hiatus

my life has seen a lot of changes since I last posted. the biggest of course being the birth of a beautiful, healthy baby girl, my Elle Simone.

wow, i have so many good girls in my life now. elle was born a week and a half ago on Nov. 6, 2009 weighing 8.5 lbs and measuring 22 inches long. we had her right here at home and she burst into the world screaming with one eye open, then nursed immediately. she quickly took over the place and even has her daddy in bed before midnight. she is the most perfect angel. welcome to the world, baby girl.

Elle at 4 Days Old

i'm not really sure what to do with this blog now that i'm no longer "at large." will it become a daddy blog? will it focus on my photography which has taken a serious hiatus since moving to Irvine almost 2 months ago? will i drop it altogether? not sure, but for now we'll start [again] with this. we'll call it Family 2.1:


oh, and a big "thanks" to my mom who came to stay with us the week after Elle's birth. she played photographer and filled my hard drive with photos and videos, made us her famous mexican casserole, and never once took charge or told us we were doing it wrong. like i said, so many good girls in my life. . .

crystal at 18 weeks

i was going to write another ranty post about how economists' and business types' obsession with growth ignores the fact that all systems decline eventually and hurts people (e.g. GM bancruptcy), but i've decided i'm going to try to be a little bit happier, so i'm posting this instead.

i finally got crystal to pose for some photos this week. as she just finished week 18, she feels much bigger than she actually looks at this point (click for larger size).

isn't she beautiful? i think so.

in case you're wondering, according to an online pregnancy guide, our little frogger is now about 5½ inches long from head to butt, or about the size of crystal's hand wide open. and according to this page, week 19 is a crucial time for brain and sensory devolopment, so i plan to scream the answers to flash cards into crystal's navel every evening this week. you can never start too early. . .

irrationality and terrorism

this week's image of the week is a new diptych from my abstract autumn series, which i think i'm calling "autumn on the southern continent." enjoy!

i don't normally plug products on this blog but i'm currently enjoying the audiobook version of Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. Ariely is an MIT professor among other things, and in the book he asks some interesting questions about what makes people act so, well, predictably irrational. if you're curious about human behavior or watch programs like the discovery channel regularly, i'm sure you will like this. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

while i'm down this road, i'll go a bit further. i recently read Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade Curtis, MD, OB/GYN. go ahead, click the link, i'll wait. you see that woman on the front cover? she may look serene but she's really sitting there wondering if hers is a molar pregnancy. she's terrified, and for good reason. this book is little more than medical terrorism, and here's why. dr. curtis spends about 2/3 of this "guide to pregnancy" describing in detail what could go wrong and what tests are used to find out if they are going wrong. no kidding, this thing could have been called 26 Ways to Test for Down's Syndrome. these words are printed in the book in this order: "If a miscarriage occurs after this point, it may be possible to tell if it is a male or a female." what!?

according to curtis' own research, only about 10% of pregnancies exhibit any problems whatsoever. so why he spends such a large part of his book describing the most unpleasant parts of pregnancy in the most unpleasant way is beyond me. and anyway, i learned more about pregnancy in one evening with Google than i learned by reading this 350 page "guide." dr. curtis isn't just a terrorist, he's obsolete. NOT RECOMMENDED.

n.b., i've linked to audible.com above but i only recommend their site if you use an apple ipod as their downloads didn't work at all with my previous cheap-o mp3 player.