In lieu of a larger post—one is forthcoming—we’ve uploaded Julia’s latest school picture, her first in middle school. This year’s photo is shown here, and you can find all of them going back to kindergarten by following the link below.
Note that Julia is wearing her school uniform in the portrait: she was given the rare opportunity to wear any top she wanted (provided it wasn’t one of the banned gang colors), but demurred.
Gallery: Julia’s Class Pictures.
We’re well into the second half of the year, so it seemed as good a time as any (other than few months ago, which I concede probably would have been better) to put up some pictures from the first few months of 2015. This set contains a trim and tidy 187 photos, down from more than 600 originals, so it’s probably a good thing that I exercised a modicum of editorial control rather than dumping the whole pile online; this way, you get slightly fewer underexposed shots of my shoes.
The first part of the album contains a number of pictures of Julia hard at work on her fifth grade science fair project, in which she measured the effect of weight on the distance traveled by a Pinewood Derby car. As I mentioned in an earlier post, she earned perfect marks for this project thanks to her hard work, some of which is very evident in the pictures. I’m not sure whether they’ll be doing science fair projects in middle school, but we’re not off the hook, regardless: as a fourth grader, it’s Joe’s turn now. Does anybody have some good project ideas?
Girl Scout activities also feature quite prominently in this collection, as Julia and Julie were both very involved in scouting this spring. The troop went geocaching in a county park—a hobby that seems to have been trivialized a bit by virtue of the fact that nearly everyone carries a phone with a built–in GPS receiver nowadays. Julia had a lot of fun, right up to the part where she tumbled down a hill and into a creek, holding onto Julie’s phone the entire time. The girls also visited the Hiller Aviation Museum, where they simulated crashing planes during takeoff, landing, and pretty much every other phase of flight; dissected bird pellets; and took part in a cleanup day at a local park.
Julia also had her braces removed this February, a much-anticipated and eagerly awaited event. She celebrated with what she and Julie termed a “candy extravaganza” and showed off some of the biggest smiles we’ve seen from her in recent years. Unfortunately, according to her orthodontist, she’s going to need some more work in a year or two once her jaw is finished growing, but we’ll worry about that when the time comes—for now, Julia is enjoying her newfound freedom to drink pop and eat gummy bears.
In other orthodontic news, Joe had an expander put in last week, so he’s been drooling profusely and making strange slurping sounds whenever food gets stuck in it for the last few days; I’m sure he’s very popular at lunchtime at school. The expander is there to correct a minor crossbite by pushing his upper teeth farther apart. Each night, we get to use a tiny allen wrench to turn a ratchet and increase the width of the device by ⅛ mm.; it’s like a tiny medieval torture device on the roof of his mouth. If all goes well, however—and he can stay on the straight and narrow with respect to his thumb–sucking habit—this may be the only intervention he needs, meaning that he won’t have to have actual braces. That would be a great outcome, but in the meantime, we’re stuck with another set of dietary restrictions
William remains adorable. He’s still not talking nearly as much as we’d like, and we’re in the process of getting him started in speech therapy on the recommendation of Dr. Kim. Or, I should say, we’re trying to get him started: the recommendation actually came in around his eighteen-month checkup, but thanks to a spectacular collision among multiple slow–moving, easily befuddled bureaucracies, we are just now getting to the point where his initial appointment is in sight. The good news is that his evaluation indicated that his comprehension is easily at or above the norm for toddlers his age, so he understands what’s going on around him. He’s just not ready to talk about it yet.
Julia turned eleven last month, and we’ll get pictures of the limited festivities up soon. This year, she got one primary (and expensive) gift: tickets to a Taylor Swift concert at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. She and Julie went to the show together and had a great time: Julia has been listening to Swift’s album, 1989 non–stop ever since.
Gallery: Early 2015.
As part of our continuing series of posts with pictures from the ancient past, here’s a collection from Spring 2011.
Summer vacation is winding down for the kids—school starts midway through the second week of August—and we’re busy getting ready for the new school year. Julie and Julia spent yesterday shopping for school uniforms, which was surprisingly time-consuming given the limited amount of choice you’re afforded. Joe has his school supply list, so everyone will probably spend some quality time at Target this week stocking up on pens, spiral notebooks, Kleenex™, and the like.
Both kids are looking to the new school year with a mix of anticipation, trepidation, and fear. For my part, I’ve shared their sense of pain, anguish, and hopelessness by spending the better part of the last few days trying to install Windows 10 on our home PC. All told, it’s been a fantastic reminder of why I use Macs. For example, consider this paraphrased exchange with the helpful support technician I spoke to after three+ hours of waiting this morning.
Microsoft: Your PC is part of a domain, so we need $500 to help you.
Me: And if I remove the computer from the domain?
Microsoft: That’s free, but you have to wait another three hours on hold.
Me: sigh
On a somewhat happier note, Julia and Joe just got back from a week at Camp Campbell. This was Julia’s first stay that wasn’t planned ahead of time to coincide with her friends’, and it was Joe’s first visit without me. Julia had a great time: she got to stay in the rustic 49er cabins instead of the resort-like Treetop cabins, and she did a great job of making new friends and trying new things. She particularly enjoyed the climbing wall—she chose that as one of her activities almost every day—so we’ll have to try that on our own someday.
We think Joe had fun at times, but he continues to be plagued by his inability to cope with adversity without throwing a fit. Twice, he ran off from activities and had to be chased down by a counselor, which resulted in us being on the receiving end of awkward phone calls from camp. He did seem to settle down a bit in the second half of the week: by Wednesday, we were convinced we were going to get a call letting us know that we needed to take him home early, but the the call never came. Nevertheless, this remains something we need to continue working on, because it’s sucking the enjoyment out of all of Joe’s activities and is going to cause some real problems down the road—possibly as soon as later this month, when school starts.
Gallery: Spring 2011.
We’ve updated Julia and Joe’s school picture galleries to include their class photos from this past year. Interestingly, Julia’s teacher, Mrs. Kammann, left Booksin for another school at the end of the year. That makes four teachers that have been driven to make a career change immediately after having our kids in their classes. And if you count teachers who left within a couple years of exposure to Julia or Joe, the number increases to seven. I’m not sure how to interpret this data, but it seems as though drawing the assignment to teach one of our kids might be hazardous to one’s career prospects.
As an aside, I just noticed that I’m not able to locate the kids’ class pictures for the year before last. Either they both managed to miss school that day, or the photos have been lost in the chaos that is our home. We’ll do our best to track them down.
Here at long last are our photos from Christmas of last year. I feel like I should have a few amusing anecdotes to share, but it’s been so long, and the intervening months have been so hectic, that I can barely remember what was happening last December.
There was a band concert—I remember that much. Joe was on better behavior in band during the spring semester, so he actually got to play with the advanced band this time. We’re definitely not out of the woods on that front yet, however: he continues to have intermittent (actually, that might be overly generous) problems managing his frustration when things don’t go just right, whether he’s having trouble with his clarinet, working on math problems, or playing baseball.
After Christmas proper, our college friend Mason swung through town with his wife Kathy and his kids Dylan and Ava. Joe and Dylan really clicked at our Rice get-together last summer in Texas, so Joe was really excited to see him again so soon. Dylan even asked his dad to buy a bag of barbecue potato chips to share with Joe on the way into town; if that’s not a real friend, I don’t know what is.
The Harts crashed at our place for the night, and we headed down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the next day. The aquarium has added a number of computerized, interactive activities, so the kids were enthralled. They even seemed to enjoy the fish, as well.
Gallery: Christmas 2014.
We’ve updated Julia’s class pictures page with this year’s spring portrait, fake background and all. Note that I said we updated Julia’s page, not the kids’ pages, because Joe, true to form, forgot his payment envelope on picture day and therefore didn’t have his picture taken.
It’s been a busy spring, with Girl Scouts, baseball, BESCA, and other activities taking significant amounts of time. As a result, we have a big backlog of pictures that I’m hoping to work through soon.
In March, we had the extremely good fortune to get a visit from some of our oldest and dearest friends, Joe and Erica Shidle, along with their two daughters, who are among Julia and Joe’s oldest friends as well. On the occasion of their visit, we took a rare trip up to the city (via Oakland, since we picked up the Shidles at their hotel in Milpitas) to give the kids a chance to experience some of the popular tourist spots. Naturally, there are pictures.
We started out at Fisherman’s Wharf, as one does, and then made our way on foot to Ghirardelli Square. From there, we decided to hop on a cable car, as neither the kids nor Julie had even been on one, and visit the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This was especially exciting for our Joe, as he had long been a fan of the excellent book Maybelle the Cable Car by Virginia Lee Burton (personally, I prefer Katy and the Big Snow by the same author, but The Little House is also great if you’re sentimental like me).
After the museum, things took a bit of a turn: a blackout hit the block where the museum sits, which would have been fine—we had just left, after all—but for the fact that the museum doubles as the powerhouse for the line that ran back in the direction of our car, leaving us more or less stranded. Situations like this one might go a long way toward explaining the enthusiasm for phasing out the cable cars back in the ’40s.
Luckily for us, there was a bus route vaguely in the vicinity, so after a pretty good hike—you can imagine how the kids felt about traipsing uphill in San Francisco—we were able to get a ride back to the car, grab a quick dinner, and visit the Golden Gate Bridge, which the older Joe once characterized as the site of the nastiest bathroom in the world, around dusk.
Despite the forced march, the kids had a great time and were thoroughly pooped when we arrived home. Hopefully the Shidles will come back for another visit someday, seeing as this one took place way back in 2011, and I’m only getting around to posting the pictures now.
Gallery: Shidles in San Francisco.
Only a few months behind schedule, here are a bunch of photos taken during fall 2014—that’s right, just last year. Most of the pictures are from soccer, with a few other snapshots thrown in for good measure.
Julia had the same coach, Jim Dueltgen—father of Phoebe and Zoe—as last year, and she had a great time playing with a bunch of other girls from Booksin. This was the first year the girls were playing in a U12 (under 12) league, so they were largely smaller and less experienced than the other teams they played against; in fact, Julia was still eligible to play in U10, but she opted to play up a level to stay with her friends. The team hung together through some ugly losses early in the season and put together a nice string of games at the end (albeit after the customary league–wide rebalancing halfway through to make things more competitive) to wrap things up. In the end, they were in a position to earn a trophy on the last day of the season–ending tournament, but things just didn’t go their way. Julia was disappointed, but she is already looking forward to next year—after some of the soccer–related drama we’ve had in the past, it was nice to hear her express that sentiment.
Joe also moved up a level, to U10, so he was often the smallest kid on the pitch. His team was very strong all year—if I recall correctly, they only lost one game during the regular season—so expectations were high going into the tournament. Unfortunately, the wheels more or less came off the wagon during the tournament weekend, and they ended up losing all three of their matches. Joe showed good improvement throughout the year, and mostly brought a positive attitude and healthy outlook, with only a couple of episodes of the pouting that has plagued him in his other endeavors over the last few months.
William loves being outside, so soccer season wasn’t any great hardship for him; we just had to make sure that he didn’t run onto the field when he saw the bigger kids chasing the ball around. He did get bonked on the head by an errant kick at one point, but by and large, he was happy sitting on the sidelines, playing with the equipment, and making friends with dogs.
In fact, the first time I personally saw him walking well was the morning of October 14, while we watched Joe’s team warming up for their game. I managed to capture the moment on video, which I’ll try to post sometime soon.
Gallery: Fall 2014.
We expect to have more recent pictures to post in a few days, but I wanted to kick things off with a set of photos we’ve had lying around since early 2011.
Julia received a perfect score on her science fair project, which I think was well–deserved considering the amount of effort she put into it. As a reward, we took the kids to the Winchester Mystery House for the first time and followed that up with dinner out and ice cream. I had the honor and privilege of carrying William through the tour, because he decided he didn’t want to ride in the Baby Bjorn, and most of the time he made it quite clear that he really wanted Julie to hold him, but everyone made it through intact.
Both kids have been spending a great deal of time learning to program at /code over the past few weeks—possibly in part because I (perhaps foolishly) decreed that time spent there wouldn’t count against their small daily allotment of screen time. The tutorials offered there are remarkable in terms of their accessibility and breadth, and Julia and Joe have picked up quite a bit very quickly. I’m hoping I can start bringing my work home and have them do it for me.
Gallery: Early 2011.
We paid a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium this winter break, and the occasion cried out for a comparison with previous trips. Consider this a preview of a more comprehensive photo update to come.
One observation: Baby Julia was huge.
Julia at Five Months
Julia at 13 Months
William at 15 Months
Occasional Dispatches from San Jose 
