Aoraki / Mt Cook Video

It's taken a couple of months, but I think I may actually have some time now to start posting video from New Zealand. Here, at least, is a first installment. It was taken from our day hike in Aoraki / Mt Cook national park. When we reached the end of the trail at the Hooker Glacier lake, there was this awesome continual cascade of clouds of the ridge and into the valley. Clouds formed and dissipated over Mt Cook itself, too. I caught it in a time lapse of stills using the GoPro. When I distilled the stills into a video it looked pretty neat, but I wanted to add a little context to it.

 
Hopefully Gaelic Storm won't be too upset that I pulled in one of their songs. These guys are great, and ought to make a southern swing sometime.

Brynna on the Monkeybars

Ahead of starting kindergarten, B has recently acquired new skills on the playground.

Brynna Skiing

A little ways down the road (about one half hour door-to-slope) is a modest ski area: Pat's Peak. They have a surprisingly large beginner's area, which is free of charge. This is BRILLIANT. It means that we can take B most anytime with almost no risk. If she is done after one or two runs, we aren't our umpti-ump dollars for a lift pass. It has also meant that we've gone more than we otherwise would dare. And so, probably not this year but next, they'll score at least one and perhaps several season passes from the Mooses. We took her a few times last winter. She wore the strap-on skis that Hilary had when she was that age. But she advanced out of those pretty quick, so at the end of last season we got her a set of real skis and boots. She's got to going downhill part pretty well squared away. Turning and stopping, those minor details, are a work in progress. Two weeks ago she got to show off for one set of grandparents. The following weekend: her other set of grandparents. And now the whole world:



I never considered myself all that good skiing backwards. Turns out to be pretty easy on the bunny slope! Holding a camera steady while skiing backwards and watching out for others is still pretty tough.

Medical Arms Race

Astute. These guys get extra points for doing it in the style of Dr. Seuss. There is an extra dash of irony here, considering that Dartmouth Med School just took on Dr. Seuss' name. It's just what the Dartmouth Atlas has been telling us for years: empty beds and idle OR suites don't stay that way. The more you have, the more you use, and the more everyone pays.

Thankfully Hilary, as a family practitioner, is a bit removed from the front lines of this decades-long medical arms race. It is tough to argue that there are too many general practitioners, or that they are over-consumed (over-worked, maybe, but that's different).

Homecoming

One of the wonderful things about being back in New Hampshire is that we're only an hour from Dartmouth, so it was easy for us to drive up for Homecoming on Friday night. I really wanted to go, despite being on call all weekend, and it was absolutely worth it. We drove up after a quick dinner and didn't leave Hanover until 11 PM! It was awfully fun to wander through Baker with Brynna at 10:30 at night, looking for the new King Arthur cafe. (Which is very tasty, by the way.)

Here's the gathering on the Green. I must say the speeches lasted MUCH longer than I remember!

Brynna tried out a higher vantage point.

And here we go!

Brynna was in awe.

And wanted to join in:

And is down a layer, cause it was HOT!

Use the Force, Brynna!

Hanging out in front of Dartmouth row. With a lightsaber. Awesome!

Yeah, I chopped my hair off. But not with a lightsaber.

"I love it at Dartmouth," Brynna said to me as we were sitting there together. Us too, little B!

TwinklePIC video

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

This will be the last post in the series - I promise. But someone pointed out to me that despite the (too) great pains I had taken to describe the twinkling effect, no one has actually seen it. So, ok, here's a quick video.

The videography is total crap: low resolution, poor dynamic range, overexposed in the dark, flicker from aliasing between the LED PWM and video framerate, streaks from the lens, etc. etc. But it does get the point across.

The Escape Artist

Brynna has a new trick: the ability to climb out of her crib. She hasn't yet surprised us by 1) pouncing on us in bed at 3 am or 2) producing a loud thump, followed by much screaming, from a botched attempt. Nevertheless, fearless climber that she is, she has managed it a few times. We have proof:

Hide And Seek!

Here's some video of Brynna playing hide and seek in the yard with us. She learned the basic concept from her little friend C down the street, the daughter of one of my co-residents. She understands the seeking part but is still a little shaky on the hiding concept: she will say "B hide!" and run away somewhere, then by the time I finish counting to ten and turn around, she is running full tilt across the yard toward me, giggling madly.

In this clip, however, we're doing "Dada hide":



You'll note Brynna doing some of her creative counting, and her absolutely adorable "where is he?" shrug. And Jasper, as always, trailing along behind. He's always giving away my hiding places.

Brynna's Autumn Walk

We've been a bit lax with the blogging lately. Life gets busy sometimes. To help make it up to you, dear readers, enjoy this new video of Brynna enjoying a fine Autumn day.

Signs

So, I thought that once I finished on the medicine service, I would be able to blog a lot. Instead, despite being on the cushy "Systems" block where my class comes back together for a variety of lectures and activities, I've still been catching up on rest. Not much emotional or physical energy for blogging at the moment! (Maybe that will change next week, during my vacation.)

But I do have a video of Brynna taken this week, showing off some of her signs. In the video, she does "please," (palm rubs circles on chest), her version of "dog," (tapping chest...the "real" sign is tapping your thigh but Brynna clearly means dog with her particular sign), "thank you" (fingers move away from chin), "eat" (fingers to mouth), "sleep" (hand next to head), and "light" (hand flashing above head, which in this video looks a lot like "milk" because Brynna is doing it by her body instead of above her head.



Yes, she's standing on a big step. Just be grateful it's not an end table...we've caught her standing up on those, too!

Brynna the Climber

Brynna, having mastered the drunken sailor walk and dancing in place, also now enjoys climbing the stairs. And climbing. And climbing. She does climb down sometimes, but mostly likes up. Here's an example.

And the Winner Is...Walking!

Yeah, the video would probably be better if it actually showed her legs. But we had to prop the camera up somewhere!

Take a Stand, Little B!

Brynna has been working on her own personal triathlon. For awhile there, we thought "tooth" was going to beat out "walk" and "talk," but now I think "walk" is making a good run for the lead. Check out the end of this video:

It looks like George is going to be a good reading buddy.

She's also showing off a few more of her new skills as she plays with the wonderful little toy box that Grandma and Da gave her for Christmas:

Peek-A-Boo!

We are having a blast with Brynna, who is learning how to play little games! She now plays peek-a-boo. This started with her responding with glee as we pulled something away from our faces, but has quickly evolved into her doing the actual peeking herself. I finally had the presence of mind to stop laughing and go get the video camera:



Also, if you close your hands around some small toy, she will pry your fingers apart and then shriek with glee when the goody reappears. And just in the last couple of days, she has started grabbing our hands and pushing them together to make a clapping noise.

In other news, Brynna is spending a lot of time walking around behind her push toy. The eating and sleeping have also improved: this week's big gourmet hit is yogurt. Last week we decided that it was time to start a green vegetable, and Brynna actually took quite well to peas. Her breastfeeding has cut smoothly back to the point that I don't even have to pump anymore: I nurse her when we get up, at lunchtime, when I get home after work, before she goes to bed at 8:00, and then a couple of times during the night. She bridges through the day with three nice meals of solid food: midmorning, midafternoon, and early evening. Plus lots of Cheerios.

Now, if we could only persuade her that it would be much nicer to sleep through the night in her crib instead of snuggling up with us in bed...

Nope, I can't figure out how to sell that one, either.

In Her Easter Bonnet...

Brynna had a lovely first Easter. It was a bright spring-y day here in Minnesota, and Mom and I had a delightful time at church this morning (Brynna was napping, which was too bad, as she would have really enjoyed the music) and then everyone had a great lunch with Beth and Matt.

We got a quick photo with B in her Easter bonnet, which she much preferred chewing on or using to play peek-a-boo:


And here are a couple of video clips of her with her special Easter basket:





We hope all of you had a wonderful Easter, too!

Shifting Gears

Brynna crawled on Monday!

As we've written, she's been right on the verge for a couple of weeks now. On Monday, after watching her struggle as her little knees kept sliding, I put my yoga mat down over her regular mat, and that did the trick. It was sticky enough for her to get the traction she needed, and she was able to do hand-foot-hand-foot before falling back onto her tummy.

By Tuesday she was staggering a little farther and crash-landing on top of her toy of interest. And she was getting started from a seated position.

Wednesday, she was crawling all the way from the wall to the bed.

By Thursday she was phasing out the crash-landing and just picking up whatever she wanted and stuffing it into her mouth as she reclined on her side.

Now she is zooming all over the place chasing toys, charging up to the computer when we are talking to Alex, and generally going crazy. She doesn't even need the yoga mat for traction anymore.

And now we need to childproof.

Here's a quick video taken earlier today. We're in Connecticut with my parents, and Brynna got to show off to a big crew this evening. I wish the film wasn't so dark...I'll get a brighter one up soon!

But YES the hippopotamus!

Our little giggle-bug:

(Thanks, Steph, for the hilarious hippo!)

Rollin'

Behold our Brynna at four months and starting to roll from back-to-front.

Those who are keeping track, however, will be quick to point out that Brynna is in fact nearly five months old, which means that, yet again, this footage is already out of date. So it goes with young children. She is at this point able to roll back-to-front and front-to-back from either side. With any luck, I'll be able to show something like that before another month is past. By that time, at the rate she is going, she's sure to be training for half marathons!

The Gymini Cricket

Sorry, no giggles in this video. She has clammed up a fair bit in the last few days, so we haven't gotten anything publishable yet. We're working on it, but I think Brynna is weirded out by the freakish fake laughter her parents use to elicit a giggle, and so refuses to play along.

Instead, we've got some footage of her playing in her Gymini - a play gym that engages her lying face up or down. I apologize that this footage is now about two weeks old - it can take a while to edit and splice things together. She has now moved on to actually rolling over (though, again, inconsistently).

Who's My Pretty Baby?

Some fun dancing with Brynna, captured with our new Flip Mino camcorder.

The latest addition to my gadget arsenal, the Flip is to video cameras what point-and-shoots are to SLRs. Very few controls, automatic everything, stripped down and simplified user interface, resulting in a very simple and compact device that is perfectly adequate for for 75% of tasks.

Expect to see some more as I play around with this new toy. I've got video from the State Fair that I hope to play around with this weekend.