backup hard drives on our local network. It turns out this device has a 266 MHz processor, 32 meg of ram and a dedicated flash storage disk- in short it's a little computer about the size of a paperback book. There's no monitor, keyboard, or any of that fancy stuff- but the core system that runs it is based on linux and some clever folks have developed a method to get it up and running as a web server. At any rate, I've done some fiddling around with it and currently have ftp access up and running. I'll be enabling http (webpage) access soon and we'll do a trial run of a Viv page hosted here. What this also means is that I'll be able to make a huge collection of pictures and movies accessible for downloading.

I'm working on this as kind of a hobby project since I enjoy fiddling with computers. So, you may have some amazingly nifty site with audio/video and optional backrubs up and running shortly. Or, I may find it too irritating to mess with and give it up. Either way, I'll let everyone know.

Easter Basket

Whale and Frog

Easter. part II

On Easter morning, after Viv got her basket and sampled some of the goodies the Easter Bunny left her, Grandma and Nonna came over for breakfast and brought bunny ears and a nose.



After breakfast, we went out back for an egg hunt. Viv found all 12 eggs.







Then we came inside, and she opened up the eggs and played with them.




That afternoon we caught a small Easter parade - a marching krewe that went down St. Claude Avenue in Bywater and Marigny.




When we got home she played "up, down" on the paved areas of our neighbor's strip of land that borders the river side of the house.




And here's just a cute picture of her later that evening on the couch.

Easter, part 1

Here's the first round of Easter pictures. There's a bunch more to come, but not tonight.

Holy Saturday Batman

On Saturday, Vivienne and Alice went to Grandma and Nonna's house to make easter cookies. Later, Michael, Nick, and Laura came over to our house and we dyed eggs. Then we all went to Moot and Tomio's for dinner. Here's some pictures of Viv at Grandma and Nonna's house and in the car on the way to dinner.

Ah-ee and zoo pictures

"Ah-ee." You hear me? "Ah-ee." Yes OK. Well, do you know what I mean by that? No? I mean dinosaur. It took us at least two weeks to figure that out. We know "nee" is down because Vivienne says it as a game with a perfectly clear "up" when she's on stairs or even just playing. But, "reh-boo" or its variant "boo-reh-boo"? We still haven't a clue. Is it red-blue, blue-red-blue? If you figure it out, let us know - it must be at least as important as dinosaur since she says it a lot.

Also, yesterday we had the day off for Good Friday so we went to the zoo and to one of our favorite ice cream parlors, Creole Creamery, with Grandma, Nick, and Laura.




Perhaps we have started a tradition of the at-the-zoo pregnant belly shot.









One of Viv's favorite books is one that her Granmod and Granpod bought her when she was just born - Moo, Bah, La La La. If you have it memorized like we do, you will know that "Rhinoceroses snort and snuff." Here's a couple of rhinos followed by Viv's snort-and-snuff face.